In 1996, the words “Death is a serious matter!” was written. In 1997, the company Loki Margmidlun was founded in Iceland with the express purpose to create the game EVE. It created a board game entitled Haettuspil purely to build up capital and shortly after the company changes its name to CCP. Obviously things are going well for this small shop in Iceland. Making serious progressions along the years to 2003, EVE Online makes its debut to the massive becoming a direct internet download later in the year. Steadily the game brings in fans to help generate ideas that become part of the game, most notably the creation of the first governing body that is democratically elected in a virtual world. From there CCP is starting to truly take care of business and their move to world domination continues by winning many technology awards and actually hiring an economics genius, aka PhD, to make sure the economy and currency within the game are in check. All of this within a ten year period. Obviously a company that can actually increase the tourism to its base country is doing something right.

No doubt about it, EVE Online has been around for some time now and we are not looking to really describe to you everything there is about it. They have their own Wiki site, EVElopedia, setup for the universe so if you are one over the over 400,000 people currently using the game, you have a place to go to freshen up on your history.  Of the masses of people online, the main game servers hold roughly 50,000 people at a time. That’s impressive considering this is a sand box game set in space. It’s vast and it’s huge and there are a lot of crafty people out there making money in more ways than one.  All of the content with the game itself is user created. You can be either a mercenary looking to gain your own fortune within the game or a pirate. Both the same really I guess when you think about it. You can be a commodities trader, industrial engineer, mining engineer, or if you really think you have what it takes to leave a massive amount of people, a battle fleet commander. Direct your fleet to do your bidding while secretly plotting to take control over a section of the world within EVE Online.

Thus you have all of the aspects needed to keep a world going. I asked if someone could possibly compare this to Second Life and I was looked at like I just compared gold to lead and saying they were equal. In a nutshell, EVE Online contains ten main sectors in which the players do the things they do, and an eleventh sector in which everyone else could be classified. Players currently are able to play various ship types and then within those ship types there are subtypes. Basically what we have here are various types of BMW’s and the options you can apply to each one of those sub types.  Of course you can’t build all of these without currency. The currency is interstellar kredits, or ISK, and with this you will buy and sell the items you need within the world. There are many ways to get ISK and one of the ways to do that is to mine resources. I mean after all, is that how the real world goes round? Whoever has the most gold, a resource, is pretty much the most powerful. And from there you have factions and corporations, because after all  you need to have some sort of governing body/leader(s) to manage all of this accumulated ISK. And finally, from there, you end up with people getting their space panties all bunched and the universe goes to hell thereafter. In fact, the best way to explain some of this is to watch the following video’s: The Butterfly Effect or Causality.

So at this point you are probably going to ask what exactly is it that we found out during our discussions with the Community Managers at PAX Prime 2011 this year. On June 21st of this year the latest expansion to the EVE Online universe, Incarna, was released. This allowed for an expansive way to give your online 3D avatar some personality with whatever customizations you want. On top of that, you are now able to customize your station environments, or Captains Quarters. While this expansion to the users is out and being set through its paces with exceptionally positive reviews, there is a new expansion currently in the works.  Up until now, EVE Online has been exclusive to the PC. If you have a pretty good gaming rig, then you are have, or will, be doing well within the EVE Online universe. Put we also have consoles out there and one of those consoles, the PlayStation 3 has some beefy gear under its hood.  So CCP Decided to finally take the horrendous developmental challenges and bring EVE Online to the PlayStation 3. But not in the way you think. What they will be doing is allowing for the PC users to do their thing up in space, but also deploy ground troops to the planet below. This is where the PlayStation 3 comes in, exclusively.  You will be able to battle it out in first person conquering areas you have been deployed from the Supercarriers above. Thus, creating a perfect union between the PC and console. If you have been on the fence about EVE Online, this should have put you over the fence.

EVE Online it is big. I mean it is really big. Let me give you an idea of how big EVE actually is. Look at a US penny. The one where Abe Lincoln looks pretty cool and not like the really lame one that was recently released and is all shiny. If you look at Abe’s eye, consider that the Sun. From there start moving out and as you reach the end of Lincoln’s nose, that is the orbit of roughly Venus. Now move all the way out to the edge of the penny. Here you have the orbit of Mars.  Now, take this penny and throw it a quarter mile away. Where it lands, that is the orbit of Pluto. This is how vast all of the information is of the EVE Online universe, and it all works well. Very well in fact because as we were researching the game after thoroughly looking over the demo during PAX, we were given the 2010 4th quarter economic report PDF.  This PDF is 52 pages long.  Things are good in the world of CCP and EVE Online and you may want to be a part of it.