Acts of bribery, theft, divorce, banking crashes, industrial espionage and fraud. No, this is not a documentary about the life of Bernard Madoff. He did not even occur on Earth. Instead, it is going on behind the scenes, a virtual galaxy of EVE Online - Game mass from the Icelandic company CCP, has attracted more than 360 thousand players.
The company recently celebrated its eighth year to launch the game, considered one of the oldest on the network. Genre to which he belongs, called Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, attracts hundreds of millions of players creating their own virtual character and playing an alternative world. Popular game and is best known in World of Warcraft, had lured more than 13 million players pay.
Today there are hundreds of games, but also ones EVE Online game is considered unusual. He still maintains the same economic model since its launch, and reports regularly on the rise in players. The game does not include dragons, or orcs thousands. Instead, players embody merchants very distant future, space, and the game they spend in a spaceship, almost without meeting other people, but only stars, planets and giant space stations.
The game does not include a central story or content. Instead, the developer has created a galaxy consisting of thousands of solar systems, a "sandbox" where you can do almost anything. You can be miners, explorers, traders, warriors, pirates, explorers and workers - or choose one of dozens of other roles. Almost every detail of the game was designed, planned, built, sold and bought by one of the players, and most of the empires, corporations and organizations have been assembled and built by cooperation between players.
The game is not friendly to new players. Many critics called him "Axel table space" because of his approach - to overwhelm the players with information on commodities and stocks. Despite, or perhaps because of it, could EVE develop a closed community of the faithful and devout players who spend hours every day in front of the screen and make nearly 2 billion financial transactions each day. The company currently employs Ph.Ds in economics, designed to maintain the financial model of the game. These also run the Federal Reserve Bank of EVE, which determines in part the prices of basic foods, as well as the rate of inflation and interest rates.
Game supports tax offenders
In the world of EVE no supervision, police or government. Players can cheat, steal and bribe, and the company even encourages it to support the blood-thirsty atmosphere of the game. Ned Coker, spokesman for the company, has said that "dark and brutal worlds are the perfect backdrop to examine human behavior. This is part of the search for true gameplay that really touches a player." Accordingly, if a player was killed during the game is severely punished. If they are not disqualified temporarily or go back to square one with all of your assets, as happens in other games, but lose all the property you have accumulated.
It's a dangerous world, and Nowhere is safe - not even your virtual safe. About five years ago had one of the managers of virtual banks to take over the bank, set up by other players. He sold all his assets for the sum of trillions of ISK, EVE's virtual currency. At that time, this amount was equivalent to 170 thousand dollars a completely true that line his pockets.
A year ago, another player could restore Madoff's deception plan. For three years he worked to establish a commercial company, including assets, bases and ships throughout the galaxy. He added investors and friends and gave them a seat on the board. But then he run into trouble paying off the mortgage on the house - in the real world.
Actor convinced the board of directors to issue shares, which were temporarily in his hands. Within minutes he managed to oust the board of directors, to take over the assets and sell them for a total of more than 45 thousand dollars. The player, known as Bad Bobby, not apologized and said he started the company with the declared aim to do so. While the real world tax offenders are tried, Bad Bobby actually received praise from game developer.
In another case dealt with a group of actors in industrial espionage. The two companies were rivals for years and fought on a number of solar systems are especially important. Finally, several players have created completely new characters and filtered rival company of new friends. For over a year they purchased the trust board and then, well-planned step, destroyed all the military bases and space ships of their enemies, and steal control of the company, with assets of $ 17 thousand dollars.
"I'm divorced, and my wife wants the ship"
Company policies on the game forbids players to rent or to buy virtual money. CCP allows players to "inject" money into the game world by purchasing Flex, a kind of virtual goods that can sell Bsook online or use the monthly subscription fee instead of game.
But Flex is a commodity for anything. A few months ago it became known that one player who leaked the details of the shipment of Pirates teammate. The group attacked the ship's trade second friend, who carried the same time 74 Flex from one house to another, and when one player has lost $ 1,300. During 2010 have been compromised site violating this policy game and specializes in selling virtual money, and database transaction data has been published. The data revealed that men earned in that year no less than 330 thousand dollars from Flex.
Two worlds, virtual and real, meet all the time. Web is full of stories about friends who stopped talking to each other because of some incident in EVE, or divorcing couples and are concerned that they would have to divide the virtual assets. One player asked for urgent advice of the EVE forums and asked "My wife wants to divorce my boat, what am I doing?". Another discussion forum dealing sent a squad of players to cut the internet cables and power of its adversaries in the real world, just to play them in the virtual world.
Can you get from the spacecraft
But not all parties in the game are so cruel and bloodthirsty. The company also runs a charity in which players can contribute to the Flex, including charitable campaigns organized for the benefit of Haiti and Japan, and has raised over 160 thousand players. In general, CCP company encourages the link between worlds, seemingly disconnected, and already established social networking players, which also includes an active romantic dating group for men and women fans.
Every few months the company also organizes votes democratically elected Council which top players ", which advises company on how to develop the game and represent the community of players. Council members travel to Iceland on the firm and the Council have the status of a separate division in society. In recent weeks, the council was very busy for the launch of the newest expansion pack of the game, Incarna.
The expansion offers something completely new world of EVE - the players, who until now had been "trapped" in their space ships, can finally walk in space stations. The more distant future they will also be able to meet other players, build shops, pubs and businesses. Soon the company also intends to launch an action game called Dust 514, where the actors who play the games space landed on the planets in the universe of EVE. Both games will communicate between them and create a richer world. Transition will make EVE more accessible to new players - and selling even more.
Chief Economist Layoffs game ": The real world is going in our direction
Dr. Ayeg'olfar Gdmnson joined ranks in 2007, CCP member, developing the game, as chief economist. Layoffs interview, "he says he heard about EVE Online first lecture from a master key and went into the game because of its extreme realism and complex economic model. "I told myself I had to do it. No economist can never get such accurate information on each transaction, and the foundations of the economy itself. "
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