Ron: 0:21

Thank you, hello jubilant creatures, welcome back to the uncannery. I'm ron and I'm joined here by my good friend I'm don. I'm doug. Very good, thank you guys for bringing the volume down really appreciate that uh, yeah, really matching the tone of the show. And boy, have we got one for you today. Uh, I want to first off, uh, thank you guys for meeting me. We just had pizza. What a beautiful pizza that was you liked it yeah, I thought it was very good we talked about the toppings.

Doug: 1:03

I will. I was about to.

Don: 1:06

I'll take down the volume.

Doug: 1:07

I'm a professional.

Ron: 1:07

Increase the interruptions. I know how to talk about pizza on a podcast. God, A lot of tension. We had a boars wild boar pepperoni and I didn't tell you this earlier. I would not take it over normal pepperoni.

Doug: 1:26

Yeah, I agree with that. I definitely would agree with that. This really was set on by their. There's a place in San Diego that I had boar bolognese. That was really excellent and I was hoping that the pizza was going to stack up and it just didn't. But they do have wild boar sausage so I'm still going to take the dive again. I would take a sausage over a pepperoni.

Ron: 1:46

I think a pepperoni. You want something different from a pepperoni.

Doug: 1:49

Really salty and thin and this was kind of a thick.

Ron: 1:52

She was a big pep.

Doug: 1:54

Yeah, really was yeah.

Ron: 1:56

Large pep. Anyways, you guys ever play video games, oh yeah.

Don: 2:08

Big time you guys ever play video games? Oh yeah, big time.

Ron: 2:10

My first, my first experience of playing video games was at a pizza parlor. Oh hell, yeah, great western pizza galaga. So, uh, crazy taxi. What are we talking?

Doug: 2:15

uh galaga, tempest, tempest that's the one that had the vector graphics right and you went around in the a lot of them had vector graphics back in my day.

Don: 2:26

I just want to remind you that I'm a little older than you. I'm trying to relate to you Battlezone.

Doug: 2:32

The vector tank game was sick.

Ron: 2:34

That was on my very first PC. Was it Battlezone I?

Doug: 2:37

want to say it was Battlezone, could have been.

Ron: 2:38

Battlezone.

Don: 2:39

That sounds familiar. Missile Command.

Ron: 2:41

Miss Missile Command. Missile Command is cool Trackball.

Don: 2:44

Centipede the other trackball one.

Ron: 2:46

Did Missile Command have a plot Like? Was it ever stated who was attacking you?

Don: 2:51

No, it's just with missiles coming in Depending on what year it was. Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Ron: 2:57

I was like is that an insensitive game?

Doug: 3:01

It's capitalizing all these fears right now. Yeah, it was a good game though, that one especially. That's like one of the first that you could like point and click and like pull things out of the sky.

Ron: 3:10

Yeah, I love that one a lot of my earliest memories of video games were, uh, of my father and my uncle playing video games. I think my uncle bought like a super nintendo console and brought it over to our house once and we didn't we like we were old enough to have played it, but that was not why it was there. It was so he could play with my dad, uh, playing that original super mario world co-op. Oh, we just sort of watched it. So like I just remember my earliest memories like watching people play video games and then eventually, of course, you know, controller found its way into our hands and then we were off to the races. I would say video games have been a very big part of my entertainment growing up as a young millennial man.

Don: 3:59

I have a similar experience because the Super Nintendo at my house was purchased by my dad and it was so that mom and dad could play Nintendo Golf with my grandparents, my mom's parents. So I guess same thing. Like I didn't play it hardly ever, but after we would go out for dinner on Sunday nights and we would come home and they would play golf for hours.

Ron: 4:19

People forget video games are for everyone. I remember we eventually had like the Nintendo Wii and I think my mom probably logged more hours on the Wii than I ever did like playing all those sport games and bowling.

Doug: 4:31

I think that there's something very special. I'll ride the Wii all day long Like that's one of the best. That one, especially, I think, because Wii Sports came with it. There was something really special about that because the barrier of entry was can you move your hand slightly? Well, guess what there's? It has motion controls. You can play any of these games and it was so much fun. I just remember so that came out when I was in college and it was just anybody who had a Wii is like that's what you did, like you knew if you were going to somebody's house like that had one, that was your entertainment for the entire night. You weren't gonna get bored.

Ron: 5:07

It was so good yeah, our college video game was rock band. Oh yeah, another. Very like anyone could kind of jump in like, hey, does that guitar look weird? Well, why don't you hit these pads with the sticks like everyone could?

Ron: 5:22

or yell into the microphone poorly uh, yeah yeah, yeah, video games are for all people, but I'm wondering that, I mean, there's an obvious sort of like, uh, in american culture there's often this dichotomy between, like you know, gamer people and, and, uh, I think, what the american culture would call normal people. Yeah, that like games are sort of, uh, they're, they're childish, they're frivolous, they're wastes of time, right, uh, I feel like there's been a lot of hatred. Uh, I hear this from like some older people who are like my kid is watching people play video games online. What's the deal like? They just go into twitch and they're watching. Why don't they play the video? You know, like, right, there's a lot of sort of judgmental discourse around the way people interact with video games. They either interact with them too much, uh, or or not correctly, or the games themselves are bad. The games are violent. The games, uh, you know, promote bad ideas and morals that that argument has been around for a while.

Don: 6:24

right, that the the shooting games cause shootings and and that kind of thing, the. Um, I'm wondering, cause you bring it up? The my preference for games so you mentioned your college game was rock band. Um, my college game was Diablo, yeah, and that's cooler, my uh. And then, as an adult right, I eventually got myself a playstation two and, um, I would play uh, red dead, red dead revolver um yeah, uncharted and call of duty, but here's.

Don: 7:01

Here's the point I was going to make. Is I stopped when those games moved away from story games? Like I like to play those games through the story thread yeah when they became, you know, online multiplayer okay I'm. I was not interested because I don't. I don't want to interact with humans.

Doug: 7:18

I don't really like humans so you're one of the 75 people who played the call of duties before they became the multiplayer sensation that they did right. They were really good games too.

Ron: 7:27

I love those um interesting, so I think I think I was like, uh, I, I was there for the transition and I think I was young enough during the transition from single player to like, hey, now there is a plethora of multiplayer games where I found it very exhilarating and exciting, mostly because I remember when Xbox Live came out and got to play Halo 2 with basically just my friends. It was like, oh, I used to have my friends come over to my house and we would all link up our Xboxes or whatever and play on the big screen and eat pizza and Cheetos, but now I can just do it from my room, which I'm not sure was like better now, like the.

Ron: 8:08

the glasses of nostalgia make me look back fondly on those, like those local area network parties, those man parties right, I'm like oh man, I should never have left that island um, but uh, it was like I have lots of memories of, like you know, just logging in to the xbox late at night with my buddy, chris, and we would uh put on different voices because everyone had a headset and we were young and dumb and we'd pretend to be like southern truckers playing with these kids, just like I don't know just like, and were you just playing with each other or were you playing?

Ron: 8:37

we were playing lobbies with strangers, but at least like I knew someone right like oh, we're on the same team, or or even if we are fighting chance like oh, I got Chris, hell yes he sucks right like unless he's on your team. There was, there was still that tie to like familiarity, I guess.

Don: 8:52

Right and then and then I guess that's why I didn't like the idea of playing that way is because I didn't want to play with strangers, like sure, and partly because I was intimidated that I wasn't. You know, you, you, the few times that I would log in like I would get killed instantly and like that wasn't fun.

Don: 9:09

Like it was just you know, abuse, um, but, uh, um. But then they started to grow right. It's like so the call of duty, you'd have, you know, an arena with 10 or 20 people in it, but then, like they, they, there's these massive games right, where there's like hundreds of people playing, oh yeah, and Don have I?

Ron: 9:30

I think I've figured out something about you, which is um, I have found the worst game for you ever, and it's called.

Don: 9:38

Eve online.

Ron: 9:40

Eve online, eve online Doug, you're familiar with Eve online Just barely, but, yes, I am Audience. You may or may not be familiar with Eve Online, but Eve Online is actually what I want to talk about today. It is a video game. It is a massive, big online video game where people fight each other, strangers, many people you'll never know, don, and this is what we call. There was a whole term for this and I feel like it doesn't exist anymore, because I think every game is one of these. It's horrible.

Don: 10:07

Is that what it's called? Yeah?

Doug: 10:09

every game is horrible. It's a big acronym coming our way.

Ron: 10:12

M-M-O-R-P-G. What does that stand for?

Doug: 10:18

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Ron: 10:27

Yeah, and these were probably the most emblematic of these, of course, would be world of warcraft, um, which was not the first mmo, but um, you know, definitely the most popular mmo, um and eve online is a game that shows up in 2003, which is sort of like the zenith of the mmo, right like uh, do you know when that wow came out? Or older work, right like I want to say like probably 2006.

Ron: 10:55

Okay, so we can really fact check so all I'm saying is like uh, there was this, there was this new sort of uh a model video games were kind of chasing. That had been proven by a couple other games, like a rune quest, I think is like one of the older MMOs right Ever quest.

Doug: 11:08

Yeah, that's the one I think of.

Ron: 11:10

Yeah, which was hey, let's make these giant. You know, now that we have, correction 2004 for world Okay cool, cool.

Ron: 11:18

So Eve online beats it out by just a couple months, probably. But the idea is, hey, now that we have this multiplayer tech that Don hates so much, right, and we can connect the world through our shared game spaces, how many people can we fit? Yeah, so instead of like 10 people in the Call of Duty arena, we can get hundreds of people. We can get thousands of people, right? Could we potentially get millions of people? And the answer is no, not really at that time. But let's make these massive multiplayer online games where everyone can play together, and then also let's charge them a subscription, because we need to keep these massive servers running, which means they cost money and they're sucking money out of the game developers forever. So we need to charge people a subscription to even run these games, and usually it was like what 15 a month or something to yeah, which sounds absurd and obscene to me.

Doug: 12:05

now, yeah, I remember I mean that was the reason I didn't play. Mmos is like I was already like I have to spend 50. And at the time, like games were 40 to $50 instead of 60 to 70. And I remember thinking like I've already spent my entire allowance on this game. I'm not going to get this back.

Ron: 12:22

I'm not spending 15 bucks a month on this yeah, um, but anyways, eve online is one of these games, right, a massive, uh, online space. Um, and I is a game I have played, I have I've been inside of eve online, I've been inside of, I've been, I've been sucked deep and hard by eve online. I've been started bad, we've just lost our family radio.

Don: 12:46

Yeah, absolutely.

Doug: 12:48

It started bad and it just kept getting worse. Didn't know how to pull myself out of that wormhole.

Ron: 12:52

It's all space themed, guys, because Eve Online is a space game and there's a lot of gravity and you know. Sort of things like that happening in space is where I'm coming from. Eve Online is a game I've always found very fascinating because it creates these very complex sort of human histories. If anyone is passingly familiar with the game, they probably have read an article about like oh, there was a big giant space battle that involved hundreds or thousands of players and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of real world dollars. And every now and then these sorts of sensational stories kind of reach the mainstream because it sounds exciting and thrilling. It's not really something you get from other games. I would posit that EVE Online is maybe the most original not original, but I mean a very unique video game in its capacity to kind of bring people together and create convoluted, strange um passion-driven stories.

Don: 13:52

So help me out, because I'm not familiar with eve online. I've never seen it, um. So what is the gameplay like? What does it look like? What's good? Yeah?

Ron: 14:02

we. We need to have a baseline here. So EVE Online is a game where, as a player, you log in and you do not have a. Your avatar is not like a person, right? You're not playing a soldier, like in Call of Duty. You're not playing an elf, like in World of Warcraft. You are a spaceship. Technically, you're a your spaceship. Hey, at first you're probably going to. You just want to make money so you can get a better spaceship, right? Who doesn't want a better spaceship? So at first, maybe you go out and you find an asteroid and you mine some asteroids, you pull in some tritanium ore and then you go back into the station, you drop off your ore, you sell it. You make a little money in this world. It's called isk isk, interstellar credits, um. It's also credits with a k, yeah, credits with a k? Um. I think it's also the abbreviation for the, the currency of iceland, uh, this is a game developed in iceland, uh, which is like the icelandic krona or whatever um, it's a game developed in Iceland by a company called CCP and and you're

Ron: 15:10

going to make that money. And then you know, hey, once you got a little bit of cash, a little bit of ISK in your wallet, maybe now you can afford a cooler ship and you might slap some guns on that ship. And maybe now you're going to go out and you're going to go shoot some pirates. Right, you, you're going to go out and you're going to go shoot some pirates. Right, you know some like NPC, computer controlled pirates, and you're going to kill them, you're going to click some bounties on them. You're going to take some more money. Maybe, you know, upgrade your ship, add some new thrusters or shield generators to it. Hey, maybe you bump into another player and they say, hey, come join my corporation. And you're like that sounds dope.

Ron: 15:39

I've always wanted to be a part of a corporation. A corporation in EVE is like a guild or a clan in like a similar game. And so now you're working with other players and they might give you cool new ships or you might get organized with them. You might join a fleet. You might join a fleet and you might battle an enemy corporation's fleet and you might have this epic space battle. All of this because you're paying $ a month to an icelandic corporation and uh, just enjoying, enjoying your life, enjoying what's happening. Does that explain a little bit uh-huh?

Doug: 16:16

you got questions give me, hit me, hit me, hit me I got it I wish everybody at home could have seen don's face right there.

Don: 16:20

So so the gameplay is just sort of seeing Don's face right there. So the gameplay is just, it's just life.

Ron: 16:29

It's money.

Don: 16:29

spend money yes it is.

Ron: 16:32

That's what games have always tried to be Don. The best games simulate life, obviously Like Missile Command.

Don: 16:41

That was true. There was always a threat of of of. Russian missiles yeah.

Ron: 16:50

But, yeah, this game is like, yes, when you, when you explain it like that, like I think this is, people either hit Eve online and they bounce off of it very quickly, or the it becomes their life, like they get I guess what I understand is a game has always been fun, so.

Don: 17:08

I'm going to go to work where I have to do something that I don't want to do in order to make money. To come home to give $15 of that money to a company, to let me continue to do work at home in a fictional environment.

Doug: 17:22

So we're already at the philosophical discussion point.

Ron: 17:25

Oh no, this is way too early. Early, I wasn't ready for this.

Doug: 17:29

So don I think what you would want out of a game and I'm thinking of what you said, that you like diablo, like this idea of like I'm gonna save tristram, I'm gonna go into the dungeons and take out what I do um, I think that you're looking for like escapism maybe, as this idea of like I don't want it to look like real life. I want it to be this fantastical version that kind of takes me out. But I think that there's another type of gamer out there because I've experienced this with some games that want a simulation that's close to life, as you would want it to, that you can manipulate it in a way that maybe you can't in your own life. And I think that Eve online kind of um straddles this, this idea, a little bit.

Ron: 18:15

Well, I would say that Eve online is escapist also, like, um, uh, when I say you join a corporation, you're not really like punching in and doing a job, right, like there's a lot, there's lots of different roles and ways you can interact with people and the game in EVE Online right, you know you can be a miner. You can be someone who manufactures items. You can be a day trader. You know you buy something real cheap in one system and then you spend an hour flying it to another system and then you sell it at a profit there. You could be like a soldier in a fleet. You can be the guy commanding the fleet. You can be the leader of the corporation, right, or just organizing corporation emails and things and which, okay, I'm getting it now.

Ron: 19:09

It sounds pretty boring and you know honestly honestly, eve is incredibly boring, like it is a very boring minute to minute kind of game. However, the reason I think so many hundreds of thousands of people have enjoyed it, and why I used to enjoy it a whole lot, was because, um, it creates, um a buy-in. It creates in a way that other games don't, and let me try to explain why this is. I think what sets eve online, apart from something like world of warcraft, is, um, if I make a character in world of warcraft, I'm gonna start in a zone. I get to pick a class, right, and I'm going to kind of progress along essentially what I'd consider a fairly linear progress path. Right, I start at zone A and then, once I hit level 15, I go to zone B and I get choices about like, which order I do the quests in or how I build my character, how I upgrade them, what kind of you know role I want to play in dungeons, but I'm still essentially constrained by the material that Blizzard has made for that game.

Ron: 20:12

Eve Online, when it was released, had thousands of solar systems in it and they've added a few, but it hasn't changed all that much from then, like basically like all the content was there. And one reason reason people hate eve online is because there isn't really like a okay, there is no guiding line. Do this, you kind of decide what you want to do, right? Um, you obviously want to make money. Right, most games, I think, have like an accumulation aspect by which you can determine your success. Right? And like, um, most other role-playing games, it would be like XP, right, how much XP have you generated to level up your character? There is none of that in.

Don: 20:52

EVE.

Ron: 20:53

It's just about making money, and you use money to engage with the economy and buy yourself new things and you get bigger and cooler ships, which is essentially how you level up. But the reason why this creates a lot of player investment, I think, is essentially actually tied to that economy aspect of it, because, unlike most games, almost every item in EVE Online is built by players, right? So, like, if you want to trade in your dinky mining ship for a fast, uh interceptor, then some player has built that interceptor and they have put it on the market, and so when you make that purchase, you're giving another player actual money. Uh, you could do the same, right? Like, you're going to sell your mining ship and some, some other player is going to take that and they're going to give you money, right, and?

Ron: 21:40

And so every time a player goes and mines an asteroid, they're creating materials that they then sell to other players, who then take those materials and use them to turn them into the starships, and then also they're going to take those, and then now your corporation can create its own star stations in space. Right, and they can defend those star stations, and other people want that space because it turns out it's orbiting a moon that has really precious ores on it that they want to mine. So they now they need to take out that enemy station, uh, and then uh, which means they need to assemble a fleet in order to do that, which means they need to hire or pay other people to mine the materials that goes into their fleet.

Don: 22:17

And so it creates this, uh, this massive sort of ecosystem of interconnected uh uh players so you, you said a second ago that if you wanted to to buy an interceptor, yeah that you had to. Uh to give money to another player, uh, and the way you said it, I don't know if you're just turn a phrase. You said you give them real money oh no, not real money, so sorry.

Ron: 22:42

Is it real isk? Okay, right, yeah, so all the currency in the game so it's not monetized, it's not like well, that's not true.

Don: 22:48

So this is Elon Musk so if Elon Musk came to play, he would have the ability to to take shortcuts that somebody only paying 15 a month wouldn't be able to take uh?

Ron: 23:01

no, yes, he definitely could, and this is why so, initially, when eve uh was released in 2003, um, there was no way to, in like, inject real world money into eve and turn it into game currency. That would allow you, of course, to, you know, buy more ships or afford more ships, so that when you lose a ship, it doesn't matter to you. You get back in the fight, and obviously that would give you an advantage. That all changed around 2008. They added a system that they called PLEX, which stands for Pilot License Extension, and what it is is an in-game item that you can purchase with in-game ISK, and then what that does is it gives you a 30-day game time extension, so you could essentially, play EVE, earn EVE money, and you spend that EVE money to pay for your real world subscription to the game. And what that does is now there's like a way to calculate what is the value of in-game EVE money in comparison to real world money, because you could also buy a Plex with real world money. It's $15, right, you spend $15 and now you buy that license extension, and then so, when you purchase a Plex card, you have two options you either put it to your subscription and you don't have to pay 15 bucks of real world money this month, or you can sell it on the market in EVE online, and you can get whatever the value was in uh eve currency.

Ron: 24:25

Let's say it's 1 billion it's usually really high, right? Because it's like obviously you can't just buy this with 50 credits, because then everyone's going to have them and now the developers aren't making any money. So or you could sell it on the market and make 1 billion you know eve dollars. Well, if you don't care about spending 15 real world dollars all that often, then why don't you buy 45 plex? And now suddenly you've amassed a giant you know horde in the game without having ever actually engaging with most of those systems. That happens and still happens. Today they've changed the system a little bit. They've kind of just turned it into instead of like a 30-day subscription, now it's just like you can buy a hundred plex and it's kind of like other, like fortnights, where you buy gems or crystals or v bucks or whatever.

Don: 25:10

So the gameplay is basically just to to make the economy in the game continue to work um, I think the gameplay is is, I mean, as far as what players want from it?

Doug: 25:22

it's whatever they want from it right but?

Ron: 25:25

but because it has that player-driven economy, um, I think that creates a lot of investment for the players, right?

Ron: 25:30

yeah it creates. Uh, so like, like things have real value, right like. I've seen this in other games where they're like uh, I used to play like elder scrolls online and that had a player versus player zone where there was three teams. You were one of three teams and you're trying to capture, essentially, a castle at the center of the of the map and it was I didn't really care if we got this castle or if we lost this castle like maybe it gave me an XP bonus or something. I don't, the rewards weren't tangible.

Ron: 25:58

But if I'm like a part of a player group and like we built, you know, all the star station, all the space stations in a star system, and like that's our system, like this is where we park and this is where we make our money and this is where we build our ships and this is like our uh system, if someone wants to come in and take that from us, then I'm gonna be like no man. Like we, I put hundreds of hours into mining the ore that went into that station or went into this uh, you know, uh shield generator. Like I'm gonna show up with my corporation mates and I'm gonna defend it because I I put blood sweat and tears into that thing.

Don: 26:32

Calling a corporation really makes it sound fun. So the way that you earn money in the game, like the examples that you've given, some of them are risky, right. Like you mentioned bounty hunting pirates. You've mentioned mining. You've mentioned day trading right, very risky day trading. Yeah, all of those are risk reward activities that you mentioned have an element of escapism, given it's because of the risk, yeah. So I guess my question is are all of the activities that earn money risky like that? Or is there like a way that you can just be the guy that, like you know, I'd seal envelopes and I get money for it, you know?

Ron: 27:21

Yes, you do not have to take that risk. I think another reason why EVE has kind of done so well is because it's designed very cleverly and that's sort of the way it's geographically designed. So again, this game has like 7,800 star systems that you can visit, right, but they're all kind of arranged on a map, and if we picture a map, picture the United States of America you guys got that in your heads.

Doug: 27:48

It's here.

Ron: 27:48

Okay, okay, pick the states in the very center of the United States of America.

Ron: 27:53

I'm talking Oklahoma, I'm talking Nebraska, I'm talking other ones like that um and so imagine, uh like if that was the map of eve, all of the states in the very center of the solar, the universe, the galaxy, um, have a very high security rating, going from 1.0 security down to 0.0 security and anything at 5.0 or above. Like, every system has the security rating and any. When you are in those high security systems there is essentially a computer controlled police force that will protect you from being attacked by other players, more or less, and will give a criminal rating to people that don't play by the rules of the game and stuff like that. So there's like these safe spaces in eve where you can show up and you can just kind of mine and make money safely without much risk of you getting shot or destroyed and stuff like that. Right, and that's where a lot of people I don't I don't have numbers, but I assume probably half, if not not more people play the game. It's just sort of in these safe spaces.

Ron: 28:57

But as you radiate away from the central state systems in this map, as you get to the periphery I'm talking your New Yorks, your Californias, your Texases those start to lose security rating and they become unsafe. Those start to lose security rating and they become unsafe. And the most interesting of these are the zero. Zero systems, or what's called null sex systems, where there is no computer presence and there is no criminal system. Players are free to do whatever is in their capacity while they're interacting in these systems, and these are all on the outside. So and this is where I think actually most of the very fun history of Eve takes place Like probably half, if not more, the systems in the game are these null sex systems, and they're there for players to just go and build whatever they want and to kind of control them however they want, and so they create systems of sovereignty and small empires and kingdoms within these, kingdoms within these.

Ron: 29:51

But again, if you're like an enemy or and you or not even an enemy if you're just like a new player and you're like I want to fly down South, let's see what happens over here, and you don't know, you crossed into someone's border and they have like a corporation policy that's like, hey, we shoot anyone who's not allied to us, then yeah, you can just warp into a system. Some guy's going to be parked, you know, 400 meters above you and he's just going to immediately shoot you. And that happens. That happens to me frequently.

Don: 30:21

And what happens if you get shot.

Ron: 30:23

So if you get shot, two things If you get shot, the in-game fiction is that you are a capsuleer, which means you are a superhuman who's been cloned and you pilot all these ships inside of a capsule. So once your ship gets destroyed, then you have been cloned and you pilot all these ships inside of a capsule. So once your ship gets destroyed, then you have a capsule remaining and you can pilot that capsule and it's pretty speedy. You can use it to fly away and get to safety. If they also kill your capsule, then you respawn in a different station, wherever you left your next, your last clone and you sort of just do you still?

Ron: 30:51

have your stuff, so you'll have any money that is like in your bank account and you'll have any, like you know, items that you've stored in other stations. But anything that was attached to that ship or to that clone that you had that you were flying the ship with uh is probably lost.

Doug: 31:05

It'll be, it'll remain in space and you could go back and take what's left of it, assuming whoever killed you didn't already rob all that stuff, which is usually why they killed you I'm very curious because, yeah, I, I've only known about this on the kind of like outskirts essentially, and I think I had like a free trial at one point what, how are most of these systems ran, these null sectors?

Ron: 31:33

so this is the. This is the really fun part, and it's kind of what I want to talk about today, which is, uh, like what, what some people, what eve historians, consider one of the most important decisions that was ever made in the history of eve, because there's lots of different ways you can organize these null sex spaces right, and so basically any political philosophy that exists in real life has been replicated in some form in Eve. Right, you have like very communist sort of organizations where players have to donate their materials to the administration of the corporation or alliance so that they can distribute them as they see fit in times of war and things like that. Uh, you know, distribute them uh, as they see fit in times of war, and things like that.

Ron: 32:16

You have very free market kind of places that are like hey, we got open borders, everyone can come into our space and use our stations and refineries and, and, uh, I mean manufacture their goods here. And hey, by the way, we'll just take a 5% tax on any transaction that occurs in those spaces. But otherwise, come on in, right, very laissez faire kind of kind of you know fiefdoms and kingdoms and stuff like that. So, and that's, you know, a lot of times this is the people who become the CEOs, the leaders of these corporations. It's about them sort of enacting their sort of philosophies in this fictional space. Right, you get very like Ayn Randian libertarian spaces, of course. Libertarian spaces, of course, um, uh, yeah, and so like, probably one of the most famous corporations was one called evolution.

Ron: 33:01

Um, and evolution was like a founding corporation. Like they were there back when, like the game was being in, it, tested in its beta phase and its alpha phase, right, like, uh, they were there the whole time and so like, as soon as the game went live, they sort of like got a head start because they knew how the game worked. They, you know, knew like what the best ships were. They knew kind of how to organize their corporation and they were a very small corporation, but their, their main goal was essentially PVP, right, player versus player comp. They wanted to be like the best combat pilots in the game, right, and just sort of take on fleets that were much bigger than them and sort of like, just have fun blowing up stuff right, and they're really key. Eventually, evolution as a corporation forms what's called an alliance. When two or more corporations decide to, you know, formally, kind of like, join together and become allies, they form in the game what's called an alliance, and their alliance they named Band of Brothers. Allies.

Doug: 33:54

they form in the game what's called an alliance and their alliance, they, they named band of brothers. Um it was originally.

Ron: 33:58

It was originally called cccp um, a play, of course, on the developers of the game ccp um, which they said and this is another like this is 2003, so this is like pc nerd. A lot of this stuff is like so infuriatingly stupid um. But they said cccp means in that to them, cookies, cake, cream and pie, because that's what they were going to take from their enemies. They're going to take all. They're going to take their cookies, their cake, their cream and their pie and leave them nothing.

Ron: 34:29

Nice cccp, the, the for USSR, yes it is also, of course, that, and I think it's a sort of dual pun or whatever. Anyways, the game developers said they forced them to change the name. They're like no, there's a risk that you're going to impersonate a CCP developer in the game and you could scam them.

Ron: 34:50

Because the developers of the game also, of course, play the game, but they're usually supposed to have their name tagged with CCP, so people know like, oh, there's a game developer. But anyways, they changed from that stupid name to Band of Brothers, which is, of course, very noble and inspiring. Bob, yeah, bob, exactly, which is what most people called them, because you know, anytime your player name appears in the game, there's going to be a little ticker next to it that has an abbreviation of both the corporation and the alliance you belong to, and so of course that was abbreviated to bob. Um, there's a leader of this alliance. His name is sir mole and he's kind of an important character in this um, in this tale.

Ron: 35:31

Um, sir mole, uh, kind of, was this, was this game's dictator? He was a strongman dictator, right. His character avatar you can have like a portrait of what your person looks like, even though you never see them. He has like this big jaw, right, and this big imperial stern, look right. And of course, there were the official EVE online forums where people would go and they would talk and spread news and gossip and threaten each other, and he would always have these big giant screeds and decrees on there about what you know his alliance was going to do and who they're going to target and who they're going to mess up. And and in reality it turns out he was a, a Swedish, uh, uh, sorry, a Danish, uh. Air conditioning repair man living in Sweden.

Ron: 36:15

We just like repair AC units during the day and then at night. He was like the most famous person in this online game.

Doug: 36:22

It's hilarious that he's equal parts the wizard of Oz behind the curtain and big brother.

Don: 36:26

Yes, like what he just said, like I'm going to repair these things during the day and night.

Doug: 36:32

They'll fear me.

Ron: 36:33

Um, band of brothers becomes essentially like this is a story about how they become the most powerful group in the game. Um, and and like a decision, uh, that that is made by several people that result results in this big paradigm shift in the sort of political landscape of the game. Um, and it. I just, I just I hope that we when I say the political landscape of a game, I don't want that to sound totally stupid, but I hope, like earlier, I can bring you to a place where you understand, like, why people, uh, are so kind of caught up in this game and that there could be politics, that there could be sort of like, you know, things people want to achieve and accomplish in this game and the ways they want to do it. Essentially, there is a war that breaks out between Band of Brothers in 2005 and another alliance called the Ascendant Frontier, and they are like neighboring alliances and they were actually once friendly alliances. They used to fight together. But the reason why band of brothers declares war on this ascendant frontier alliance is because they are about to achieve something that's never been done in the game before.

Ron: 37:45

In 2005, the developers introduced new ships to the game and they introduced the largest ships that had ever been seen in the game and they're still the largest ships to the game. Uh, and they introduced the largest ships that had ever been seen in the game and they're still the largest ships to this day, and they're called Titans. Um, they're like you know, in the, in the fiction of the game. They're like nine miles long, massive. They just dwarf everything else, right, they? They take three months to build. They take, you know, hundreds of thousands of man hours, like combined man hours, to like mine the materials, hundreds of thousands of man hours, like combined man hours, to like mine the materials. Get all the components, build them in starship shipyards.

Doug: 38:19

Is this three months real, real?

Ron: 38:21

Yeah.

Doug: 38:21

Real life It'll take, you have to wait.

Ron: 38:23

Yeah, yeah, you're going to. You're going to wait. Right, they were these massive super weapons that the developers thought would be like a really cool thing to work up to, but you know, we won't see that many of them, right people complain that baseball takes too long a pitch clock in to speed up the game have you been arty just working on my titan month two baby um, that that the the introduction these titans uh made like a a real arms race in the game.

Ron: 38:53

Everyone knew like the first alliance to to build one of these titans will like have this sort of unstoppable force on the battlefield, because they also have these doomsday weapons that could like, with one blast, destroy like hundreds of spaceships. Like it was kind of insane I've seen this movie. It's got a wookie yeah yeah, it's very death star-esque.

Ron: 39:12

Yes, absolutely. Um, but the but the alliance that turned out made the first Titan was not Band of Brothers, it was this Ascendant Frontier like had like 2000, maybe even 3000 players, and they were. They were like a, just an industrial corporation. They didn't want to be fighters, they just kind of wanted to have their little zone. They were the ones collecting money from people coming in and using their facilities and just kind of being all around cool guys, and their leader was a dude named Cy Vock. Um, and Cy Vock was an American, uh, working an American working in air bases in Europe. He was like a satellite technician or something like that, and so he was just like traveling across Europe, playing in the same time zone as Sir Molly. So they were, like you know, always kind of online at the same time, but part of each other's world. That's why they kind of like once worked together. But it became very clear that, because Ascendant Frontier was such an industrial powerhouse, uh, they were probably going to make the world's first Titan, and they and they were, and I want to explain very quickly, um, what they had to go through to do this, because anytime a, an Alliance, learned that someone was making a really cool ship, um, they would immediately find the location where it was being made and they would just go and destroy their space stations and make them start from zero again, Cause no one wanted them to have this Right, Um uh, and so they would have spies right Like infiltrate their corporation, Like you know,

Ron: 40:49

tell one of your court mates to make a new character. Uh, get into their corporation corporation. Try to cozy up with the leaders, find out where all the major manufacturing is happening, what are they working on, report that back to your original corporation and then give them that intel. The history of spying in EVE is very big. This is like another way people make money is they might infiltrate an enemy corporation, rise up through the ranks and then, like, take all their assets, deliver them to the original corporation and just sort of get them that way. Um, anyways, like cyvok and ascendant frontier, in order to make their titan, they had to create like three different ruses. The first ruse was they hired a different corporation to uh to make a titan. Uh, and knowing that eventually, like that information would leak out and people would target that corporation instead of themselves. And apparently it leaked out too quickly and a bunch of alliances just went and destroyed all of that corporation's shipyards before they could even start making it and they're like, oh crap, that that didn't. That worked too good. Um, the second thing they did was they um, uh, said that they were making a different kind of large ship, a mothership. Like, oh, would they publish it. We're making motherships right now and everyone's thinking was no one would believe that they could make both a mothership and a titan at the same time. So then that would like kind of take some of the heat off their back. And then the the third kind of ruse was like we're going to make it in the last place anyone would think we'd make it, which is like in the most traveled system in our territory. They just like put it right under everyone's nose. We're going to build it right here where everyone's flying through Right, and then, like, everyone's going to think we're keeping it like in a secret periphery station in some you know backwater system or something, but we're just going to build it right here in the most populous place possible.

Ron: 42:39

And Cyvok has like been interviewed about this process because he did eventually succeed at producing this Titan, but it did take them three months. He said the secrecy was so important that him and only one other player in the whole game were allowed to transport the materials needed to the shipyard where they had to build it. Like you need to make like 19 different components and each of these components requires like hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of material and, of course, like every ship has a cargo hold to kind of carry so much stuff. So he's like him and one other guy using 15 different alt characters for five hours a night during the least populous server times when the game was essentially most dead, would fly their ships back and forth through all these different systems just to get all the materials they needed into the one place where they could actually build the ship. And he said like it just sucked. He said it was the worst time he's ever had in the game. He like almost quit.

Ron: 43:39

He says this is a quote from him, from an interview that was conducted with him a few years ago. He said the stress and paranoia of the security situation was nearly breaking me. The nine days between eight and 14 hours a day of component building uh sorry, hauling was the most boring thing I've ever done in Eve. The two months of mineral compression killed my drive to ever build again. I had help, of course, but only one other person and he was losing his mind also.

Doug: 44:09

I keep imagining too. You said that these corporations, like the biggest ones, are two to 3000 people. Yeah, so there's probably like shifts that people are running to, like where your job is security, right, yes, like when you were just watching and like somebody's coming in the line. I don't recognize it. Do you want to go idm really quick, roger? That?

Ron: 44:28

right and this is another important thing about eve is there is one server for the entire world, right? So, like, no matter where you are in the world unless you're in china, there's a separate server for the entire world, right? So like, no matter where you are in the world unless you're in China, there's a separate server for China, right, but they're basically siphoned off from everyone else, but everyone else in the world plays on this one server. And so, yeah, like, a corporation will hire people based on their time zones. Like, hey, we need more people in the Pacific time zone to cover these hours, otherwise that's our like weak zone, but that's when the Russian alliances can move in and take our stuff, cause we're all asleep during the winter.

Don: 44:55

So, yeah, that becomes a whole kind of strategic element of it Also the thing about a game that was nice playing call of duty was that you know, when it got to be two, 30 in the morning, like I could turn it off, and then tomorrow I could turn it back on and I would be at the same spot.

Ron: 45:20

This is a game where people like will set their alarms for 4am if that's what their corporation needs them to do. Um to like get into the game, log in and like fight a battle because they're fighting in another person's time zone, or something like. Those stories are pretty commonplace.

Don: 45:31

But like the one where he's building the Titan, like there was no rest, Like even when, like they, they finished their shift and they right when he turns, he logs out, the game is still playing even though he's not there and they could lose everything when he wasn't even right so like you could never quite turn the the anxiety part off.

Ron: 45:51

No, absolutely not. How fun this the anxiety part? Oh no.

Don: 45:53

No, absolutely not. How fun. This sounds like a great time.

Ron: 45:55

This is real stuff. Anyways, eventually, in September of 2006, everything is ready to go All right. The progress bar on the little construction of the Titan is about to hit 100%. So Cyvok invites a couple of the trusted leadership of his Ascendant Frontier Alliance out. They're outside the Star station waiting for this thing to appear in space. It hits a hundred percent and nothing happens Like it. Just there's no ship and it turns out they had to like.

Don: 46:26

The developers didn't really build it. They didn't think anybody would do it.

Ron: 46:29

The developers didn't install any of the code for this because they didn't think anyone would do it this fast, right?

Ron: 46:39

And so they had had I was just kidding, no, no, no, you're 100 right. So they had to get ccp on the line. Someone had to wake up in iceland. They said within minutes they had got a developer and he actually went in and like manually installed the ship for them, placed it in space, transferred it to his account, all that kind of stuff. Like they completely blew the developers expectations out of the water. That like that's how quickly it was even, and it was still like a giant three month period, right. So they had the first Titan and Cybox says and you know, the next day he goes and he parks it in the middle of the system so everyone can come and see. And it's this big, like you know, everyone's eyes are jumping out of their heads when, oh my gosh, it's so huge and it exists and someone has it. And then that's when we come back to band of brothers, right?

Ron: 47:19

Band of brothers is supposed to be the most powerful, coolest group in the in the world and they've just been showed up because now this guy's got a Titan.

Ron: 47:28

So within two days, two days, sir Mollet goes on the forums. He announces that they are going to go to war with Ascendant Frontier. I want to read you his announcement because I think this also typifies the kind of people we're dealing with. He says as of today, the whole of BOB goes into full war mode. And then he launches into a poem the pendulum with braids of din proclaims the midnight, din proclaims the midnight. We begin to call to mind, ironically, what uses we have made of this dead day that drops to the abyss today. Zero date, prophetical friday 29 in somber folly mauger. The truth, our heart maintains. We seeing still the light, that sayings have walked in ways heretical. The pendulum is about to swing, it begins. It was apparently like a real poem from some dude in the 19th century. He just changed the date to announce their declaration of war.

Doug: 48:28

Cyvock logs in. He's like band of brothers, more like band of baby brothers.

Don: 48:35

I'm about to bully you guys I'm intrigued.

Doug: 48:40

This has really gotten me yeah.

Ron: 48:42

So like everyone's kind of like not sure what will happen with this war. These are, like essentially the two biggest groups of player groups in the game at this time, like band of brothers is outnumbered by ascendant frontier. Ascendant frontier is like you know they got the money, they got the industry, you know they can manufacture any ships they need. How are you going to crack them? And then Band of Brothers, of course, are like the best pilots, they're the best kind of like dudes at playing that portion of the game, but they're outnumbered and so, anyways, this giant war, you know, occurs and it's just a giant stalemate, right, no one's like really taking territory from anyone else. Again, for all the reasons I listed, they're just sort of stuck in place. Um, but then something, something important of course, happens.

Ron: 49:25

Everyone knows that like whoever owns the titan, like that gives them tremendous leverage in any sort of conflict. Eventually band of brothers does complete their own Titan and Sir Mollie starts flying it and bringing it to battles. And you know, there's, there's, there's kind of a like people say Cyvok was a bit cagey with his Titan, like he was too afraid of losing it so he wouldn't really play with it aggressively enough to really like leverage its true potential, but regardless, like Sir Mollie really wants to kill that Titan, right, like it's symbolically right and and and and strategically just take it off the board so that hopefully that will you know open up a hole in their front lines and then they can kind of pour in and start kind of taking this uh alliance down. Um, eventually what happens is ben the brother succeeds at taking one solar system in, like the, the home region, the main region of ascending frontier, gives them like a foothold right, nebraska, yeah, yeah they take nebraska just omaha.

Ron: 50:29

Yeah, they take, uh, oh, yeah, anyways, I'm trying to think of another city in Nebraska Lincoln, cairn, cairn, cairns. I like I should know more about Nebraska, cause my friend is from Nebraska, but anyways, um, uh, they take one of those places and, uh, just outside of their foothold is a little uh, uh, a um system called C9A-CC.

Ron: 50:55

Um, because that just rolls off the tongue yeah, this becomes the major, pivotal battlefield of this engagement. Um, because, uh, ascendant frontier brings their fleet into c9a and band of brothers, both of the titans are there. Both the titans are somewhere in the system. They're just kind of jockeying for position, waiting for their big giant battle to happen. They do meet and it's kind of a wet blanket battle Like there's nothing. Nothing decisive occurs, right, and sort of like you get like one shot with these Titans, right, you got this doomsday weapon, you shoot it and then it takes forever to recharge and Sivok launches his doomsday weapon. He kind of misses, he doesn't do the damage he needs and so he immediately retreats in his titan. Now, now, the way movement in this game works is you have two speeds. You can kind of just move your ship forward with its engines and, you know, just kind of move through space, or of course, you can warp with your ship kind of like in star wars.

Ron: 51:52

Right, and that's the fastest way to move around. But in order to warp somewhere, you need a, you need a coordinate, you need to, like have a what the game calls a bookmark. You've bookmarked these coordinates and you can pull them out of your folder and you can tell your ship to warp there. Right, and so in order to, like kind of retreat safely from a battlefield, what you would do is every player would have created their own sort of set of bookmarks, safe spaces in that system that are like away from any planets or any stars or stations. Just go into deep space, essentially, and you can just kind of leave your ship there. No one would be able to find you because you're so far out, they couldn't scan down your ship, and then you'd be safe to log out, and then you could. You know your ship would disappear from the game and then you could log back in whenever you want. So this is what happens. Saevok claims that he and his Titan warped to a bookmarked off-grid location in the same system. That would have taken someone who didn't have those coordinates 23 hours to fly to. Just like if they had found the position, they would have to fly to it and it would take them 23 hours to arrive there in real time unless they had that actual location right.

Ron: 53:06

A pilot for Band of Brothers named Valora was claims to have scanned the position of Cyvox Titan which, again, cyvox says would not be possible because he was so far out, he was outside of scanning range. This, valora, you know, tells the officers in his corporation I've got Cyvox Titan right. He jumps in. He sees that the Titan is still there, even though Cyvox has logged offline. Cyvox says he jumps, he logs offline but the ship remains in space, which it's not supposed to. Ballora sends this coordinates to all the other Band of Brothers people in the system. They all show up and they start shooting at this Titan that has no pilot. It's basically dead in space. Right, right, cybock logs back in while his ship is being shot at, sees that it's about to blow up, logs off, ship goes down, explodes. There's video of this right bands brothers people yelling. It's it's the end of return of the jedi you know they're dancing with the ewoks right big celebration.

Ron: 54:13

I think sir mole goes on the forum after this and he says like tighten down.

Doug: 54:18

Nuff said okay come on it becomes his giant pr he does the poem and then he's gonna drop that yeah yeah, he's got facets you know, I guess, many facets yeah, yeah, let me not be too judgmental

Ron: 54:30

this is a controversial moment in the history of eve because this is not what cyborg says happened. Cyborg claims there was foul stuff at play, right, uh? He believes that a ccp developer who was a part of band of brothers used development tools to find the location of his titan and then also logged him out of the game. That that cyvok did not choose to log out, that suddenly he had computer problems. He was logged out of the game and also could not log back in on an alternative character, cyvok Right and that location was then, of course, shared with the rest of the members of Band of Brothers who came and destroyed his Titan 23 hours later.

Ron: 55:15

So if they had the exact location location, they could warp to it immediately so you don't have to have been.

Don: 55:20

And to bookmark a location, you don't have to have been there previously.

Ron: 55:23

You can just know the coordinates you do have to have been there previously, but someone could share, for instance, like you could link those coordinates to you, right? And and the other thing is like you have scanners that like let you find objects in space and if you like scan something to 100 percent, then you receive its coordinates. So again I want to. I want to read real quick Cyvok finds. Cyvok to this day says foul play was at foot and I want to read to you what he says his account was. Oh, I should also mention they named this Titan. I'm sorry, I forgot this is very important. What would you name the first Titan to ever appear in?

Doug: 55:58

this massive space opera game.

Don: 56:00

The Titanic. That's pretty good it was for you, john. Thanks, kronos.

Ron: 56:06

That would be also very dope. I'm playing.

Doug: 56:09

God of War right now speaking of video games, and that would be.

Ron: 56:12

The name Cyborg chooses is Steve, and apparently it's actually a tribute to steve irwin, who had uh, who passed uh like a few weeks before the titan arrived.

Ron: 56:23

um, this is kind of the place and culture we are at when steve irwin was big yeah okay, and I didn't need to say that, because he starts this quote by saying steve was destroyed by straight up cheating on the part of bob and two members of the cccp dev team that played as bob members. After I used the doomsday gun, I used one of my alts to sino, to my off-grid bookmark. That just means warp um. Keep in mind this system was about 20 conventional jumps from where the battle was taking place and again 23 hours at warp, off-grid, unreachable. So there I was, with steve on my main avatar, syvac, and my alt, uh, fishy, who put up the sign oh, fishy is an alternate character. Here's another thing about eve you can you can be logged in with multiple accounts, and that's when he's blah, blah, blah. Um. Fishy put up the sign oh, putting around waiting for the pvp aggression timer to run out, when suddenly one of the ccp interstellar news corp ships just appeared out of nowhere and started to orbit my titan. Two seconds later I was bumped offline a total coincidence, I am sure. And about three seconds earlier that uh, that so was my alt. I tried to log back in but was timed out on all my player avatars in that system. I was using yet another alt in my corp chat and on my team speak so I could relay what was happening. After about two minutes, the BOB fleet was sino-jumping, dreadnoughts to Steve and the rest is history. It was a total farce and inside job Straight up cheating. The story is told much differently, of course, by the other side, painting me as some kind of idiot that forgot about the aggression timer and BOB pilots is just so awesome that they managed to probe down and reach an unreachable grid location within minutes, despite the distance.

Ron: 57:56

Again, I don't blame CCP. I blame the few people that chose to abuse their dev access to do this, and CCP made massive changes after this event. People inside CCP did get let go. Dev tool logging was instituted. Devs could no longer play as members of player corporations with unknown avatars.

Ron: 58:12

News Corp members had their dev tool access curtailed and a bunch of other stuff, but it always annoyed me that they never publicly fessed up to what happened and made things right. To be fair to them on that front, they were a very small company at the time and did not really have the tools, processes or policies in place to definitively prove, legally speaking, that my version of events were what took place. I did receive a private apology from several of their team members who I had worked with in the past, but that was the end of it. Wow, and to this day, ccp has not said like, oh yeah, that's definitely what happened, but there does seem to be some claim to some some people being laid off inside of them as a result, maybe, of this uh, uh incident. Um, but I don't know, a lot of people kind of think also, he's, he's uh, he's not quite on the money with his interpretation of events well, imagine constructing steve after three months, 14 hour shifts, everything to see that go down.

Doug: 59:13

Yeah, there's probably going to beat. Your brain is going to start going. There's no way.

Ron: 59:17

That happens to him so much that Saevak quits the game the next day. He announces he has he doesn't even announce himself, he has an underling in his corporation announce that he has retired permanently from the game. He retires from the leading position of the Ascendant Frontier Alliance and from that moment on basically the whole alliance starts to fall apart. Band of Brothers starts making headway in the war. It's kind of like an interesting thing where it's like the morale of all the players just sort of drops. And then here's another, like the thing about Eve is like it doesn't like.

Ron: 59:55

In many ways it replicates, you know, like real world history or politics or strategy and interest, but in another way it doesn't. Because people are there to have fun, right, like this is what you keep coming back to, don, it's supposed to be fun. And like big wars and big battles are fun, Like this is content people want when they join an epic science fiction space game. But they also don't want to lose, like everything they've worked for, right, and so, yeah, um, it turns out like there's reports of like other, you know, smaller groups inside of ascendant frontier, basically just looting all of the assets they can from the main alliance and trying to jockey for like who will get the best position when this war eventually ends. They start cozying up to band of brothers being like hey, yo, we'll let you into this system if you take it easy on us. Like it just, you know, starts collapsing essentially and uh, band of brothers from there takes everything they had, they take all their territory and they become the preeminent, de facto strongest power in uh, eve online.

Ron: 1:00:56

Um, and many people think this is an important situation because it basically sets the stage for the next. I mean what this is 2006. I mean, the game is still going now in two uh in 2024, it sets, you know, the next decade and a half of of uh events in Eve. Because, uh, what's going to happen now is like band of brothers is the biggest group in the game. They start becoming, you know, massive uh tools to everyone. They start like telling people they owe them taxes or they're going to attack them and just sort of like robbing people. And so another group sort of joins up. They're called goon swarm and goon swarm becomes this group. That's like, hey, we hate band of brothers, we're going to destroy band of brothers.

Doug: 1:01:36

And they try multiple times and fail until eventually they manage to like unite the entire game against band of brothers and in a giant uh conflict that is called the great war that lasts two years of real life time band of brothers is eventually defeated, their home territories taken by goon swarm, and now goon swarm is the essentially the sort of unchallenged master faction in eve to this day it's really nice to know that it mirrors real life, that when the bad guy shows up and somebody says we'll take care of this for you, they become just the next bad guy.

Don: 1:02:09

That's fun I like that. I'm disappointed they didn't learn from real history about calling something the Great War.

Ron: 1:02:18

Like that's going to be the only one there have definitely been subsequent Great Wars in EVE Online, but this is the one I want to talk about today, because we could be here for hours, my friends, yeah. So I guess the reason I want to bring this to you guys is not just because EVE Online is super cool and you guys should resub and join my corporation, so we can play together.

Doug: 1:02:39

Yeah, what corporation are you in, by the?

Ron: 1:02:41

way, I don't want to dox them by saying it right now, but I'm a very small-time player in a corporation right now. I've recently rejoined this summer and I got got back into Eve after I bought this book, uh, from which most of the research for today's episode comes from. It's called empires of Eve by, uh, the journalist Andrew grown, who basically went and cataloged a lot of these events by actually interviewing these people and talking to them about their experiences in the game.

Don: 1:03:08

Does your corporation rhyme with land of mothers? No, they're not there anymore.

Ron: 1:03:15

I don't like some of the players are there, but I don't know if there's a if evolution or band of brothers. I don't think band of brothers is still in the lions they just wiped out how insane is it that, like they're having conversations.

Doug: 1:03:26

So it's something that fascinates me immediately. They're having conversations as, like, new corporations are starting up and if you're going into one of these null sectors and saying like, hey, I want, I want to work for you guys, and I'm guessing there's probably an interview.

Ron: 1:03:37

There's definitely an interview process. Yeah, any corporation. I have to actually have a real life interview with a person.

Doug: 1:03:43

Yeah.

Ron: 1:03:43

Because you could be a spy. You could. You could not have that Like there needs to be a vetting process.

Doug: 1:03:48

Yeah, and you can literally say, like I was a of band of brothers, like I participated in the great war, I'm like there's just, there are actual credentials that make you something.

Ron: 1:04:00

There are like celebrities in this game who are just veterans of these events, like valora, the guy who, the character who like scanned down the ship. Like they're still out there, they will happily tell you about what happened. Like there's still debates on like reddit about what happened. You know a lot of people like cyborg's a big cry, baby, we got him fair to square. Uh, you know, like everything's fine. Um, these are still like ripple throughout the community and, if you like, were a player back then, you have a lot of clout. People really want to talk to you about this stuff. So what I'm saying, though like this is interesting because it's like this to me is all real. Like Like this is this is real life, stuff that's happening.

Doug: 1:04:36

Right.

Ron: 1:04:41

I, like you know, to those, to those mean dads who say your, your kids aren't having real experiences or living life in a video game. They are. This is, this is life stuff, people. People left the game because they couldn't. You know, because it was so tragic the events that unfolded Right. People launch whole, you know, because it was so tragic the events that unfolded right. People launch whole, you know, wars and campaigns just on the same sort of fickle human passions of, oh I don't like that guy, he makes me mad. Or oh, they have something I don't have and I want to be the. You know, I want to be the coolest, most dope dude in space, right? I think these are a lot of the same things that we see in real human life.

Ron: 1:05:16

I'm not saying this is obviously like a one for one right. Like this kind of goes back to our risk thing, right, like no one's really at risk here, you know, of losing life or limb, right, just time, yeah, but just time and time. And investment and interest, and you know there's definitely. You, definitely you know sacrifices how many marriages ended as a result of the great war? You know, like that's right.

Doug: 1:05:41

And were they married in eve online as pilots? Or irl marriages, yeah, flesh marriages I think, hmm, the, the.

Don: 1:05:55

so what this is making me think about, cause we we talked about this a few times last season the idea that the fiction right, one of the reasons that we that that we read fiction is is to escape from our real lives, and this would be the same thing here, right as you, as you log in to play a game in order to escape from whatever your situation is and your current life, and so I can be an air conditioner repairman in real life that logs on and is thein. The Russian formalist right.

Don: 1:06:38

The idea that he studied that relates to fiction, is called carnival right, and that one of the things that fiction does is it allows us to experience things that are outside of our norm. And the idea of carnival he took from medieval carnivals, where the social order was inverted and so Topsy-turvy, day, and so right, uh, servants became masters, masters became servants, but the, the, the controlling force behind that in the medieval, um, actual carnivals, but also in fiction, is that there's a controlling voice that is monitoring that, and then the carnival ends and things return to normal. So I'm wondering in this case, right, like the, there is no controlling voice here.

Ron: 1:07:19

So, right, it's just players playing does the player, the in-game persona, eventually become the real persona or vice versa, right?

Don: 1:07:29

so there's the two things there, right and again bakteen. It has to do with the polyphony of the controlling voice then just becomes the hegemonic culmination of everybody's voices, trying to decide what's going to happen next in the game, but also that there's no return, like the only way to return to normal is to log off.

Ron: 1:07:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don: 1:07:51

Right, and so that's where it breaks for me, where you're saying that this is real life.

Ron: 1:07:57

Like I understand the, the, the feeling of it being a real investment, but in real life I can't just log off over right, like yeah, like uh, in this, in this you know, empires of eve book, the guy interviewing cyborg says, like you know this I think this book was written in 2014, 2016, somewhere around there. He says, like cyborg, still he describes him as being like frustrated and wistful, like speaking about this.

Doug: 1:08:27

Still, you know, like it's a part of him, he will bear this yeah to the end, to anybody that would think yeah, I imagine there would be people that would look at him and say, like that's not a great life accomplishment, but to be a person like think about somebody who is willing to go through with that, to where the developers, or like I don't know if we're going to look at this as like its own universe, like the gods of the universe didn't even write into existence the thing that he was creating there's, I mean, like what a perspective you know shift that makes you have, where it's not just collecting a check, but like I literally created something that the creators didn't even believe I could do and then I made this. So, yeah, I imagine life probably is a little bit darker of a shade when you've accomplished something like that in a digital space, right, and that I mean I'm instantly drawn to somebody like David Foster Wallace because I think about his idea in infinite Jess, that there is a form of entertainment that is so entertaining that it's like yeah, the, the idea of life becomes a little bit more. I don't know like it's, it's turned down and, of course, like Infinite Jest takes a very. I guess what is the? It's such a simple word and I'm just lost for it right now.

Doug: 1:09:46

Pessimistic Wow, the fact that that's gone is really worrying me. Pessimistic take on the idea of entertainment kind of taking over and somebody misses their life. But yeah, it's interesting because, yeah, don, you were bringing up logging out, but but he retired there. There's like a difference between I've logged out, I might play this again, but yeah, our men literally retired from that because I think that was such a part of his life.

Don: 1:10:12

But the the like you pointed out the chaos continued like he didn't log in, but the game continued and his sense of loss seems to have continued as well. Because again that idea that there was no closure, there's no controlling voice, no author yet is is saying here's the, here's the ethical viewpoint that we should learn from this experience. It was just a, it's just a loss.

Ron: 1:10:37

This is your, your, your kind of idea of the author. The importance of the author here is very interesting to me, and I think that's probably why video games are so appealing to so many people.

Ron: 1:10:47

right, Because they are given authorship, right To an extent right, and I think some games, more than others, right, extend more of that authorship ability to the, to the player. Right, and I think that's probably why, like, video games are like bigger than movies. Now, right, like, I think, like all fiction, we, we arrive at a place where we, the author, disappears.

Don: 1:11:09

Right, if the fiction is good enough yeah, right, and like the author is dead, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly Right.

Ron: 1:11:15

And uh, you know, it's just uh, our that, that, that that world, that that narrative exists in our brain and we have a sort of um discovery, um, uh element to it.

Ron: 1:11:30

Uh, I uh fictional worlds like lord of the rings or star wars or eve, online, right, and we do receive dopamine rushes when we discover things, even in these fictional places, right, like finding out about a, a new culture in the lord of the rings, or, uh, encountering a new, uh landmark in a, in a mmorpg, right gives us a little dopamine rush because, like, human beings are sort of hardwired to explore, to like, expand and find new resources and, you know, stabilize the colony, right. And so I think, yeah, I'm just always trying to figure out why we love fiction so much like it, cause I think it gets, you know, short shrift a lot of the times, right, like I don't read fiction, I read nonfiction, that's true, that's real. But uh, like, that's always been such an immature view of fiction to me, right, that it does have. I think it does teach us real things. Like you're saying, the lack of the author in Yvonne line doesn't teach us any less about how he, how humans, behave and and act and organize themselves, right.

Don: 1:12:32

It's an interesting like. I would like to learn more about it because it's an interesting application. I mentioned the I'm jokingly at Bart a second ago about the death of the author, but the point that Bart makes in that, in that essay, is that when the author is finished writing, that is, that's the end of the author's contribution to the experience, and then after that, it's the reader that that vivifies the text. Um, and, and what I'm saying is that the author has left a, a a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow. But the reader can bring their own experience to their own understanding, their own way of of perceiving what the author has written and and, like I said, vivifies it and makes it meaningful to them. In this case, it sounds like like that's what bothers me about it is there's no trail of breadcrumbs, it's just, it's a, it's a universe where there's nobody controlling it.

Ron: 1:13:22

I think there's still a trail of breadcrumbs Cause. I think it's important Like what are the primary actions people can engage with on in.

Ron: 1:13:29

Eve and it's like, yes, we were talking about it sort of being simulationist, but you said earlier, like, like, can I be the guy who stamps the envelopes? And like, no, that is not something you can do. Right, like you, you cannot leave your ship, right you? You don't have a human body that can go onto the planet surface and find animals or catalog plants. Like eve online is still a game essentially centered around war and violent conflict. I think that's a breadcrumb, though, right, you're gonna. That's gonna provide parameters by which people interact with it and therefore it will the. You know, there's a reason why this book's called the empires of eve and not the the scientific discoveries of eve, because it's not a star trek exploration game in that sense. Right?

Don: 1:14:10

but there's no in fiction, right even even in Infinite Jest, there's a point to the story, and Wallace is of course, you know, post-postmodern. I was going to say Jensen, who you talk to, but there's a meaning that is available to take away from it.

Doug: 1:14:33

Yeah.

Don: 1:14:34

And in this case, in Eve. That's what I'm searching for, like what's the it's, and I think that might be why Syvok is that his name Right Is so frustrated.

Ron: 1:14:45

He lost his meaning?

Don: 1:14:46

Well, right, the only meaning is a badge of accomplishment for having done this thing through time and patience, and it was just taken away without a for having done this thing through time and patience, and it was just taken away without a like, without a meaning, without a reason, without a narrative and I think, too, the I was about to bring this up and you say with me perfectly the fact that even he's, like, stuck in the realm of the rules were fixed.

Doug: 1:15:15

So I didn't get the experience out of the world that like, because that's the I mean. If he does believe that, if this is not an excuse, in some ways it is more tragic to me because the laws that he was operating in a universe that he truthfully felt like, this is something I can understand and I interact with, which is why I give of my time so freely to this place. If he feels that's violated, of course he retired because it's, like, the greatest violation of, like the my universe that you created for me, that I was able to make into what I wanted, uh, doesn't exist in the way that I thought that it did Cause. Interestingly, um, you brought up that you like Diablo dawn because I was obsessed with the like, still, I'd still play them, um, and I probably played the most of two.

Doug: 1:16:02

But going back to one, the, yeah, the idea is is you go into the church and you keep going and guess who's at the bottom of, if you keep going layers, diablo is there and you're going to slay diablo, because the parameters of the game are get better stuff, level up up, you know, get better equipment, get more spells, get more health, everything else. And then the great sense of accomplishment is the simple I beat, you know, you beat the game, you know, in a sense, and you never, you never played that one online.

Don: 1:16:27

No, Diablo two is the only one I ever played was no-transcript the type of player or person that would be attracted to that the but the simulation is actually like you're saying that that cyvak might be upset because the rules that he thought existed were different than.

Don: 1:17:20

But that's exactly the real world too, like everyone operates under a set of rules that they assume, yes, but then there's there, you know, even you know, the miraculous right like I believe that the physics works a certain way. But then there's these stories where a miracle happens and the physics didn't work the way that they were supposed to. The way it was described to me, but that still is accepted as reality because it did happen. The same thing is here, like he may have believed that there was no reason or ability for the developers to do this, but they clearly had the ability.

Don: 1:17:54

I mean if, if his version of the account is what happened, right, they had the ability to, so it doesn't make it against the rules, because the rules were developed by the developers, so their rules include the ability to come in and and do a cosmic you know, shift of.

Don: 1:18:08

so it, but it doesn't make it less frustrating for him. I'm positive, but it actually mimics the storyline. But the point that you're making and I think it's the same point that I'm making is that when we tell this in a story, there's a narrative that has a reason for the narrative, and even in narratives where we're subverting the norms of society, there's a reason for that subversion, either to test the bounds of society or experience what it's like to test those bounds. It's all in a safe space, but it sounds like in Eve. It's not a safe space because there's no, there's that controlling voice is not there to control it, it's just there to the chaos continues.

Ron: 1:18:46

And because a lot of these are written as histories, I think a lot of the controlling voice you're looking for has been added by, for instance, the journalist who wrote this down, right Like I was able to put a nice little cap on this by saying like, don't worry, band of brothers eventually got what was coming to them, though, because they eventually became the target of a massive uprising and were overthrown, right, but that's a of course in hindsight.

Don: 1:19:07

Yeah, we have the hindsight of history to. We don't place that narrative on it, but we don't have a narrative goal for tomorrow's gameplay but and then, yes, and isn't, but that's that's freedom

Ron: 1:19:18

isn't that and that isn't that. What more could you want in a simulated universe?

Don: 1:19:22

that's what life is. That's what I do every day. I want when I go to a simulated universe yeah, but then I'm taking it back down to the basics, baby.

Doug: 1:19:34

Well, and I think that that's also the thing that's interesting is, I think that we do self-author every single day, right, like in your.

Doug: 1:19:41

If we're going to say that we have a mundane day, let's say like you know what, or the person who you know, the person that, like oh, the, the, my work crush, finally looked at me, like whatever it like, extrapolates into this giant thing Right, and to make the most egregious jump that we could probably ever make. One of the things I was thinking about when you were talking about this Dawn is like the idea of like human beings and like fiction. But I think, like even people who have like religious experience right, like getting into, like text or stories that are ancient mythology, like all of these things. I think that this is part of us as being human beings. We do like these stories, but maybe the person who likes something like Eve Online is looking to create their own. They're the person that really is attached magnetically to the idea of give me the ability to tell my own story and then the world will tell it after that.

Ron: 1:20:40

That's exactly it, Doug. I think that's a beautiful way to bring this together and to end this episode. Gentlemen, thank you for following me down this virtual labyrinth and I hope to see you guys out there in EVE very soon. I have a code you could put that will actually give me a small kickback if you subscribe within the next 30 days and also give you plenty of cool in-game items I'm not logging in until Cyvox back.

Doug: 1:21:08

That's all I gotta say.

Ron: 1:21:10

Thank you for following us. Also, listener, take care and we'll see you on the next episode of the Uncannery.

Doug: 1:21:49

See you everybody, Thank you.