Analysis: EVE Online

In this series of articles I'm going to be examining some notable games related to Worlds Apart. I'll be analysing important features, how they influence play experience, and how this applies to Worlds Apart.

For my first article I'm going to be slightly ambitious: I'm going to break out the big guns and dissect EVE Online by CCP. EVE sells itself as "the world's largest game universe". It's a slow-burning, open-ended, sci-fi game where the player takes on the role of a single pilot against a backdrop of player-driven trade, corporate warfare, and piracy. In-depth analysis after the cut.

I do not intend these articles to be reviews of these games. If you're looking for a score, or an opinion on whether overall a game is good or bad, you ought to look elsewhere.

In EVE, while the player takes on the role of a single pilot, they are given a choice between a large number of specialisations. These include, for example, traders, miners, manufacturers, and pirates. The game's open-ended structure lends itself to the player setting their own goals, and its depth and complexity make for a satisfying long-term experience.

The core gameplay of EVE involves the accumulation of Skills (XP) and ISK (money). Skills are bought with Skill Points - the player selects a skill to train, and that skill continues to train (even while the player is offline) for some amount of real-world time until the next level of that skill is reached. ISK is obtained in a variety of ways - usually through using your skills to perform activities in your specialisation. Skills and ISK combine to unlock content for the user (e.g. a cruiser requires the "Cruisers" skill, and a several hours worth of ISK).

Different specialisations appeal to different players. For example, it takes a fairly experienced pilot to make a capable bounty hunter, but more-or-less anyone can fit up a frigate with some mining lasers.

The game is about long-term progress rather than short-term gratification. Mining, for example, is notably uninteractive - you turn on your mining lasers and wait several minutes for your cargo hold to fill up, fly back to a station to unload, repeat. Activities in EVE are very much extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated; you mine because it gets you ISK rather than because mining is fun.

Experienced miners make vastly more ISK/hour than new miners - both because they've invested ISK in a better ship, and because they've invested real-world time (not played time) into training skills. While you can in theory catch up in ISK (although remember than an hour of experienced time generates much more ISK than an hour of inexperienced time), you do not have any effective way to increase the rate at which you gain skill points.

This means that low level play can seem futile - I could spend twenty minutes earning a small amount of ISK now, or I could spend twenty minutes earning a much larger amount of ISK (that makes the smaller amount seem insignificant) in a month's time when I've trained some skills. In addition, CCP - to a certain extent - allow real-money trade. I can buy game time and sell it to experienced players for ISK. Obviously, they buy it at a rate based on the amount of ISK they can earn, not the amount of ISK I can earn. This means that particularly as a starting player I can generate ISK several thousand times faster by working overtime than by playing the game. "That's sad, why would you spend real world money buying in-game money?" I hear you say. While that may be true for a game like World of Warcraft where a) exchanging real-world money for in-game money is always against the EULA, and b) earning money is supposed to be fun, let me repeat myself: "you mine because it gets you ISK rather than because mining is fun".

I need to avoid this problem in Worlds Apart. This initial exponential ramp-up is typical of persistent games - as is the extrinsic rather than intrinsic reward of many activities, often referred to as "the grind". ISK is only motivating because of the promise of eventual reward (a new ship). Paying three months subscription, plus either buying or grinding enough ISK to buy a ship all on the promise of this eventually getting fun is a serious barrier to entry. Add to this EVE's overwhelming complexity (a boon for experienced players, but a barrier to new ones), and mediocre tutorial (the game deliberately throws you out into the galaxy with only the vaguest of idea of what's going on), and we have a game firmly entrenched in its niche - a way of life to its veteran players, but a terrifying leviathan to new ones.

One thing that EVE does notably well is using ownership over its virtual existance as a vehicle for immersion. The first five minutes have you bombarded with a wealth of deep background information, following which you slot your character in, picking starting skills and crafting your portrait. Once in the world, you're confronted with a huge range of choices. You're given several different ships as part of the tutorial quest and encouraged to equip them as you choose. EVE players commonly claim that "There is no 'best', everything is situational", and while I think this is an overstatement (there are many trivially solvable situational "bests"), there is certainly a great deal of early variety compared to its peers. As you progress, making ISK, getting new ships, learning skills, the game really encourages you to buy into its reality - which (one supposes) is the game's major selling point.

A downside of the game's open-ended structure is that the player is given a great deal of oppurtunity to make mistakes - often before the player has an opportunity to learn what constitutes a mistake. Several combinations of starting skills are so bad as to be almost unplayable, losing an early ship through bad luck or inexperience is punishing, and the game a) gives you little to no indication regarding whether or not you are capable of completing any given mission in your current state, and b) punishes you severely for failing.

Lessons to learn:

• Reduce complication for a mainstream audience, but preferably preserve depth.
• Starting players achievements must be meaningful in context
• Establish player ownership over their part of the gamestate
• Not demanding 100% attention isn't a barrier to the player buying into a game's reality