EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMORPG) set 22,000 years in the future. As many as 15 million people have tried the game, with up to half a million players inhabiting the EVE universe at one time. Unlike other games, EVE has a uniquely player-driven design, resulting in a seemingly limitless number of story lines, communities and allegiances — a recent Bloomberg Business article described EVE as a kind of “controlled experiment in human nature.” The game has earned a devoted following, with relationships between players forming over years, often translating between online and offline relationships. As a result of these relationships and interpersonal connections, EVE Online has produced a universe-sized narrative, extending beyond the game itself into cross-platform formats like books and online wikis.
EVE Online Panel
Join EVE Online’s Creative Director Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Microsoft Research member Jessa Lingel as they describe attempts to tell the story of this massive world and its inhabitants. They will discuss EVE as a platform for the collective production of narrative, the potential for games as storytelling platforms and the interlacing of technology and communities in conceptualizing the future.
The discussion will take place in the Brown Institute at Columbia University at 6pm on Monday, April 27.