EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) in which more than half a million people around the world play in the same online space, interacting with one another and outlining narratives, characters, and worlds. MMOGs live, grow, and evolve following their own rules and collective instincts; the player experience cannot be achieved in any other form of art or entertainment. EVE Online is set in outer space more than twenty thousand years into the future. Humanity, having exhausted Earth’s resources, has begun laying claim to the rest of the Milky Way and beyond, discovering a galaxy dubbed New Eden. Players adopt avatars and design and fly spaceships through New Eden—which is made up of thousands of solar systems connected to one another via “stargates”—taking part in various occupations, pursuits, and events. Each solar system is home to planets, stars, space stations, and obstacles such as wormholes and asteroid belts. CCP Games has created a complete experience, employing not only designers and developers but also economists and anthropologists. CCP explains that the “power [belongs] to the players. Nothing compares to a player that is enabled to affect the universe. We create tools for players to create content.”
Gallery label from Applied Design, March 2, 2013–January 31, 2014.
