High drama from the world of Eve Online, where a week ago, a spy stole 400 billion ISK, and this week, a trusted player who was secretly a spy masterminded the destruction of a rare ship worth 390 billion ISK (the in-game currency, not to be confused with Icelandic Krona). Eve is notorious for high-denomination… READ THE REST
I’m always interested in these stories, even though I have never played Eve Online. And I feel like it’s way too late to start now.
But that’s probably a good thing. If I was there from early on, I’d probably not have a job or a life at this point. heh.
“I’m bored, lets do something newsworthy!”
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I was listening to a co-worker talk about this for a good half an hour.
EVE is completely and utterly how I imagine gigantic corporate hegemonies in space would act in the face of certain scarcity. Even at the bottom, people like the characters my co-worker plays would probably be desperate enough to engage in almost-certainly suicidal missions just for a small cut of the action.
It’s so thoroughly an exercise in the analytic urges of humanity: we put things together with an ultimate goal being to break yet other things apart. The synthetic urges don’t seem to be expressed (i.e., we break things apart with an ultimate goal being to put brand-new things together), so I guess I’ll continue to look for another game.
I’d probably not have a job or a life
I listened to a little bit of the soundcloud recording of that guy flipping out over his game losses or whatever. It reminded me of this guy:
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I find these stories mildly amusing, although I watched the space ship video and have absolutely no idea what’s going on. Also, I’m surprised than in-game ponzi schemes are legal if the in-game currency can be traded for $$$.
Officially, ISK can’t be converted to real money but like anything more than one person values, you can find people who will pay a player real money for ISK.
ISK can be use to pay for an account’s monthly subscription but that’s probably not sufficiently money-like to run afoul of various country’s laws. Or more likely it’s just too small potatoes for government attorneys to pay attention.
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In Eve, the in-game currency can not be traded for real world money (well, without risking being banned from the game by using some shady sites). It is possible to go the other direction, though. You can purchase a “PLEX” for real money, which is an in-game item that you can redeem for a month of game time (a “Pilot License Extension”), and that item can be sold on the market in-game for in-game money. The amount of in-game money you get depends on market conditions in the game though. Some hard core players make enough in-game money that they support their subscription by purchasing these PLEX, essentially paying someone in-game money in exchange for that person paying their subscription fee. There are the regular supply and demand (and potential market manipulation) factors that come into determining just how much PLEX sell for on the market, though.
CCP decided to create that sort of exchange to undercut 3rd party “gold farming” type operations, and by having the in-game money come from other players in a market transaction they avoid the in-game inflation that would occur if they just gave you in-game money for cash, created out of thin air.
EO is a fascinating game, with a lot of cross-over into real life. I suppose that is one of the appeals of most MMORPG’s but Eve is notorious for it. For anyone interested, you can have fun and ramble around on your own but the key is joining a good Corporation that fits you and vice versa. Speaking again to cross-over, when I was a player I joined a Corp based on another real life forum I was a member of. The advantages have to do with shared resources, alliances, and financial assistance (a lot of ISK to a newbie is chump-change to a more advanced player).
I always loved this in-house music rap video that the Eve Online folks did.
The pimp cup and the '99 Daihatsu Charade were a very nice touch. As well as the mid-video Techno-Viking bridge.
Is there some special in-game meaning to the word “spy” as it is used here? Is that a game class, or Eve player jargon, or something?
I skimmed a couple of Cory’s links and found them pretty impenetrable.
@Extra88 and benjaminterry: Thanks for the explanation
There are no classes in Eve-online. The spy in this case is just that: someone who created a fake identity to infiltrate an organization to attain access to that organization’s assets, information, etc. Acquiring such access usually requires gaining the trust of the owners, and that may involve social engineering and other metagame tactics. Consequently, such infiltrations can take a very long time. Months or longer is not unheard of.
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Eve Online: Even more frustrating than your real job.
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“What is this, a game for Ents?”
Thats a little more than $14000 US worth of ingame currency, for each incident.
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