Mirroring Infinity: How EVE Online Reflects and Constructs Culture

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ron (00:21):
Thank you, hello jubilant creatures, welcome back to the
uncannery.
I'm ron and I'm joined here bymy good friend I'm don.
I'm doug.
Very good, thank you guys forbringing the volume down really

(00:44):
appreciate that uh, yeah, reallymatching the tone of the show.
And boy, have we got one foryou today.
Uh, I want to first off, uh,thank you guys for meeting me.
We just had pizza.
What a beautiful pizza that wasyou liked it yeah, I thought it
was very good we talked aboutthe toppings.

Doug (01:03):
I will.
I was about to.

Don (01:06):
I'll take down the volume.

Doug (01:07):
I'm a professional.

Ron (01:07):
Increase the interruptions.
I know how to talk about pizzaon a podcast.
God, A lot of tension.
We had a boars wild boarpepperoni and I didn't tell you
this earlier.
I would not take it over normalpepperoni.

Doug (01:26):
Yeah, I agree with that.
I definitely would agree withthat.
This really was set on by their.
There's a place in San Diegothat I had boar bolognese.
That was really excellent and Iwas hoping that the pizza was
going to stack up and it justdidn't.
But they do have wild boarsausage so I'm still going to
take the dive again.
I would take a sausage over apepperoni.

Ron (01:46):
I think a pepperoni.
You want something differentfrom a pepperoni.

Doug (01:49):
Really salty and thin and this was kind of a thick.

Ron (01:52):
She was a big pep.

Doug (01:54):
Yeah, really was yeah.

Ron (01:56):
Large pep.
Anyways, you guys ever playvideo games, oh yeah.

Don (02:08):
Big time you guys ever play video games?
Oh yeah, big time.

Ron (02:10):
My first, my first experience of playing video
games was at a pizza parlor.
Oh hell, yeah, great westernpizza galaga.
So, uh, crazy taxi.
What are we talking?

Doug (02:15):
uh galaga, tempest, tempest that's the one that had
the vector graphics right andyou went around in the a lot of
them had vector graphics back inmy day.

Don (02:26):
I just want to remind you that I'm a little older than you
.
I'm trying to relate to youBattlezone.

Doug (02:32):
The vector tank game was sick.

Ron (02:34):
That was on my very first PC.
Was it Battlezone I?

Doug (02:37):
want to say it was Battlezone, could have been.

Ron (02:38):
Battlezone.

Don (02:39):
That sounds familiar.
Missile Command.

Ron (02:41):
Miss Missile Command.
Missile Command is coolTrackball.

Don (02:44):
Centipede the other trackball one.

Ron (02:46):
Did Missile Command have a plot Like?
Was it ever stated who wasattacking you?

Don (02:51):
No, it's just with missiles coming in Depending on what
year it was.
Yeah, that's what I waswondering.

Ron (02:57):
I was like is that an insensitive game?

Doug (03:01):
It's capitalizing all these fears right now.
Yeah, it was a good game though, that one especially.
That's like one of the firstthat you could like point and
click and like pull things outof the sky.

Ron (03:10):
Yeah, I love that one a lot of my earliest memories of
video games were, uh, of myfather and my uncle playing
video games.
I think my uncle bought like asuper nintendo console and
brought it over to our houseonce and we didn't we like we
were old enough to have playedit, but that was not why it was
there.
It was so he could play with mydad, uh, playing that original

(03:33):
super mario world co-op.
Oh, we just sort of watched it.
So like I just remember myearliest memories like watching
people play video games and theneventually, of course, you know
, controller found its way intoour hands and then we were off
to the races.
I would say video games havebeen a very big part of my
entertainment growing up as ayoung millennial man.

Don (03:59):
I have a similar experience because the Super Nintendo at
my house was purchased by my dadand it was so that mom and dad
could play Nintendo Golf with mygrandparents, my mom's parents.
So I guess same thing.
Like I didn't play it hardlyever, but after we would go out
for dinner on Sunday nights andwe would come home and they
would play golf for hours.

Ron (04:19):
People forget video games are for everyone.
I remember we eventually hadlike the Nintendo Wii and I
think my mom probably loggedmore hours on the Wii than I
ever did like playing all thosesport games and bowling.

Doug (04:31):
I think that there's something very special.
I'll ride the Wii all day longLike that's one of the best.
That one, especially, I think,because Wii Sports came with it.
There was something reallyspecial about that because the
barrier of entry was can youmove your hand slightly?
Well, guess what there's?
It has motion controls.
You can play any of these gamesand it was so much fun.

(04:54):
I just remember so that cameout when I was in college and it
was just anybody who had a Wiiis like that's what you did,
like you knew if you were goingto somebody's house like that
had one, that was yourentertainment for the entire
night.
You weren't gonna get bored.

Ron (05:07):
It was so good yeah, our college video game was rock band
.
Oh yeah, another.
Very like anyone could kind ofjump in like, hey, does that
guitar look weird?
Well, why don't you hit thesepads with the sticks like
everyone could?
or yell into the microphonepoorly uh, yeah yeah, yeah,
video games are for all people,but I'm wondering that, I mean,

(05:29):
there's an obvious sort of like,uh, in american culture there's
often this dichotomy between,like you know, gamer people and,
and, uh, I think, what theamerican culture would call
normal people.
Yeah, that like games are sortof, uh, they're, they're
childish, they're frivolous,they're wastes of time, right,
uh, I feel like there's been alot of hatred.

(05:51):
Uh, I hear this from like someolder people who are like my kid
is watching people play videogames online.
What's the deal like?
They just go into twitch andthey're watching.
Why don't they play the video?
You know, like, right, there'sa lot of sort of judgmental
discourse around the way peopleinteract with video games.
They either interact with themtoo much, uh, or or not

(06:14):
correctly, or the gamesthemselves are bad.
The games are violent.
The games, uh, you know,promote bad ideas and morals
that that argument has beenaround for a while.

Don (06:24):
right, that the the shooting games cause shootings
and and that kind of thing, the.
Um, I'm wondering, cause youbring it up?
The my preference for games soyou mentioned your college game
was rock band.
Um, my college game was Diablo,yeah, and that's cooler, my uh.

(06:44):
And then, as an adult right, Ieventually got myself a
playstation two and, um, I wouldplay uh, red dead, red dead
revolver um yeah, uncharted andcall of duty, but here's.
Here's the point I was going tomake.
Is I stopped when those gamesmoved away from story games?

(07:07):
Like I like to play those gamesthrough the story thread yeah
when they became, you know,online multiplayer okay I'm.
I was not interested because Idon't.
I don't want to interact withhumans.

Doug (07:18):
I don't really like humans so you're one of the 75 people
who played the call of dutiesbefore they became the
multiplayer sensation that theydid right.
They were really good games too.

Ron (07:27):
I love those um interesting , so I think I think I was like,
uh, I, I was there for thetransition and I think I was
young enough during thetransition from single player to
like, hey, now there is aplethora of multiplayer games
where I found it veryexhilarating and exciting,
mostly because I remember whenXbox Live came out and got to

(07:50):
play Halo 2 with basically justmy friends.
It was like, oh, I used to havemy friends come over to my
house and we would all link upour Xboxes or whatever and play
on the big screen and eat pizzaand Cheetos, but now I can just
do it from my room, which I'mnot sure was like better now,
like the.
the glasses of nostalgia make melook back fondly on those, like

(08:11):
those local area networkparties, those man parties right
, I'm like oh man, I shouldnever have left that island um,
but uh, it was like I have lotsof memories of, like you know,
just logging in to the xbox lateat night with my buddy, chris,
and we would uh put on differentvoices because everyone had a
headset and we were young anddumb and we'd pretend to be like
southern truckers playing withthese kids, just like I don't

(08:35):
know just like, and were youjust playing with each other or
were you playing?
we were playing lobbies withstrangers, but at least like I
knew someone right like oh,we're on the same team, or or
even if we are fighting chancelike oh, I got Chris, hell yes
he sucks right like unless he'son your team.
There was, there was still thattie to like familiarity, I
guess.

Don (08:52):
Right and then and then I guess that's why I didn't like
the idea of playing that way isbecause I didn't want to play
with strangers, like sure, andpartly because I was intimidated
that I wasn't.
You know, you, you, the fewtimes that I would log in like I
would get killed instantly andlike that wasn't fun.
Like it was just you know, abuse, um, but, uh, um.

(09:14):
But then they started to growright.
It's like so the call of duty,you'd have, you know, an arena
with 10 or 20 people in it, butthen, like they, they, there's
these massive games right, wherethere's like hundreds of people
playing, oh yeah, and Don haveI?

Ron (09:30):
I think I've figured out something about you, which is um
, I have found the worst gamefor you ever, and it's called.

Don (09:38):
Eve online.

Ron (09:40):
Eve online, eve online Doug , you're familiar with Eve
online Just barely, but, yes, Iam Audience.
You may or may not be familiarwith Eve Online, but Eve Online
is actually what I want to talkabout today.
It is a video game.
It is a massive, big onlinevideo game where people fight
each other, strangers, manypeople you'll never know, don,
and this is what we call.

(10:01):
There was a whole term for thisand I feel like it doesn't
exist anymore, because I thinkevery game is one of these.
It's horrible.

Don (10:07):
Is that what it's called?
Yeah?

Doug (10:09):
every game is horrible.
It's a big acronym coming ourway.

Ron (10:12):
M-M-O-R-P-G.
What does that stand for?

Doug (10:18):
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Ron (10:27):
Yeah, and these were probably the most emblematic of
these, of course, would be worldof warcraft, um, which was not
the first mmo, but um, you know,definitely the most popular mmo
, um and eve online is a gamethat shows up in 2003, which is
sort of like the zenith of themmo, right like uh, do you know
when that wow came out?
Or older work, right like Iwant to say like probably 2006.

(10:55):
Okay, so we can really factcheck so all I'm saying is like
uh, there was this, there wasthis new sort of uh a model
video games were kind of chasing.
That had been proven by acouple other games, like a rune
quest, I think is like one ofthe older MMOs right Ever quest.

Doug (11:08):
Yeah, that's the one I think of.

Ron (11:10):
Yeah, which was hey, let's make these giant.
You know, now that we have,correction 2004 for world Okay
cool, cool.
So Eve online beats it out byjust a couple months, probably.
But the idea is, hey, now thatwe have this multiplayer tech
that Don hates so much, right,and we can connect the world
through our shared game spaces,how many people can we fit?

(11:32):
Yeah, so instead of like 10people in the Call of Duty arena
, we can get hundreds of people.
We can get thousands of people,right?
Could we potentially getmillions of people?
And the answer is no, notreally at that time.
But let's make these massivemultiplayer online games where
everyone can play together, andthen also let's charge them a
subscription, because we need tokeep these massive servers

(11:52):
running, which means they costmoney and they're sucking money
out of the game developersforever.
So we need to charge people asubscription to even run these
games, and usually it was likewhat 15 a month or something to
yeah, which sounds absurd andobscene to me.

Doug (12:05):
now, yeah, I remember I mean that was the reason I
didn't play.
Mmos is like I was already likeI have to spend 50.
And at the time, like gameswere 40 to $50 instead of 60 to
70.
And I remember thinking likeI've already spent my entire
allowance on this game.
I'm not going to get this back.

Ron (12:22):
I'm not spending 15 bucks a month on this yeah, um, but
anyways, eve online is one ofthese games, right, a massive,
uh, online space.
Um, and I is a game I haveplayed, I have I've been inside
of eve online, I've been insideof, I've been, I've been sucked
deep and hard by eve online.
I've been started bad, we'vejust lost our family radio.

Don (12:46):
Yeah, absolutely.

Doug (12:48):
It started bad and it just kept getting worse.
Didn't know how to pull myselfout of that wormhole.

Ron (12:52):
It's all space themed, guys , because Eve Online is a space
game and there's a lot ofgravity and you know.
Sort of things like thathappening in space is where I'm
coming from.
Eve Online is a game I'vealways found very fascinating
because it creates these verycomplex sort of human histories.
If anyone is passingly familiarwith the game, they probably

(13:14):
have read an article about likeoh, there was a big giant space
battle that involved hundreds orthousands of players and
resulted in the loss of hundredsof thousands of real world
dollars.
And every now and then thesesorts of sensational stories
kind of reach the mainstreambecause it sounds exciting and
thrilling.
It's not really something youget from other games.

(13:35):
I would posit that EVE Onlineis maybe the most original not
original, but I mean a veryunique video game in its
capacity to kind of bring peopletogether and create convoluted,
strange um passion-drivenstories.

Don (13:52):
So help me out, because I'm not familiar with eve online.
I've never seen it, um.
So what is the gameplay like?
What does it look like?
What's good?
Yeah?

Ron (14:02):
we.
We need to have a baseline here.
So EVE Online is a game where,as a player, you log in and you
do not have a.
Your avatar is not like aperson, right?
You're not playing a soldier,like in Call of Duty.
You're not playing an elf, likein World of Warcraft.
You are a spaceship.
Technically, you're a yourspaceship.

(14:28):
Hey, at first you're probablygoing to.
You just want to make money soyou can get a better spaceship,
right?
Who doesn't want a betterspaceship?
So at first, maybe you go outand you find an asteroid and you
mine some asteroids, you pullin some tritanium ore and then
you go back into the station,you drop off your ore, you sell
it.
You make a little money in thisworld.
It's called isk isk,interstellar credits, um.
It's also credits with a k,yeah, credits with a k?

(14:50):
Um.
I think it's also theabbreviation for the, the
currency of iceland, uh, this isa game developed in iceland, uh
, which is like the icelandickrona or whatever um, it's a
game developed in Iceland by acompany called CCP and and

(15:10):
you'regoing to make that money.
And then you know, hey, onceyou got a little bit of cash, a
little bit of ISK in your wallet, maybe now you can afford a
cooler ship and you might slapsome guns on that ship.
And maybe now you're going togo out and you're going to go
shoot some pirates.
Right, you, you're going to goout and you're going to go shoot
some pirates.
Right, you know some like NPC,computer controlled pirates, and
you're going to kill them,you're going to click some
bounties on them.
You're going to take some moremoney.
Maybe, you know, upgrade yourship, add some new thrusters or

(15:33):
shield generators to it.
Hey, maybe you bump intoanother player and they say, hey
, come join my corporation.
And you're like that soundsdope.
I've always wanted to be a partof a corporation.
A corporation in EVE is like aguild or a clan in like a
similar game.
And so now you're working withother players and they might
give you cool new ships or youmight get organized with them.

(15:54):
You might join a fleet.
You might join a fleet and youmight battle an enemy
corporation's fleet and youmight have this epic space
battle.
All of this because you'repaying $ a month to an icelandic
corporation and uh, justenjoying, enjoying your life,
enjoying what's happening.
Does that explain a little bituh-huh?

Doug (16:16):
you got questions give me, hit me, hit me, hit me I got it
I wish everybody at home couldhave seen don's face right there
.

Don (16:20):
So so the gameplay is just sort of seeing Don's face right
there.
So the gameplay is just, it'sjust life.

Ron (16:29):
It's money.

Don (16:29):
spend money yes it is.

Ron (16:32):
That's what games have always tried to be Don.
The best games simulate life,obviously Like Missile Command.

Don (16:41):
That was true.
There was always a threat of ofof.
Russian missiles yeah.

Ron (16:50):
But, yeah, this game is like, yes, when you, when you
explain it like that, like Ithink this is, people either hit
Eve online and they bounce offof it very quickly, or the it
becomes their life, like theyget I guess what I understand is
a game has always been fun, so.

Don (17:08):
I'm going to go to work where I have to do something
that I don't want to do in orderto make money.
To come home to give $15 ofthat money to a company, to let
me continue to do work at homein a fictional environment.

Doug (17:22):
So we're already at the philosophical discussion point.

Ron (17:25):
Oh no, this is way too early.
Early, I wasn't ready for this.

Doug (17:29):
So don I think what you would want out of a game and I'm
thinking of what you said, thatyou like diablo, like this idea
of like I'm gonna save tristram, I'm gonna go into the dungeons
and take out what I do um, Ithink that you're looking for
like escapism maybe, as thisidea of like I don't want it to
look like real life.
I want it to be thisfantastical version that kind of

(17:51):
takes me out.
But I think that there'sanother type of gamer out there
because I've experienced thiswith some games that want a
simulation that's close to life,as you would want it to, that
you can manipulate it in a waythat maybe you can't in your own
life.
And I think that Eve onlinekind of um straddles this, this

(18:14):
idea, a little bit.

Ron (18:15):
Well, I would say that Eve online is escapist also, like,
um, uh, when I say you join acorporation, you're not really
like punching in and doing a job, right, like there's a lot,
there's lots of different rolesand ways you can interact with
people and the game in EVEOnline right, you know you can
be a miner.
You can be someone whomanufactures items.

(18:36):
You can be a day trader.
You know you buy something realcheap in one system and then
you spend an hour flying it toanother system and then you sell
it at a profit there.
You could be like a soldier ina fleet.

(19:01):
You can be the guy commandingthe fleet.
You can be the leader of thecorporation, right, or just
organizing corporation emailsand things and which, okay, I'm
getting it now.
It sounds pretty boring and youknow honestly honestly, eve is
incredibly boring, like it is avery boring minute to minute
kind of game.
However, the reason I think somany hundreds of thousands of

(19:22):
people have enjoyed it, and whyI used to enjoy it a whole lot,
was because, um, it creates, uma buy-in.
It creates in a way that othergames don't, and let me try to
explain why this is.
I think what sets eve online,apart from something like world
of warcraft, is, um, if I make acharacter in world of warcraft,

(19:42):
I'm gonna start in a zone.
I get to pick a class, right,and I'm going to kind of
progress along essentially whatI'd consider a fairly linear
progress path.
Right, I start at zone A andthen, once I hit level 15, I go
to zone B and I get choicesabout like, which order I do the
quests in or how I build mycharacter, how I upgrade them,

(20:04):
what kind of you know role Iwant to play in dungeons, but
I'm still essentiallyconstrained by the material that
Blizzard has made for that game.
Eve Online, when it was released, had thousands of solar systems
in it and they've added a few,but it hasn't changed all that
much from then, like basicallylike all the content was there.
And one reason reason peoplehate eve online is because there

(20:27):
isn't really like a okay, thereis no guiding line.
Do this, you kind of decidewhat you want to do, right?
Um, you obviously want to makemoney.
Right, most games, I think,have like an accumulation aspect
by which you can determine yoursuccess.
Right?
And like, um, most otherrole-playing games, it would be
like XP, right, how much XP haveyou generated to level up your

(20:49):
character?
There is none of that in.

Don (20:52):
EVE.

Ron (20:53):
It's just about making money, and you use money to
engage with the economy and buyyourself new things and you get
bigger and cooler ships, whichis essentially how you level up.
But the reason why this createsa lot of player investment, I
think, is essentially actuallytied to that economy aspect of
it, because, unlike most games,almost every item in EVE Online

(21:15):
is built by players, right?
So, like, if you want to tradein your dinky mining ship for a
fast, uh interceptor, then someplayer has built that
interceptor and they have put iton the market, and so when you
make that purchase, you'regiving another player actual
money.
Uh, you could do the same,right?
Like, you're going to sell yourmining ship and some, some

(21:36):
other player is going to takethat and they're going to give
you money, right, and?
And so every time a player goesand mines an asteroid, they're
creating materials that theythen sell to other players, who
then take those materials anduse them to turn them into the
starships, and then also they'regoing to take those, and then
now your corporation can createits own star stations in space.

(21:56):
Right, and they can defendthose star stations, and other
people want that space becauseit turns out it's orbiting a
moon that has really preciousores on it that they want to
mine.
So they now they need to takeout that enemy station, uh, and
then uh, which means they needto assemble a fleet in order to
do that, which means they needto hire or pay other people to
mine the materials that goesinto their fleet.

Don (22:17):
And so it creates this, uh, this massive sort of ecosystem
of interconnected uh uh playersso you, you said a second ago
that if you wanted to to buy aninterceptor, yeah that you had
to.
Uh to give money to anotherplayer, uh, and the way you said
it, I don't know if you're justturn a phrase.

(22:39):
You said you give them realmoney oh no, not real money, so
sorry.

Ron (22:42):
Is it real isk?
Okay, right, yeah, so all thecurrency in the game so it's not
monetized, it's not like well,that's not true.

Don (22:48):
So this is Elon Musk so if Elon Musk came to play, he would
have the ability to to takeshortcuts that somebody only
paying 15 a month wouldn't beable to take uh?

Ron (23:01):
no, yes, he definitely could, and this is why so,
initially, when eve uh wasreleased in 2003, um, there was
no way to, in like, inject realworld money into eve and turn it
into game currency.
That would allow you, of course, to, you know, buy more ships
or afford more ships, so thatwhen you lose a ship, it doesn't
matter to you.
You get back in the fight, andobviously that would give you an
advantage.
That all changed around 2008.

(23:23):
They added a system that theycalled PLEX, which stands for
Pilot License Extension, andwhat it is is an in-game item
that you can purchase within-game ISK, and then what that
does is it gives you a 30-daygame time extension, so you
could essentially, play EVE,earn EVE money, and you spend

(23:45):
that EVE money to pay for yourreal world subscription to the
game.
And what that does is nowthere's like a way to calculate
what is the value of in-game EVEmoney in comparison to real
world money, because you couldalso buy a Plex with real world
money.
It's $15, right, you spend $15and now you buy that license

(24:08):
extension, and then so, when youpurchase a Plex card, you have
two options you either put it toyour subscription and you don't
have to pay 15 bucks of realworld money this month, or you
can sell it on the market in EVEonline, and you can get
whatever the value was in uh evecurrency.
Let's say it's 1 billion it'susually really high, right?
Because it's like obviously youcan't just buy this with 50

(24:30):
credits, because then everyone'sgoing to have them and now the
developers aren't making anymoney.
So or you could sell it on themarket and make 1 billion you
know eve dollars.
Well, if you don't care aboutspending 15 real world dollars
all that often, then why don'tyou buy 45 plex?
And now suddenly you've amasseda giant you know horde in the
game without having everactually engaging with most of

(24:53):
those systems.
That happens and still happens.
Today they've changed thesystem a little bit.
They've kind of just turned itinto instead of like a 30-day
subscription, now it's just likeyou can buy a hundred plex and
it's kind of like other, likefortnights, where you buy gems
or crystals or v bucks orwhatever.

Don (25:10):
So the gameplay is basically just to to make the
economy in the game continue towork um, I think the gameplay is
is, I mean, as far as whatplayers want from it?

Doug (25:22):
it's whatever they want from it right but?

Ron (25:25):
but because it has that player-driven economy, um, I
think that creates a lot ofinvestment for the players,
right?
yeah it creates.
Uh, so like, like things havereal value, right like.
I've seen this in other gameswhere they're like uh, I used to
play like elder scrolls onlineand that had a player versus
player zone where there wasthree teams.
You were one of three teams andyou're trying to capture,
essentially, a castle at thecenter of the of the map and it

(25:47):
was I didn't really care if wegot this castle or if we lost
this castle like maybe it gaveme an XP bonus or something.
I don't, the rewards weren'ttangible.
But if I'm like a part of aplayer group and like we built,
you know, all the star station,all the space stations in a star
system, and like that's oursystem, like this is where we

(26:07):
park and this is where we makeour money and this is where we
build our ships and this is likeour uh system, if someone wants
to come in and take that fromus, then I'm gonna be like no
man.
Like we, I put hundreds ofhours into mining the ore that
went into that station or wentinto this uh, you know, uh
shield generator.
Like I'm gonna show up with mycorporation mates and I'm gonna

(26:28):
defend it because I I put bloodsweat and tears into that thing.

Don (26:32):
Calling a corporation really makes it sound fun.
So the way that you earn moneyin the game, like the examples
that you've given, some of themare risky, right.
Like you mentioned bountyhunting pirates.
You've mentioned mining.
You've mentioned day tradingright, very risky day trading.

(26:56):
Yeah, all of those are riskreward activities that you
mentioned have an element ofescapism, given it's because of
the risk, yeah.
So I guess my question is areall of the activities that earn
money risky like that?
Or is there like a way that youcan just be the guy that, like
you know, I'd seal envelopes andI get money for it, you know?

Ron (27:21):
Yes, you do not have to take that risk.
I think another reason why EVEhas kind of done so well is
because it's designed verycleverly and that's sort of the
way it's geographically designed.
So again, this game has like7,800 star systems that you can
visit, right, but they're allkind of arranged on a map, and

(27:43):
if we picture a map, picture theUnited States of America you
guys got that in your heads.

Doug (27:48):
It's here.

Ron (27:48):
Okay, okay, pick the states in the very center of the
United States of America.
I'm talking Oklahoma, I'mtalking Nebraska, I'm talking
other ones like that um and soimagine, uh like if that was the
map of eve, all of the statesin the very center of the solar,
the universe, the galaxy, um,have a very high security rating

(28:11):
, going from 1.0 security downto 0.0 security and anything at
5.0 or above.
Like, every system has thesecurity rating and any.
When you are in those highsecurity systems there is
essentially a computercontrolled police force that
will protect you from beingattacked by other players, more

(28:32):
or less, and will give acriminal rating to people that
don't play by the rules of thegame and stuff like that.
So there's like these safespaces in eve where you can show
up and you can just kind ofmine and make money safely
without much risk of you gettingshot or destroyed and stuff
like that.
Right, and that's where a lotof people I don't I don't have
numbers, but I assume probablyhalf, if not not more people

(28:54):
play the game.
It's just sort of in these safespaces.
But as you radiate away from thecentral state systems in this
map, as you get to the peripheryI'm talking your New Yorks,
your Californias, your Texasesthose start to lose security
rating and they become unsafe.
Those start to lose securityrating and they become unsafe.

(29:15):
And the most interesting ofthese are the zero.
Zero systems, or what's callednull sex systems, where there is
no computer presence and thereis no criminal system.
Players are free to do whateveris in their capacity while
they're interacting in thesesystems, and these are all on
the outside.
So and this is where I thinkactually most of the very fun
history of Eve takes place Likeprobably half, if not more, the

(29:36):
systems in the game are thesenull sex systems, and they're
there for players to just go andbuild whatever they want and to
kind of control them howeverthey want, and so they create
systems of sovereignty and smallempires and kingdoms within
these, kingdoms within these.
But again, if you're like anenemy or and you or not even an

(29:57):
enemy if you're just like a newplayer and you're like I want to
fly down South, let's see whathappens over here, and you don't
know, you crossed intosomeone's border and they have
like a corporation policy that'slike, hey, we shoot anyone
who's not allied to us, thenyeah, you can just warp into a
system.
Some guy's going to be parked,you know, 400 meters above you
and he's just going toimmediately shoot you.
And that happens.
That happens to me frequently.

Don (30:21):
And what happens if you get shot.

Ron (30:23):
So if you get shot, two things If you get shot, the
in-game fiction is that you area capsuleer, which means you are
a superhuman who's been clonedand you pilot all these ships
inside of a capsule.
So once your ship getsdestroyed, then you have been
cloned and you pilot all theseships inside of a capsule.
So once your ship getsdestroyed, then you have a
capsule remaining and you canpilot that capsule and it's
pretty speedy.
You can use it to fly away andget to safety.
If they also kill your capsule,then you respawn in a different

(30:47):
station, wherever you left yournext, your last clone and you
sort of just do you still?
have your stuff, so you'll haveany money that is like in your
bank account and you'll have any, like you know, items that
you've stored in other stations.
But anything that was attachedto that ship or to that clone
that you had that you wereflying the ship with uh is
probably lost.

Doug (31:05):
It'll be, it'll remain in space and you could go back and
take what's left of it, assumingwhoever killed you didn't
already rob all that stuff,which is usually why they killed
you I'm very curious because,yeah, I, I've only known about
this on the kind of likeoutskirts essentially, and I
think I had like a free trial atone point what, how are most of

(31:29):
these systems ran, these nullsectors?

Ron (31:33):
so this is the.
This is the really fun part,and it's kind of what I want to
talk about today, which is, uh,like what, what some people,
what eve historians, considerone of the most important
decisions that was ever made inthe history of eve, because
there's lots of different waysyou can organize these null sex
spaces right, and so basicallyany political philosophy that
exists in real life has beenreplicated in some form in Eve.

(31:55):
Right, you have like verycommunist sort of organizations
where players have to donatetheir materials to the
administration of thecorporation or alliance so that
they can distribute them as theysee fit in times of war and
things like that.
Uh, you know, distribute themuh, as they see fit in times of

(32:16):
war, and things like that.
You have very free market kindof places that are like hey, we
got open borders, everyone cancome into our space and use our
stations and refineries and, and, uh, I mean manufacture their
goods here.
And hey, by the way, we'll justtake a 5% tax on any
transaction that occurs in thosespaces.
But otherwise, come on in,right, very laissez faire kind
of kind of you know fiefdoms andkingdoms and stuff like that.
So, and that's, you know, a lotof times this is the people who

(32:43):
become the CEOs, the leaders ofthese corporations.
It's about them sort ofenacting their sort of
philosophies in this fictionalspace.
Right, you get very like AynRandian libertarian spaces, of
course.
Libertarian spaces, of course,um, uh, yeah, and so like,
probably one of the most famouscorporations was one called
evolution.
Um, and evolution was like afounding corporation.

(33:03):
Like they were there back when,like the game was being in, it,
tested in its beta phase andits alpha phase, right, like, uh
, they were there the whole timeand so like, as soon as the
game went live, they sort oflike got a head start because
they knew how the game worked.
They, you know, knew like whatthe best ships were.
They knew kind of how toorganize their corporation and
they were a very smallcorporation, but their, their

(33:24):
main goal was essentially PVP,right, player versus player comp
.
They wanted to be like the bestcombat pilots in the game,
right, and just sort of take onfleets that were much bigger
than them and sort of like, justhave fun blowing up stuff right
, and they're really key.
Eventually, evolution as acorporation forms what's called
an alliance.
When two or more corporationsdecide to, you know, formally,

(33:47):
kind of like, join together andbecome allies, they form in the
game what's called an alliance,and their alliance they named
Band of Brothers.
Allies.

Doug (33:54):
they form in the game what's called an alliance and
their alliance, they, they namedband of brothers.
Um it was originally.

Ron (33:58):
It was originally called cccp um, a play, of course, on
the developers of the game ccpum, which they said and this is
another like this is 2003, sothis is like pc nerd.
A lot of this stuff is like soinfuriatingly stupid um.
But they said cccp means inthat to them, cookies, cake,

(34:19):
cream and pie, because that'swhat they were going to take
from their enemies.
They're going to take all.
They're going to take theircookies, their cake, their cream
and their pie and leave themnothing.
Nice cccp, the, the for USSR,yes it is also, of course, that,
and I think it's a sort of dualpun or whatever.

(34:40):
Anyways, the game developerssaid they forced them to change
the name.
They're like no, there's a riskthat you're going to
impersonate a CCP developer inthe game and you could scam them
.
Because the developers of thegame also, of course, play the
game, but they're usuallysupposed to have their name
tagged with CCP, so people knowlike, oh, there's a game
developer.
But anyways, they changed fromthat stupid name to Band of

(35:03):
Brothers, which is, of course,very noble and inspiring.
Bob, yeah, bob, exactly, whichis what most people called them,
because you know, anytime yourplayer name appears in the game,
there's going to be a littleticker next to it that has an
abbreviation of both thecorporation and the alliance you
belong to, and so of coursethat was abbreviated to bob.
Um, there's a leader of thisalliance.

(35:25):
His name is sir mole and he'skind of an important character
in this um, in this tale.
Um, sir mole, uh, kind of, wasthis, was this game's dictator?
He was a strongman dictator,right.
His character avatar you canhave like a portrait of what
your person looks like, eventhough you never see them.
He has like this big jaw, right, and this big imperial stern,

(35:46):
look right.
And of course, there were theofficial EVE online forums where
people would go and they wouldtalk and spread news and gossip
and threaten each other, and hewould always have these big
giant screeds and decrees onthere about what you know his
alliance was going to do and whothey're going to target and who
they're going to mess up.
And and in reality it turns outhe was a, a Swedish, uh, uh,

(36:09):
sorry, a Danish, uh.
Air conditioning repair manliving in Sweden.
We just like repair AC unitsduring the day and then at night
.
He was like the most famousperson in this online game.

Doug (36:22):
It's hilarious that he's equal parts the wizard of Oz
behind the curtain and bigbrother.

Don (36:26):
Yes, like what he just said , like I'm going to repair these
things during the day and night.

Doug (36:32):
They'll fear me.

Ron (36:33):
Um, band of brothers becomes essentially like this is
a story about how they becomethe most powerful group in the
game.
Um, and and like a decision, uh, that that is made by several
people that result results inthis big paradigm shift in the
sort of political landscape ofthe game.
Um, and it.

(36:54):
I just, I just I hope that wewhen I say the political
landscape of a game, I don'twant that to sound totally
stupid, but I hope, like earlier, I can bring you to a place
where you understand, like, whypeople, uh, are so kind of
caught up in this game and thatthere could be politics, that
there could be sort of like, youknow, things people want to

(37:14):
achieve and accomplish in thisgame and the ways they want to
do it.
Essentially, there is a warthat breaks out between Band of
Brothers in 2005 and anotheralliance called the Ascendant
Frontier, and they are likeneighboring alliances and they
were actually once friendlyalliances.
They used to fight together.

(37:35):
But the reason why band ofbrothers declares war on this
ascendant frontier alliance isbecause they are about to
achieve something that's neverbeen done in the game before.
In 2005, the developersintroduced new ships to the game
and they introduced the largestships that had ever been seen
in the game and they're stillthe largest ships to the game.

(37:55):
Uh, and they introduced thelargest ships that had ever been
seen in the game and they'restill the largest ships to this
day, and they're called Titans.
Um, they're like you know, inthe, in the fiction of the game.
They're like nine miles long,massive.
They just dwarf everything else, right, they?
They take three months to build.
They take, you know, hundredsof thousands of man hours, like
combined man hours, to like minethe materials, hundreds of
thousands of man hours, likecombined man hours, to like mine

(38:16):
the materials.
Get all the components, buildthem in starship shipyards.

Doug (38:19):
Is this three months real, real?

Ron (38:21):
Yeah.

Doug (38:21):
Real life It'll take, you have to wait.

Ron (38:23):
Yeah, yeah, you're going to .
You're going to wait.
Right, they were these massivesuper weapons that the
developers thought would be likea really cool thing to work up
to, but you know, we won't seethat many of them, right people
complain that baseball takes toolong a pitch clock in to speed
up the game have you been artyjust working on my titan month
two baby um, that that the theintroduction these titans uh

(38:50):
made like a a real arms race inthe game.
Everyone knew like the firstalliance to to build one of
these titans will like have thissort of unstoppable force on
the battlefield, because theyalso have these doomsday weapons
that could like, with one blast, destroy like hundreds of
spaceships.
Like it was kind of insane I'veseen this movie.
It's got a wookie yeah yeah,it's very death star-esque.

(39:12):
Yes, absolutely.
Um, but the but the alliancethat turned out made the first
Titan was not Band of Brothers,it was this Ascendant Frontier
like had like 2000, maybe even3000 players, and they were.

(39:37):
They were like a, just anindustrial corporation.
They didn't want to be fighters, they just kind of wanted to
have their little zone.
They were the ones collectingmoney from people coming in and
using their facilities and justkind of being all around cool
guys, and their leader was adude named Cy Vock.
Um, and Cy Vock was an American, uh, working an American
working in air bases in Europe.
He was like a satellitetechnician or something like

(39:58):
that, and so he was just liketraveling across Europe, playing
in the same time zone as SirMolly.
So they were, like you know,always kind of online at the
same time, but part of eachother's world.
That's why they kind of likeonce worked together.
But it became very clear that,because Ascendant Frontier was
such an industrial powerhouse,uh, they were probably going to

(40:19):
make the world's first Titan,and they and they were, and I
want to explain very quickly, um, what they had to go through to
do this, because anytime a, anAlliance, learned that someone
was making a really cool ship,um, they would immediately find
the location where it was beingmade and they would just go and
destroy their space stations andmake them start from zero again

(40:40):
, Cause no one wanted them tohave this Right, Um uh, and so
they would have spies right Likeinfiltrate their corporation,
Like you know,tell one of your court mates to
make a new character.
Uh, get into their corporationcorporation.
Try to cozy up with the leaders, find out where all the major
manufacturing is happening, whatare they working on, report

(41:01):
that back to your originalcorporation and then give them
that intel.
The history of spying in EVE isvery big.
This is like another way peoplemake money is they might
infiltrate an enemy corporation,rise up through the ranks and
then, like, take all theirassets, deliver them to the
original corporation and justsort of get them that way.
Um, anyways, like cyvok andascendant frontier, in order to

(41:24):
make their titan, they had tocreate like three different
ruses.
The first ruse was they hired adifferent corporation to uh to
make a titan.
Uh, and knowing that eventually, like that information would
leak out and people would targetthat corporation instead of
themselves.
And apparently it leaked outtoo quickly and a bunch of
alliances just went anddestroyed all of that

(41:45):
corporation's shipyards beforethey could even start making it
and they're like, oh crap, thatthat didn't.
That worked too good.
Um, the second thing they didwas they um, uh, said that they
were making a different kind oflarge ship, a mothership.
Like, oh, would they publish it.
We're making motherships rightnow and everyone's thinking was
no one would believe that theycould make both a mothership and

(42:08):
a titan at the same time.
So then that would like kind oftake some of the heat off their
back.
And then the the third kind ofruse was like we're going to
make it in the last place anyonewould think we'd make it, which
is like in the most traveledsystem in our territory.
They just like put it rightunder everyone's nose.
We're going to build it righthere where everyone's flying
through Right, and then, like,everyone's going to think we're

(42:29):
keeping it like in a secretperiphery station in some you
know backwater system orsomething, but we're just going
to build it right here in themost populous place possible.
And Cyvok has like beeninterviewed about this process
because he did eventuallysucceed at producing this Titan,
but it did take them threemonths.
He said the secrecy was soimportant that him and only one

(42:53):
other player in the whole gamewere allowed to transport the
materials needed to the shipyardwhere they had to build it.
Like you need to make like 19different components and each of
these components requires likehundreds of thousands of cubic
meters of material and, ofcourse, like every ship has a
cargo hold to kind of carry somuch stuff.
So he's like him and one otherguy using 15 different alt

(43:16):
characters for five hours anight during the least populous
server times when the game wasessentially most dead, would fly
their ships back and forththrough all these different
systems just to get all thematerials they needed into the
one place where they couldactually build the ship.
And he said like it just sucked.
He said it was the worst timehe's ever had in the game.

(43:37):
He like almost quit.
He says this is a quote from him, from an interview that was
conducted with him a few yearsago.
He said the stress and paranoiaof the security situation was
nearly breaking me.
The nine days between eight and14 hours a day of component
building uh sorry, hauling wasthe most boring thing I've ever
done in Eve.
The two months of mineralcompression killed my drive to

(44:00):
ever build again.
I had help, of course, but onlyone other person and he was
losing his mind also.

Doug (44:09):
I keep imagining too.
You said that thesecorporations, like the biggest
ones, are two to 3000 people.
Yeah, so there's probably likeshifts that people are running
to, like where your job issecurity, right, yes, like when
you were just watching and likesomebody's coming in the line.
I don't recognize it.
Do you want to go idm reallyquick, roger?
That?

Ron (44:28):
right and this is another important thing about eve is
there is one server for theentire world, right?
So, like, no matter where youare in the world unless you're
in china, there's a separateserver for the entire world,
right?
So like, no matter where youare in the world unless you're
in China, there's a separateserver for China, right, but
they're basically siphoned offfrom everyone else, but everyone
else in the world plays on thisone server.
And so, yeah, like, acorporation will hire people
based on their time zones.
Like, hey, we need more peoplein the Pacific time zone to
cover these hours, otherwisethat's our like weak zone, but

(44:50):
that's when the Russianalliances can move in and take
our stuff, cause we're allasleep during the winter.

Don (44:55):
So, yeah, that becomes a whole kind of strategic element
of it Also the thing about agame that was nice playing call
of duty was that you know, whenit got to be two, 30 in the
morning, like I could turn itoff, and then tomorrow I could
turn it back on and I would beat the same spot.

Ron (45:20):
This is a game where people like will set their alarms for
4am if that's what theircorporation needs them to do.
Um to like get into the game,log in and like fight a battle
because they're fighting inanother person's time zone, or
something like.
Those stories are prettycommonplace.

Don (45:31):
But like the one where he's building the Titan, like there
was no rest, Like even when,like they, they finished their
shift and they right when heturns, he logs out, the game is
still playing even though he'snot there and they could lose
everything when he wasn't evenright so like you could never
quite turn the the anxiety partoff.

Ron (45:51):
No, absolutely not.
How fun this the anxiety part?
Oh no.

Don (45:53):
No, absolutely not.
How fun.
This sounds like a great time.

Ron (45:55):
This is real stuff.
Anyways, eventually, inSeptember of 2006, everything is
ready to go All right.
The progress bar on the littleconstruction of the Titan is
about to hit 100%.
So Cyvok invites a couple ofthe trusted leadership of his
Ascendant Frontier Alliance out.
They're outside the Starstation waiting for this thing

(46:16):
to appear in space.
It hits a hundred percent andnothing happens Like it.
Just there's no ship and itturns out they had to like.

Don (46:26):
The developers didn't really build it.
They didn't think anybody woulddo it.

Ron (46:29):
The developers didn't install any of the code for this
because they didn't thinkanyone would do it this fast,
right?
And so they had had I was justkidding, no, no, no, you're 100
right.
So they had to get ccp on theline.
Someone had to wake up iniceland.
They said within minutes theyhad got a developer and he
actually went in and likemanually installed the ship for
them, placed it in space,transferred it to his account,

(46:51):
all that kind of stuff.
Like they completely blew thedevelopers expectations out of
the water.
That like that's how quickly itwas even, and it was still like
a giant three month period,right.
So they had the first Titan andCybox says and you know, the
next day he goes and he parks itin the middle of the system so
everyone can come and see.
And it's this big, like youknow, everyone's eyes are

(47:12):
jumping out of their heads when,oh my gosh, it's so huge and it
exists and someone has it.
And then that's when we comeback to band of brothers, right?
Band of brothers is supposed tobe the most powerful, coolest
group in the in the world andthey've just been showed up
because now this guy's got aTitan.
So within two days, two days,sir Mollet goes on the forums.

(47:35):
He announces that they aregoing to go to war with
Ascendant Frontier.
I want to read you hisannouncement because I think
this also typifies the kind ofpeople we're dealing with.
He says as of today, the wholeof BOB goes into full war mode.
And then he launches into apoem the pendulum with braids of
din proclaims the midnight, dinproclaims the midnight.

(47:59):
We begin to call to mind,ironically, what uses we have
made of this dead day that dropsto the abyss today.
Zero date, prophetical friday29 in somber folly mauger.
The truth, our heart maintains.
We seeing still the light, thatsayings have walked in ways
heretical.
The pendulum is about to swing,it begins.
It was apparently like a realpoem from some dude in the 19th

(48:23):
century.
He just changed the date toannounce their declaration of
war.

Doug (48:28):
Cyvock logs in.
He's like band of brothers,more like band of baby brothers.

Don (48:35):
I'm about to bully you guys I'm intrigued.

Doug (48:40):
This has really gotten me yeah.

Ron (48:42):
So like everyone's kind of like not sure what will happen
with this war.
These are, like essentially thetwo biggest groups of player
groups in the game at this time,like band of brothers is
outnumbered by ascendantfrontier.
Ascendant frontier is like youknow they got the money, they
got the industry, you know theycan manufacture any ships they
need.
How are you going to crack them?

(49:02):
And then Band of Brothers, ofcourse, are like the best pilots
, they're the best kind of likedudes at playing that portion of
the game, but they'reoutnumbered and so, anyways,
this giant war, you know, occursand it's just a giant stalemate
, right, no one's like reallytaking territory from anyone
else.
Again, for all the reasons Ilisted, they're just sort of
stuck in place.
Um, but then something,something important of course,

(49:24):
happens.
Everyone knows that like whoeverowns the titan, like that gives
them tremendous leverage in anysort of conflict.
Eventually band of brothersdoes complete their own Titan
and Sir Mollie starts flying itand bringing it to battles.
And you know, there's, there's,there's kind of a like people
say Cyvok was a bit cagey withhis Titan, like he was too

(49:47):
afraid of losing it so hewouldn't really play with it
aggressively enough to reallylike leverage its true potential
, but regardless, like SirMollie really wants to kill that
Titan, right, like it'ssymbolically right and and and
and strategically just take itoff the board so that hopefully
that will you know open up ahole in their front lines and

(50:07):
then they can kind of pour inand start kind of taking this uh
alliance down.
Um, eventually what happens isben the brother succeeds at
taking one solar system in, likethe, the home region, the main
region of ascending frontier,gives them like a foothold right
, nebraska, yeah, yeah they takenebraska just omaha.

(50:29):
Yeah, they take, uh, oh, yeah,anyways, I'm trying to think of
another city in Nebraska Lincoln, cairn, cairn, cairns.
I like I should know more aboutNebraska, cause my friend is
from Nebraska, but anyways, um,uh, they take one of those
places and, uh, just outside oftheir foothold is a little uh,

(50:49):
uh, a um system called C9A-CC.
Um, because that just rolls offthe tongue yeah, this becomes
the major, pivotal battlefieldof this engagement.
Um, because, uh, ascendantfrontier brings their fleet into
c9a and band of brothers, bothof the titans are there.

(51:10):
Both the titans are somewherein the system.
They're just kind of jockeyingfor position, waiting for their
big giant battle to happen.
They do meet and it's kind of awet blanket battle Like there's
nothing.
Nothing decisive occurs, right,and sort of like you get like
one shot with these Titans,right, you got this doomsday
weapon, you shoot it and then ittakes forever to recharge and

(51:31):
Sivok launches his doomsdayweapon.
He kind of misses, he doesn'tdo the damage he needs and so he
immediately retreats in histitan.
Now, now, the way movement inthis game works is you have two
speeds.
You can kind of just move yourship forward with its engines
and, you know, just kind of movethrough space, or of course,
you can warp with your ship kindof like in star wars.

(51:52):
Right, and that's the fastestway to move around.
But in order to warp somewhere,you need a, you need a
coordinate, you need to, likehave a what the game calls a
bookmark.
You've bookmarked thesecoordinates and you can pull
them out of your folder and youcan tell your ship to warp there
.
Right, and so in order to, likekind of retreat safely from a
battlefield, what you would dois every player would have
created their own sort of set ofbookmarks, safe spaces in that

(52:15):
system that are like away fromany planets or any stars or
stations.
Just go into deep space,essentially, and you can just
kind of leave your ship there.
No one would be able to findyou because you're so far out,
they couldn't scan down yourship, and then you'd be safe to
log out, and then you could.
You know your ship woulddisappear from the game and then
you could log back in wheneveryou want.
So this is what happens.

(52:36):
Saevok claims that he and hisTitan warped to a bookmarked
off-grid location in the samesystem.
That would have taken someonewho didn't have those
coordinates 23 hours to fly to.
Just like if they had found theposition, they would have to
fly to it and it would take them23 hours to arrive there in

(53:00):
real time unless they had thatactual location right.
A pilot for Band of Brothersnamed Valora was claims to have
scanned the position of CyvoxTitan which, again, cyvox says
would not be possible because hewas so far out, he was outside

(53:20):
of scanning range.
This, valora, you know, tellsthe officers in his corporation
I've got Cyvox Titan right.
He jumps in.
He sees that the Titan is stillthere, even though Cyvox has
logged offline.
Cyvox says he jumps, he logsoffline but the ship remains in
space, which it's not supposedto.
Ballora sends this coordinatesto all the other Band of

(53:44):
Brothers people in the system.
They all show up and they startshooting at this Titan that has
no pilot.
It's basically dead in space.
Right, right, cybock logs backin while his ship is being shot
at, sees that it's about to blowup, logs off, ship goes down,
explodes.
There's video of this rightbands brothers people yelling.

(54:06):
It's it's the end of return ofthe jedi you know they're
dancing with the ewoks right bigcelebration.
I think sir mole goes on theforum after this and he says
like tighten down.

Doug (54:18):
Nuff said okay come on it becomes his giant pr he does the
poem and then he's gonna dropthat yeah yeah, he's got facets
you know, I guess, many facetsyeah, yeah, let me not be too
judgmental

Ron (54:30):
this is a controversial moment in the history of eve
because this is not what cyborgsays happened.
Cyborg claims there was foulstuff at play, right, uh?
He believes that a ccpdeveloper who was a part of band
of brothers used developmenttools to find the location of
his titan and then also loggedhim out of the game.

(54:53):
That that cyvok did not chooseto log out, that suddenly he had
computer problems.
He was logged out of the gameand also could not log back in
on an alternative character,cyvok Right and that location
was then, of course, shared withthe rest of the members of Band
of Brothers who came anddestroyed his Titan 23 hours
later.

(55:15):
So if they had the exactlocation location, they could
warp to it immediately so youdon't have to have been.

Don (55:20):
And to bookmark a location, you don't have to have been
there previously.

Ron (55:23):
You can just know the coordinates you do have to have
been there previously, butsomeone could share, for
instance, like you could linkthose coordinates to you, right?
And and the other thing is likeyou have scanners that like let
you find objects in space andif you like scan something to
100 percent, then you receiveits coordinates.
So again I want to.
I want to read real quick Cyvokfinds.
Cyvok to this day says foulplay was at foot and I want to

(55:46):
read to you what he says hisaccount was.
Oh, I should also mention theynamed this Titan.
I'm sorry, I forgot this isvery important.
What would you name the firstTitan to ever appear in?

Doug (55:58):
this massive space opera game.

Don (56:00):
The Titanic.
That's pretty good it was foryou, john.
Thanks, kronos.

Ron (56:06):
That would be also very dope.
I'm playing.

Doug (56:09):
God of War right now speaking of video games, and
that would be.

Ron (56:12):
The name Cyborg chooses is Steve, and apparently it's
actually a tribute to steveirwin, who had uh, who passed uh
like a few weeks before thetitan arrived.
um, this is kind of the placeand culture we are at when steve
irwin was big yeah okay, and Ididn't need to say that, because
he starts this quote by sayingsteve was destroyed by straight

(56:33):
up cheating on the part of boband two members of the cccp dev
team that played as bob members.
After I used the doomsday gun,I used one of my alts to sino,
to my off-grid bookmark.
That just means warp um.
Keep in mind this system wasabout 20 conventional jumps from
where the battle was takingplace and again 23 hours at warp
, off-grid, unreachable.

(56:54):
So there I was, with steve onmy main avatar, syvac, and my
alt, uh, fishy, who put up thesign oh, fishy is an alternate
character.
Here's another thing about eveyou can you can be logged in
with multiple accounts, andthat's when he's blah, blah,
blah.
Um.
Fishy put up the sign oh,putting around waiting for the
pvp aggression timer to run out,when suddenly one of the ccp
interstellar news corp shipsjust appeared out of nowhere and

(57:16):
started to orbit my titan.
Two seconds later I was bumpedoffline a total coincidence, I
am sure.
And about three seconds earlierthat uh, that so was my alt.
I tried to log back in but wastimed out on all my player
avatars in that system.
I was using yet another alt inmy corp chat and on my team
speak so I could relay what washappening.
After about two minutes, theBOB fleet was sino-jumping,

(57:37):
dreadnoughts to Steve and therest is history.
It was a total farce and insidejob Straight up cheating.
The story is told muchdifferently, of course, by the
other side, painting me as somekind of idiot that forgot about
the aggression timer and BOBpilots is just so awesome that
they managed to probe down andreach an unreachable grid
location within minutes, despitethe distance.
Again, I don't blame CCP.
I blame the few people thatchose to abuse their dev access

(58:00):
to do this, and CCP made massivechanges after this event.
People inside CCP did get letgo.
Dev tool logging was instituted.
Devs could no longer play asmembers of player corporations
with unknown avatars.
News Corp members had their devtool access curtailed and a
bunch of other stuff, but italways annoyed me that they
never publicly fessed up to whathappened and made things right.

(58:22):
To be fair to them on thatfront, they were a very small
company at the time and did notreally have the tools, processes
or policies in place todefinitively prove, legally
speaking, that my version ofevents were what took place.
I did receive a private apologyfrom several of their team
members who I had worked with inthe past, but that was the end
of it.
Wow, and to this day, ccp hasnot said like, oh yeah, that's

(58:45):
definitely what happened, butthere does seem to be some claim
to some some people being laidoff inside of them as a result,
maybe, of this uh, uh incident.
Um, but I don't know, a lot ofpeople kind of think also, he's,
he's uh, he's not quite on themoney with his interpretation of
events well, imagineconstructing steve after three

(59:07):
months, 14 hour shifts,everything to see that go down.

Doug (59:13):
Yeah, there's probably going to beat.
Your brain is going to startgoing.
There's no way.

Ron (59:17):
That happens to him so much that Saevak quits the game the
next day.
He announces he has he doesn'teven announce himself, he has an
underling in his corporationannounce that he has retired
permanently from the game.
He retires from the leadingposition of the Ascendant
Frontier Alliance and from thatmoment on basically the whole

(59:38):
alliance starts to fall apart.
Band of Brothers starts makingheadway in the war.
It's kind of like aninteresting thing where it's
like the morale of all theplayers just sort of drops.
And then here's another, likethe thing about Eve is like it
doesn't like.
In many ways it replicates, youknow, like real world history or
politics or strategy andinterest, but in another way it

(01:00:01):
doesn't.
Because people are there tohave fun, right, like this is
what you keep coming back to,don, it's supposed to be fun.
And like big wars and bigbattles are fun, Like this is
content people want when theyjoin an epic science fiction
space game.
But they also don't want tolose, like everything they've
worked for, right, and so, yeah,um, it turns out like there's

(01:00:22):
reports of like other, you know,smaller groups inside of
ascendant frontier, basicallyjust looting all of the assets
they can from the main allianceand trying to jockey for like
who will get the best positionwhen this war eventually ends.
They start cozying up to bandof brothers being like hey, yo,
we'll let you into this systemif you take it easy on us.
Like it just, you know, startscollapsing essentially and uh,

(01:00:45):
band of brothers from theretakes everything they had, they
take all their territory andthey become the preeminent, de
facto strongest power in uh, eveonline.
Um, and many people think thisis an important situation
because it basically sets thestage for the next.
I mean what this is 2006.
I mean, the game is still goingnow in two uh in 2024, it sets,

(01:01:08):
you know, the next decade and ahalf of of uh events in Eve.
Because, uh, what's going tohappen now is like band of
brothers is the biggest group inthe game.
They start becoming, you know,massive uh tools to everyone.
They start like telling peoplethey owe them taxes or they're
going to attack them and justsort of like robbing people.
And so another group sort ofjoins up.

(01:01:30):
They're called goon swarm andgoon swarm becomes this group.
That's like, hey, we hate bandof brothers, we're going to
destroy band of brothers.

Doug (01:01:36):
And they try multiple times and fail until eventually
they manage to like unite theentire game against band of
brothers and in a giant uhconflict that is called the
great war that lasts two yearsof real life time band of
brothers is eventually defeated,their home territories taken by
goon swarm, and now goon swarmis the essentially the sort of

(01:01:57):
unchallenged master faction ineve to this day it's really nice
to know that it mirrors reallife, that when the bad guy
shows up and somebody says we'lltake care of this for you, they
become just the next bad guy.

Don (01:02:09):
That's fun I like that.
I'm disappointed they didn'tlearn from real history about
calling something the Great War.

Ron (01:02:18):
Like that's going to be the only one there have definitely
been subsequent Great Wars inEVE Online, but this is the one
I want to talk about today,because we could be here for
hours, my friends, yeah.
So I guess the reason I want tobring this to you guys is not
just because EVE Online is supercool and you guys should resub
and join my corporation, so wecan play together.

Doug (01:02:39):
Yeah, what corporation are you in, by the?

Ron (01:02:41):
way, I don't want to dox them by saying it right now, but
I'm a very small-time player ina corporation right now.
I've recently rejoined thissummer and I got got back into
Eve after I bought this book, uh, from which most of the
research for today's episodecomes from.
It's called empires of Eve by,uh, the journalist Andrew grown,

(01:03:01):
who basically went andcataloged a lot of these events
by actually interviewing thesepeople and talking to them about
their experiences in the game.

Don (01:03:08):
Does your corporation rhyme with land of mothers?
No, they're not there anymore.

Ron (01:03:15):
I don't like some of the players are there, but I don't
know if there's a if evolutionor band of brothers.
I don't think band of brothersis still in the lions they just
wiped out how insane is it that,like they're having
conversations.

Doug (01:03:26):
So it's something that fascinates me immediately.
They're having conversations as, like, new corporations are
starting up and if you're goinginto one of these null sectors
and saying like, hey, I want, Iwant to work for you guys, and
I'm guessing there's probably aninterview.

Ron (01:03:37):
There's definitely an interview process.
Yeah, any corporation.
I have to actually have a reallife interview with a person.

Doug (01:03:43):
Yeah.

Ron (01:03:43):
Because you could be a spy.
You could.
You could not have that Likethere needs to be a vetting
process.

Doug (01:03:48):
Yeah, and you can literally say, like I was a of
band of brothers, like Iparticipated in the great war,
I'm like there's just, there areactual credentials that make
you something.

Ron (01:04:00):
There are like celebrities in this game who are just
veterans of these events, likevalora, the guy who, the
character who like scanned downthe ship.
Like they're still out there,they will happily tell you about
what happened.
Like there's still debates onlike reddit about what happened.
You know a lot of people likecyborg's a big cry, baby, we got
him fair to square.
Uh, you know, like everything'sfine.

(01:04:20):
Um, these are still like ripplethroughout the community and,
if you like, were a player backthen, you have a lot of clout.
People really want to talk toyou about this stuff.
So what I'm saying, though likethis is interesting because
it's like this to me is all real.
Like Like this is this is reallife, stuff that's happening.

Doug (01:04:36):
Right.

Ron (01:04:41):
I, like you know, to those, to those mean dads who say your
, your kids aren't having realexperiences or living life in a
video game.
They are.
This is, this is life stuff,people.
People left the game becausethey couldn't.
You know, because it was sotragic the events that unfolded
Right.
People launch whole, you know,because it was so tragic the
events that unfolded right.
People launch whole, you know,wars and campaigns just on the
same sort of fickle humanpassions of, oh I don't like

(01:05:02):
that guy, he makes me mad.
Or oh, they have something Idon't have and I want to be the.
You know, I want to be thecoolest, most dope dude in space
, right?
I think these are a lot of thesame things that we see in real
human life.
I'm not saying this is obviouslylike a one for one right.
Like this kind of goes back toour risk thing, right, like no

(01:05:23):
one's really at risk here, youknow, of losing life or limb,
right, just time, yeah, but justtime and time.
And investment and interest,and you know there's definitely.
You, definitely you knowsacrifices how many marriages
ended as a result of the greatwar?
You know, like that's right.

Doug (01:05:41):
And were they married in eve online as pilots?
Or irl marriages, yeah, fleshmarriages I think, hmm, the, the
.

Don (01:05:55):
so what this is making me think about, cause we we talked
about this a few times lastseason the idea that the fiction
right, one of the reasons thatwe that that we read fiction is
is to escape from our real lives, and this would be the same
thing here, right as you, as youlog in to play a game in order

(01:06:15):
to escape from whatever yoursituation is and your current
life, and so I can be an airconditioner repairman in real
life that logs on and is thein.
The Russian formalist right.

(01:06:38):
The idea that he studied thatrelates to fiction, is called
carnival right, and that one ofthe things that fiction does is
it allows us to experiencethings that are outside of our
norm.
And the idea of carnival hetook from medieval carnivals,
where the social order wasinverted and so Topsy-turvy, day
, and so right, uh, servantsbecame masters, masters became

(01:06:59):
servants, but the, the, thecontrolling force behind that in
the medieval, um, actualcarnivals, but also in fiction,
is that there's a controllingvoice that is monitoring that,
and then the carnival ends andthings return to normal.
So I'm wondering in this case,right, like the, there is no
controlling voice here.

Ron (01:07:19):
So, right, it's just players playing does the player,
the in-game persona, eventuallybecome the real persona or vice
versa, right?

Don (01:07:29):
so there's the two things there, right and again bakteen.
It has to do with the polyphonyof the controlling voice then
just becomes the hegemonicculmination of everybody's
voices, trying to decide what'sgoing to happen next in the game
, but also that there's noreturn, like the only way to
return to normal is to log off.

Ron (01:07:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don (01:07:51):
Right, and so that's where it breaks for me, where you're
saying that this is real life.

Ron (01:07:57):
Like I understand the, the, the feeling of it being a real
investment, but in real life Ican't just log off over right,
like yeah, like uh, in this, inthis you know, empires of eve
book, the guy interviewingcyborg says, like you know this

(01:08:18):
I think this book was written in2014, 2016, somewhere around
there.
He says, like cyborg, still hedescribes him as being like
frustrated and wistful, likespeaking about this.

Doug (01:08:27):
Still, you know, like it's a part of him, he will bear
this yeah to the end, to anybodythat would think yeah, I
imagine there would be peoplethat would look at him and say,
like that's not a great lifeaccomplishment, but to be a
person like think about somebodywho is willing to go through
with that, to where thedevelopers, or like I don't know

(01:08:48):
if we're going to look at thisas like its own universe, like
the gods of the universe didn'teven write into existence the
thing that he was creatingthere's, I mean, like what a
perspective you know shift thatmakes you have, where it's not
just collecting a check, butlike I literally created
something that the creatorsdidn't even believe I could do

(01:09:08):
and then I made this.
So, yeah, I imagine lifeprobably is a little bit darker
of a shade when you'veaccomplished something like that
in a digital space, right, andthat I mean I'm instantly drawn
to somebody like David FosterWallace because I think about
his idea in infinite Jess, thatthere is a form of entertainment
that is so entertaining thatit's like yeah, the, the idea of

(01:09:33):
life becomes a little bit more.
I don't know like it's, it'sturned down and, of course, like
Infinite Jest takes a very.
I guess what is the?
It's such a simple word and I'mjust lost for it right now.
Pessimistic Wow, the fact thatthat's gone is really worrying
me.
Pessimistic take on the idea ofentertainment kind of taking

(01:09:55):
over and somebody misses theirlife.
But yeah, it's interestingbecause, yeah, don, you were
bringing up logging out, but buthe retired there.
There's like a differencebetween I've logged out, I might
play this again, but yeah, ourmen literally retired from that
because I think that was such apart of his life.

Don (01:10:12):
But the the like you pointed out the chaos continued
like he didn't log in, but thegame continued and his sense of
loss seems to have continued aswell.
Because again that idea thatthere was no closure, there's no
controlling voice, no authoryet is is saying here's the,
here's the ethical viewpointthat we should learn from this

(01:10:33):
experience.
It was just a, it's just a loss.

Ron (01:10:37):
This is your, your, your kind of idea of the author.
The importance of the authorhere is very interesting to me,
and I think that's probably whyvideo games are so appealing to
so many people.
right, Because they are givenauthorship, right To an extent
right, and I think some games,more than others, right, extend
more of that authorship abilityto the, to the player.
Right, and I think that'sprobably why, like, video games

(01:11:00):
are like bigger than movies.
Now, right, like, I think, likeall fiction, we, we arrive at a
place where we, the author,disappears.

Don (01:11:09):
Right, if the fiction is good enough yeah, right, and
like the author is dead, yeah,yeah, yeah exactly Right.

Ron (01:11:15):
And uh, you know, it's just uh, our that, that, that that
world, that that narrativeexists in our brain and we have
a sort of um discovery, um, uhelement to it.
Uh, I uh fictional worlds likelord of the rings or star wars
or eve, online, right, and we doreceive dopamine rushes when we

(01:11:38):
discover things, even in thesefictional places, right, like
finding out about a, a newculture in the lord of the rings
, or, uh, encountering a new, uhlandmark in a, in a mmorpg,
right gives us a little dopaminerush because, like, human
beings are sort of hardwired toexplore, to like, expand and
find new resources and, you know, stabilize the colony, right.

(01:12:01):
And so I think, yeah, I'm justalways trying to figure out why
we love fiction so much like it,cause I think it gets, you know
, short shrift a lot of thetimes, right, like I don't read
fiction, I read nonfiction,that's true, that's real.
But uh, like, that's alwaysbeen such an immature view of
fiction to me, right, that itdoes have.
I think it does teach us realthings.

(01:12:21):
Like you're saying, the lack ofthe author in Yvonne line
doesn't teach us any less abouthow he, how humans, behave and
and act and organize themselves,right.

Don (01:12:32):
It's an interesting like.
I would like to learn moreabout it because it's an
interesting application.
I mentioned the I'm jokingly atBart a second ago about the
death of the author, but thepoint that Bart makes in that,
in that essay, is that when theauthor is finished writing, that
is, that's the end of theauthor's contribution to the
experience, and then after that,it's the reader that that

(01:12:53):
vivifies the text.
Um, and, and what I'm saying isthat the author has left a, a a
trail of breadcrumbs for thereader to follow.
But the reader can bring theirown experience to their own
understanding, their own way ofof perceiving what the author
has written and and, like I said, vivifies it and makes it
meaningful to them.
In this case, it sounds likelike that's what bothers me

(01:13:15):
about it is there's no trail ofbreadcrumbs, it's just, it's a,
it's a universe where there'snobody controlling it.

Ron (01:13:22):
I think there's still a trail of breadcrumbs Cause.
I think it's important Likewhat are the primary actions
people can engage with on in.
Eve and it's like, yes, we weretalking about it sort of being
simulationist, but you saidearlier, like, like, can I be
the guy who stamps the envelopes?
And like, no, that is notsomething you can do.
Right, like you, you cannotleave your ship, right you?
You don't have a human bodythat can go onto the planet
surface and find animals orcatalog plants.

(01:13:44):
Like eve online is still a gameessentially centered around war
and violent conflict.
I think that's a breadcrumb,though, right, you're gonna.
That's gonna provide parametersby which people interact with
it and therefore it will the.
You know, there's a reason whythis book's called the empires
of eve and not the thescientific discoveries of eve,

(01:14:06):
because it's not a star trekexploration game in that sense.
Right?

Don (01:14:10):
but there's no in fiction, right even even in Infinite Jest
, there's a point to the story,and Wallace is of course, you
know, post-postmodern.
I was going to say Jensen, whoyou talk to, but there's a
meaning that is available totake away from it.

Doug (01:14:33):
Yeah.

Don (01:14:34):
And in this case, in Eve.
That's what I'm searching for,like what's the it's, and I
think that might be why Syvok isthat his name Right Is so
frustrated.

Ron (01:14:45):
He lost his meaning?

Don (01:14:46):
Well, right, the only meaning is a badge of
accomplishment for having donethis thing through time and
patience, and it was just takenaway without a for having done
this thing through time andpatience, and it was just taken
away without a like, without ameaning, without a reason,
without a narrative and I think,too, the I was about to bring

(01:15:06):
this up and you say with meperfectly the fact that even
he's, like, stuck in the realmof the rules were fixed.

Doug (01:15:15):
So I didn't get the experience out of the world that
like, because that's the I mean.
If he does believe that, ifthis is not an excuse, in some
ways it is more tragic to mebecause the laws that he was
operating in a universe that hetruthfully felt like, this is
something I can understand and Iinteract with, which is why I
give of my time so freely tothis place.

(01:15:35):
If he feels that's violated, ofcourse he retired because it's,
like, the greatest violation of, like the my universe that you
created for me, that I was ableto make into what I wanted, uh,
doesn't exist in the way that Ithought that it did Cause.
Interestingly, um, you broughtup that you like Diablo dawn
because I was obsessed with thelike, still, I'd still play them

(01:15:59):
, um, and I probably played themost of two.
But going back to one, the, yeah, the idea is is you go into the
church and you keep going andguess who's at the bottom of, if
you keep going layers, diablois there and you're going to
slay diablo, because theparameters of the game are get
better stuff, level up up, youknow, get better equipment, get
more spells, get more health,everything else.
And then the great sense ofaccomplishment is the simple I

(01:16:22):
beat, you know, you beat thegame, you know, in a sense, and
you never, you never played thatone online.

Don (01:16:27):
No, Diablo two is the only one I ever played was

(01:17:00):
no-transcript the type of playeror person that would be
attracted to that the but thesimulation is actually like
you're saying that that cyvakmight be upset because the rules
that he thought existed weredifferent than.

(01:17:20):
But that's exactly the realworld too, like everyone
operates under a set of rulesthat they assume, yes, but then
there's there, you know, evenyou know, the miraculous right
like I believe that the physicsworks a certain way.
But then there's these storieswhere a miracle happens and the
physics didn't work the way thatthey were supposed to.
The way it was described to me,but that still is accepted as

(01:17:41):
reality because it did happen.
The same thing is here, like hemay have believed that there
was no reason or ability for thedevelopers to do this, but they
clearly had the ability.
I mean if, if his version of theaccount is what happened, right
, they had the ability to, so itdoesn't make it against the
rules, because the rules weredeveloped by the developers, so

(01:18:03):
their rules include the abilityto come in and and do a cosmic
you know, shift of.
so it, but it doesn't make itless frustrating for him.
I'm positive, but it actuallymimics the storyline.
But the point that you'remaking and I think it's the same
point that I'm making is thatwhen we tell this in a story,
there's a narrative that has areason for the narrative, and

(01:18:25):
even in narratives where we'resubverting the norms of society,
there's a reason for thatsubversion, either to test the
bounds of society or experiencewhat it's like to test those
bounds.
It's all in a safe space, butit sounds like in Eve.
It's not a safe space becausethere's no, there's that
controlling voice is not thereto control it, it's just there
to the chaos continues.

Ron (01:18:46):
And because a lot of these are written as histories, I
think a lot of the controllingvoice you're looking for has
been added by, for instance, thejournalist who wrote this down,
right Like I was able to put anice little cap on this by
saying like, don't worry, bandof brothers eventually got what
was coming to them, though,because they eventually became
the target of a massive uprisingand were overthrown, right, but
that's a of course in hindsight.

Don (01:19:07):
Yeah, we have the hindsight of history to.
We don't place that narrativeon it, but we don't have a
narrative goal for tomorrow'sgameplay but and then, yes, and
isn't, but that's that's freedom

Ron (01:19:18):
isn't that and that isn't that.
What more could you want in asimulated universe?

Don (01:19:22):
that's what life is.
That's what I do every day.
I want when I go to a simulateduniverse yeah, but then I'm
taking it back down to thebasics, baby.

Doug (01:19:34):
Well, and I think that that's also the thing that's
interesting is, I think that wedo self-author every single day,
right, like in your.
If we're going to say that wehave a mundane day, let's say
like you know what, or theperson who you know, the person
that, like oh, the, the, my workcrush, finally looked at me,

(01:19:58):
like whatever it like,extrapolates into this giant
thing Right, and to make themost egregious jump that we
could probably ever make.
One of the things I wasthinking about when you were
talking about this Dawn is likethe idea of like human beings
and like fiction.
But I think, like even peoplewho have like religious
experience right, like gettinginto, like text or stories that

(01:20:18):
are ancient mythology, like allof these things.
I think that this is part of usas being human beings.
We do like these stories, butmaybe the person who likes
something like Eve Online islooking to create their own.
They're the person that reallyis attached magnetically to the
idea of give me the ability totell my own story and then the
world will tell it after that.

Ron (01:20:40):
That's exactly it, Doug.
I think that's a beautiful wayto bring this together and to
end this episode.
Gentlemen, thank you forfollowing me down this virtual
labyrinth and I hope to see youguys out there in EVE very soon.
I have a code you could putthat will actually give me a

(01:21:00):
small kickback if you subscribewithin the next 30 days and also
give you plenty of cool in-gameitems I'm not logging in until
Cyvox back.

Doug (01:21:08):
That's all I gotta say.

Ron (01:21:10):
Thank you for following us.
Also, listener, take care andwe'll see you on the next
episode of the Uncannery.

Doug (01:21:49):
See you everybody, Thank you.

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