CCP’s epic science fiction space-based MMO, Eve-Online, has long been one of my favorites. This coldly brutal game is designed to be a “sandbox” where conflicts between different groups of players provide the majority of the content in the game. A player can choose how they wish to interact with those around them, and these sometimes barbarous interactions give Eve a very unique niche in the MMO market. One can choose to be a pirate or a bounty hunter, a commodities trader or a thief, and all of these choices are allowable and encouraged by the developers. Your role in the persistent Eve-Online universe is hampered only by your imagination.
The world of Eve is cutting edge, and has occasionally raised real world questions about virtual property and what should be allowable within an online game. Scamming other players out of their hard-earned ISK (the in game currency) is allowed and somewhat encouraged by the developers, and is considered to be an inevitable consequence for trusting the wrong people. Occasionally, scams have been brazen enough to leak into “mainstream” news.
One such scam in 2005 involved the infiltration of a corporation called Ubiqua Seraph (UQS) by a mercenary corporation called Guiding Hand Social Club (GHSC). GHSC managed to insert an operative into UQS, and after building up trust over several months, GHSC’s “Valentine Operative” managed to rise through the UQS ranks to reach the role of Corporate Director. When the timing was right, the GHSC operative cleaned out virtually all of UQS’s assets and then performed an in-game execution of Mirial, UQS’s CEO. That scam yielded GHSC a cool 20 billion ISK, which is equivalent to around $2,500USD. One Eve-Online player known in-game as Ashley Sky said of the scam, “As a small-time thief and villain, this kind of thing could happen only in my evil dreams. I kneel in awe at this incredible story of deception. I stand in the cool shadows of giants.”
Another scam, known now as the EIB scam, involved a single player named Cally setting up an Investment Bank, and using trust built up over several months to defraud his in-game investors of over 700 billion ISK of money and assets, a sum that converts to over $100,000USD. The perpetrator of this scam openly stated, “Think of me as a space Robin Hood - steals from the rich and gives to himself.” Given these stories of deception and intrigue, it’s easy to see why the most often quoted adage of the Eve-Online denizens is “trust no one.”
Not all news of Eve is so scandalous. CCP recently hired an economist named Dr. Eyjo Gudmundsson to study the in-game economy of the Eve-Online Universe. He publishes his findings for academia and the online community, and also gives his expert advice to the other developers with regards to the likely economic impact of proposed changes to the in-game economy. He takes a decidedly hands off approach with the in-game economy, believing it to be a wonderful example of a healthy and working free market. He was recently interviewed for an article regarding the Eve economy in Scientific American, where he expounded at length upon the idea that Eve-Online is a laissez faire laboratory.
The latest news from CCP reveals yet another way this gaming company is on the cutting edge: community involvement in the development of the game itself. Yesterday, CCP opened up the polls for the player-base to vote for representatives to the new Council of Stellar Management. The CSM has the distinction of being the first democratically elected governing body in a virtual world. Representatives on this council will be charged with providing feedback and suggestions to the game developers regarding the concerns of the players of the game. A PDF document outlining the reasons behind the formation of the council and the specifics of its implementation can be found here.
I, for one, applaud CCP for this bold and unprecedented move. While I am somewhat reminded of Dell’s IdeaStorm, CCP has taken the idea of customer input one step further by formalizing a player-elected governing body to work with the game developers themselves. I can only hope the online gaming community will watch closely and learn from what CCP is doing. It will be months before we see if this results in success or failure, but I’m predicting success. The cluetrain has pulled into the MMO station!
May 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am
A minor correction - at the time of the theft, the money stolen wasn’t worth $2,500 USD, but in fact $16,500 USD.