Skip to main content

Where have all the great Eve writers gone?

EVE online used to inspire the best writing about games. The sandbox universe of New Eden gave rise to a million stories and the uncompromising ruthlessness of the game ensured that many of those stories were worth reading. Epic stories like the Guiding Hand Social Club's meticulous evsiceration of Ubiqua Seraph  caught the attention of main stream media but I have always enjoyed more mundane stories of the day to day experiences of capsuleers: tales of piracy and revenge, tales of exploration and discovery, tales of incompetence and mastery. I myself was never more than a very casual EVE player and yet it inspired some of my own favourite writing

Where have all these great EVE blogs gone? Some stalwarths like Wilhelm over at the Ancient Gaming Noob  still write regularly about the game but these are stories of participating in mega alliances and huge wars. This seems to have become a feature of EVE writing lately. The politics of mega alliances dominates everything and gripping tales of the achievements and failures of individual capsuleers don't feature. If you want plenty of examples of the worst of EVE writing head over to Reddit's r/eve. There is a mega-war on in EVE at the moment and this reddit sub is filled with partisan tales and boasting that is unreadable for an outsider.

The last Eve blog that really gripped me was Doyce Testerman's series about "Life in Wormhole" . Wormholes are the most remote and most uncontrollable environments in EVE so back in 2012 when Doyce was wormholing there was still plenty of room for stirring tales of individual exploits.

Why aren't there still great EVE blogs about individual capsuleers? I can think of a a few possible reasons but I am not sure which if any of them are the real reason:

1. It is possibe the game has been running so long that there are no new stories to tell.
2. It is possible that the decline of EVE blogging is just a reflection of the decline of game blogging generally.
3. It is possible that EVE has changed from being a game of individual efforts and small groups to a game of mega-alliances and power blocs. The efforts of individuals are no longer relevant and no longer worth writing about.

of course there is also a more hopeful possibiliy:

4. It is possible that there are still players out there writing great indivudal stories that I haven't found yet. Please let this be the case and if you know of such writing then please direct me to it.
Labels:

Comments

Wilhelm Arcturus said…
EVE blogs are kind of funny. If I look closely, I always seem to find a few new ones have popped up since last I checked. But most of them just last for a season or two then fade. It is a very nomadic subject if you are trying to keep up with the smaller stories.
10:03 pm
mbp said…
Hi Wilhelm. Well done to you for sticking with it for so long. Yes Eve blogs have always come and gone but recently there seems to be far more gone than come.
7:15 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My First Gaming Mouse: Logitech G300

I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse?  There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features  seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter.  2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input.  2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements.   3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button.  4. Extr
10 comments
Read more

Android Tip 3: Sharing a Folder between multiple users of an Android device

Android has allowed multiple user logins for quite a while now. This is can be very useful for tablets which are shared by family members. Normally Android erects strict Chinese walls between users preventing them from using each others apps and viewing each others files. This is a useful security feature and ensures your kids don't mess up your work spreadsheets when screwing around on the tablet and should also prevent them from buying €1,000 worth of Clash of Candy coins on your account. Sometimes however you really do want to share stuff with other users and this can prove surprisingly difficult. For example on a recent holiday I realised that I wanted to share a folder full of travel documents with my wife. Here are some ways to achieve this. 1. If you have guaranteed internet access  then you can create a shared folder on either Dropbox or Google drive. Either of these has the great advantage of being able to access the files on any device and the great disadvantage of bein
52 comments
Read more

Portal 2 two screen coop on one PC.

I mentioned before that I intended to try Portal 2 in "unofficial split screen co-op mode. Well split screen on a small computer monitor is a recipe for a headache especially when the game defies gravity as much as portal. However a minor bit of extra fiddling allowed us to drive two seperate screens from one PC. The Steam forums describes a complicated method of doing this that I couldn't get working so this simpler method which worked for me might be of use to someone. 1. First I followed the instructions in this post to get split screen multi-player working: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1847904 A minor issue not mentioned is that you need to enable the console from the keyboard/mouse options menu I am using keyboard and one wired Xbox360 controller as suggested. Getting the controller to switch to channel 2 was tricky at first but as Chameleon8 mentions plugging it out and in again during loading works. The trick for me was to do the plug / p
1 comment
Read more