Socializing Gamers - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 33

their out of game money to catch up to or surpass their friends by buying
their way forward. This straightforward design, built on attracting a mass
audience of compulsive players is shaped by the dynamics of the environ-
ment within which the games are played, both of which are key parts of
their rhetorical construction.
EVE ONLINE
In the wake of discussing four games that actively encourage more people
to play, it is important to analyze a dif erent part of the spectrum with a
game that takes an alternate approach to socializing play. EVE Online cer-
tainly encourages people to try the game. Developer CCP of ers a fourteen-
day free trial to give people a chance to do just that, but the design of the
game functions in a way to push most people away. By carefully deploying
specifi c design choices, CCP hones the audience of the game and shapes the
context of their player base.
EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that is
dif erent from almost any other game on the market. Attracting around
330,000 players, the game is played by the fewest people of any exam-
ined in this chapter, but there are a number of reasons why it is especially
worthy of study. EVE features a single shard world, where everyone plays
together, rather than the more common approach in MMOGs of splitting
players onto servers that only hold a small fraction of the total population
playing the game. This means that if you know anyone playing EVE , you
are going to be playing with them, eliminating the need to choose between
servers and, possibly, friends. The game is set in space, with a particularly
dark motif to many of the graphics, giving the universe a dystopian feel, in
opposition to the bright colors and fantasy settings of many competitors.
Game play is relatively slow and key activities, like mining, are tremen-
dous time sinks. If a player has ever expressed concern about the length
of time on some of the old Kalimdor fl ight paths in World of Warcraft , 29
they would be aghast at the space fl ights between systems that can seem-
ingly take hours. Character creation and execution is also dif erent. Any
character can pursue any and all skills for which they are qualifi ed. Instead
of picking a class, players in EVE can pick what they want to do and, if
they change their mind, they can change their training to add their newly
desired skills. EVE 's training is particularly friendly to casual players, as it
happens around the clock, regardless of whether or not the player is logged
in. There are no experience points to advance levels, only time to train
skills, and players new to the game can possess skills to perform limited,
but crucial roles at a level to match the most experienced pilots within a
matter of a month or two.
Although these dif erences, and more, separate EVE from its competi-
tors in its genre, the most notable dif erence is the brutal, harsh, cold, and