In this paper I will present the computer game Eve Online (hereinafter referred to as Eve), which was released by the Icelandic Crowd Control Productions (CCP hereafter) in 2003. First and foremost, I will present what the players of Eve is doing to expand and exploit the game to a greater extent than what the developers had in mind. To view it, I will first describe what Eve is and see it in context with other similar games. I do this in order to point out that giving players the opportunities they have in Eve as the corresponding computer games can not offer. Then I look at some of the meta-game gameplay that adds up to, and give examples where players create their own works either in game or out and either using or inspired by Eve. I will also look at some of the game's developers have done since the launch in order to satisfy their users. This is not a presentation of the computer game Eve Online, but a showcase of some of the more specific aspects of Eve Online that add up to player created and player-controlled items.
Internettromskip
Eve Online was first launched in 2003 with the full title of Eve Online: Second Genesis. Publishers CCP would create a different MMORPG at that time was dominated by Everquest and Lineage. When World of Warcraft (henceforth WoW) defined MMORPG genre in the autumn of 2004, Eve is still small but has since created its own loyjale player base and had, by 2008 just under 250,000 player accounts. A main point of the CCP was to have a server that everyone played in contrast to most MMORPG games where you can choose between different servers.
Eve Online is set in New Eden, a sci-fi universe 20,000 years forward in time and spread over thousands of solar systems players can fly to. The players relate to each other by collaborating with other spacecraft in its fleet and shoot in pieces the enemy fleet of spaceships. One of the main themes of the game is capitalism and it can boast of having perhaps the genre's most advanced player-based economy. This means that there are players who generate all the game's resources, money, space ships and equipment that they use to get better at shooting each other to pieces. The other main theme of Eve 's warfare. The universe consists basically of five groups or factions of people, of whom four are playable, and these are mostly in a cold or hot conflict. Next to these factions are the players' own factions, either in the form of a corporation or alliance of several corporations. The player-controlled factions, I will elaborate on.
From world heroes to the everyday heroes
Role of the data involved is almost always the player who went out to save the world from the evil powers. He / she was the game's center, he / she was the hero the world had waited for. From the mid-90th century onwards, the birth of a new genre in the gaming industry. Titles such as Ultima Online, Everquest and Asheron's Call was a completely new type of game that got the players to relate to the virtual universe and its partners in a way they had not done before. A player could collect iron, as another forged into a sword, which he then sold to another player, who used it to fight other players or creatures in the game world. A player's choices left to decide how he would go forth to conquer the game and reach the end, how he would fit into a world of equals. Yet it is often the feeling of accomplishment that motivates a player to continue playing a game for a long time. The player wants to prove to themselves and others that he has what it takes to get to the top.
In most multiplayer games is the ranking lists, and in sports. They show who's best, but the role-playing games have a system based on many more facets. They are often several areas players can mark themselves in. Players judged based on how good they are, how many friends they have, how credible they are, how they behave and what they do. They can become celebrities or villains in their gangs, or on their server or in the entire game. In extreme cases, the players' actions make them like many Internet phenomena, also out of the game's audience know who is. One can say that where traditional multiplayer games like Counter Strike and Starcraft relate to the players as practitioners, who shows his skill with the rules and conditions the game has set, so using role-play other players who judges based on expectations and reactions judge a player's actions. The point of the game was no longer to reach the end or finishing in the top of the rankings, but to find their place in a society that is developed by the players' actions.
