Slashdot Mirror
EVE Online Getting TV, Comic Book Adaptations
CCP Games, creators of the successful space MMORPG EVE Online, have announced they will be harvesting stories from within the game to create comic books, a TV series, and possibly even films set in the EVE universe. EVE has never set records for the size of its userbase, but it's long been known as a game that generates some of the best emergent gameplay in the industry. From battles involving thousands of players to in-game confidence schemes involving currency worth tens of thousands of real dollars, it's likely you've heard about players' exploits even if you haven't played the game. CCP is now looking to bring the EVE universe to a wider audience, and rather than having a group of writers dictate all of the lore, they're letting the players take part. They've set up a site where users can share their tales and vote on those of others. CCP has partnered with Dark Horse Comics to make a comic book out of the stories, and with a production company to make a live-action TV show.
Lenny Bruce from the way, waybackmachine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfNhiRGQ-js
I thought this was standard operating procedure for any game these days.
Here are two pages full of examples, many for games most people never heard about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games
http://comicbookdb.com/user_list.php?ID=466&user=
That being said; EVE Online has done amazing things through their willingness to listen and work with fans and players. I wish more games were like that.
For most of the content in EVE, you simply need to be there, on site, to experience it to its fullest.
Sure, you can watch a live stream of the Battle of Asakai, where enough ships were present to instate a time dilation factor of 90%, and force the movement of the system to its separate physical node, but it doesn't capture the pure awe at the number and size of ships, the cacophony of fleet chatter, and such.
You can read a comic about how a young, intrepid explorer (yours truly, in fact...) went through a decaying wormhole to explore the hostile system on the other side, forgetting about the 1-hour timer, then found that the wormhole vanished, forcing him to take the "clone express" home, but it doesn't capture the terror upon finding no trace of your exit, and the realization that you're alone in a hostile system, with no chance of rescue, and any moment, hostiles may come hunting for your little frigate.
You can read about how an organized wormhole raid got stuck inside when their salvaging Noctis went through the low-mass wormhole first (instead of yours truly's scanner ship, which could have found the new exit), followed by some combat ships before the wormhole vanished, stranding the rest of the fleet outside, but it doesn't really do justice to the uproarious laughter of the fleet, then the creeping dread that the enemy knows we've arrived and are actively hunting us, and we don't know where to run, nor the relief when our commanding officer begins negotiations for the location of the new exit, and we return to known space 10 million credits poorer, but with our ships intact.
Most content in EVE is like real life - you gotta be there to fully appreciate the joke/story.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Because in cases of Slashvertisement, you see some product we could give a shit less about, get a glowing story on slashdot, likely because they PAID slashdot to put the story up. In this case, it's a product a lot of readers here are interested in, and was likely posted just because people here are into this sort of thing, I doubt CCP paid anyone to post it.
Why is it that I don't see anyone complaining about "Slashvertisement" when EVE Online is being pushed? It gets a disproportionately large number of articles, compared to user base. Why?
I have an ingenious explanation which explains why nobody is screaming 'slashvertisement', *and* why this article was posted considering the mind-boggingly enormously huge number of articles compared to the userbase...
OK, want to know why? OK,get ready....this is big-sky thinking sort of stuff, and in many circles this sort of thinking may be highly controversial, but im going to put it out there, and watch what sort of reaction happens once the world is presented with this utterly incredible, stunning level of enlightened thought.....
"Its not a slashvertisement"
Now, 'whoa' I hear you cry, ' this is indeed a level of thinking that goes above mere mortals, a level of genius that makes Einstein look like G.W. Bush', and I wholeheartedly agree with you, and am humbly appreciative of your kind, kind words, but I dont do this for myself, I perform these feats of stunning intellect for the benefit of the human race itself.
Enjoy your now enlightened view on this situation.
...for this to go down in history with the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.
Me neither. Its inevitable considering how internet spaceships and fantasy sword and sorcery are so alike in almost every way imaginable.
Remember, CCP Games had to change the name of the game to EvE because they were about to get sued for copyright and trademark infringement for the word-for-word similarity that Dungeons and Dragons has to EvE Online. Almost every person who has ever seen these two games side by side actually cannot tell them apart, such is the similarity in evidence here.
"Its not a slashvertisement"
I don't believe you. Every article on bitcoin has cries of slashvertisement. Yes, they aren't hawking a single product on a single site, but they are advertising a "product".
Learn to love Alaska
Finally, a sci-fi movie where Microsoft can sponsor Excel placements.
A new pilot will spend the entire first half of the movie downloading skills into his brain, then will spend the rest of the movie mining an asteroid, only to have his can stolen by some guy in a destroyer.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't play the game, but I am a huge fan of the spreadsheet adaptations. I mean, when you see a Titan stretched out on a pivot table, it's like, oh yeah. This is the medium it was meant for.
Some people made a series of sci-fi mechinima features using EVE for exteriors and custom Half-Life 2 sets for interiors and characters. Very well done, each is better than the previous.
Clear Skies
Clear Skies 2 part 1
Clear Skies 3
Web site
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
The user base might be small (compared e.g. to WoW) however they all play on a single server. 65k concurrent users online *on one server* is something impressive. (A typical WoW server has less than 2k users and often less than 1k online).
I did fleet battles in Eve where both sides had far over 1k ships in the same single solar system, and roughly the same number still incomming.
That is as if all WoW players on the same server would be in the same Alterac Valley (a battleground) instance.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.