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Disclaimer: I am Gecko Hareka and this is part of my CSM12 campaign. Every second vote counts… So let me get yours.
I never thought I would be running for CSM. I have always thought that if I knew too much it could make me love the game less.
I think for most people they stumble into the game and begin to participate, reaching out to help the game continue to grow.
Players are reading and listening to chronicles, creating their own news sites, making eve parodies and so much more. Including the building of their own tools, writing stories, setting up internal infrastructure and making eve videos etc. This is what I love most about EVE, the player creations and how we all contribute in our own way.
In hindsight it started when CCP took the EVE Wiki offline. It felt like they deleted part of the player history. Just like that. It was outdated, had a lot of misleading information in it, but also stories, edit wars, alliance descriptions, war accounts, maps and other interesting stuff that is part of EVE’s rich history. It also provided background for Andrew Groen’s book “Empires of Eve.” To be fair, after taking the wiki offline, CCP provided a data dump and there are other player wikis that offer information but that’s not the problem.
When I asked about EVE history and the deletion of the EVE-wiki at Evesterdam last year, I got the feeling that there weren’t any concrete plans. I think that the player content is not sufficiently factored into CCPs plans for redesigning EVE and I want to be there to remind them to look at what’s there and also use it. In-game players can not only interact through their ships or through chat – although Jita local is a mini-game all of it’s own – they also interact through telling stories, make music, trying their hand at space-politics and all the other activities that together are called “Meta”.
EVE as a sandbox is mainly driven by conflict. From my observations the best and most memorable conflicts come from either personal grudges or from common in-game history. If a group has worked on making a region their own by putting up infrastructure, drawing their maps (Wollari from http://evemaps.dotlan.net/ is a saint) and putting up their stations and now citadels, they get attached to their space. They will more often than not fight, even wage a guerilla war to get their “Ancestral region” back.
While stations were an achievement meant to stay, citadels can be destroyed. This is an interesting twist to the game, but it also takes away player monuments. If I built a station and I get thrown out of a system, I might want that station back. And I might be willing to fight for it.
Don’t get me wrong – there are a lot of different types of players but a common story can help to keep morale up – even if you are on the losing side. With citadels, these monuments get easier to eradicate. So I think players need some way to geo-locate their content in the EVE universe more than ever. Let’s give players a hook to anchor their content in the game.
Let me give you an example: When you fly through B-R5RB you might want to know more about the battle, the background and so on. But what do you find besides the best-looking spreadsheet-app and some wrecks? A beacon. One. Look at it. There are no links, no “Do you want to know more…?” and when you search it out of game you might get to that EVE-article on eveonline.com, which links to mostly third-party hosted player-content. And the best thing? The info-link from EVE’s own article leads to the discontinued EVElopedia aka Eve-wiki. As do a lot of links from the official backstory page just try to click on organisations… That’s no way to treat Eve history.
I care because those stories are part of the fascination of the game for me. They were what finally made me subscribe in 2011 after years of being reasonable (“No more time-eaters”). And they are game drivers. Just think, how long the player-history of Goons drove the whole game (And will drive it again, if all the building activity is any indicator – thanks EVE economy report). How role-players from Providence finally made it into a community event after years and years of playing their own version of EVE’s story.
I think there is too much potential to just ignore it or integrate it in one-time events. The player content should be there for new players to find and discover. I know I just loved all the things I could do when I was a newbie. And I still have a fond spot for the ‘damsel in distress’ missions. I think more stories make for a better game. It adds options and play-modes – there are even players who;
1. Play EVE with sound
2. Just like to look at things, explore and even write blogs about it (EVE Travel)
3. Use mining as a form of meditation, if some podcasts are to be believed. 😉
I want to gently point CCP in the direction of great content. Nothing fancy. Nothing that takes a lot of people away from balancing and development and buying new servers to host our game. But I think it is neglected at the moment and it would make for an even better game if it were not. I think a bit of this can be easily integrated into whatever changes they are planning – and now is the most important time for it as the changes they are planning now will have a major impact on game play in the coming years.
So I understand it’s going to be your Alliance/Friends/Corp first…
but could we say Gecko Hareka second on the list?
Thanks and congratulations. You made it through this wall of text.
Contact:
Twitter: @GeckoHareka
In-game: Gecko Hareka
Link to my CSM Campaign: here.
