EVE Online: The Politics

In timeless fashion, the posturing and rivalries between the RedSwarm and the Band of Brothers led to a year-long war - a war which only came to a close just after Christmas. The politics, however, have not stopped. And the latest wars mean that the previous allies of RedSwarm - the Northern Coalition - are now feeling the brunt of the Band's ongoing grudge. These conflicts only seem to get bigger as the game goes on - with thousands of people now involved. Following the political machinations is like following a giant, nerdy soap opera - a space opera, if you will. Should the Band of Brothers ally with Triumvirate? Did this alliance steal that super-capital ship pilot? What really happened to the collapsing Red Alliance? Disgraced leaders, deposed tyrants, treacherous spies, loved industrialists - the list of characters and situations expands daily. It will last as long as EVE does, and it's one of the things that gamers either love or loathe about that game world. There's no room for indifference - it's a feature that no other game can boast. (Except maybe Travian and a couple of other browser games, but anyway!)

Not everyone in EVE wants to play this long game of logistical enormity, nor to have to rely on bigger boys for protection. Many smaller organisations exist under the radar, and some of them even have a manifesto for independence and anti-unilateralism. One such organisation is The Star Fraction whose leader, Jade Constantine (played by gamer Andrew Cruse) sets itself against the interests of the big player alliances, and fights for libertarian values in the pod-pilot community. Constantine's arguments for dynamism in the game world are both arguments about the attitudes and behaviours of players in the game world, and arguments about the game design that CCP is touting.

EVE's most recent political manifestation has, in fact, given Constantine/Cruse an even bigger platform to peddle his views from. It's the Council of Stellar Management - the point at which EVE's politics burst out of the game and into the real world. This council of players - which we've reported on before - has met in real life to discuss both the in-game and meta-gaming issues that trouble the EVE Universe. It's a kind of democratically-elected UN Security Council of the game world: one which acknowledges the hybrid existence of the pod pilots and their politics. It is both the wars in the game world, and the words exchanged by real people on the forums and chat channels outside it, that really define their attitudes and policies.

It's this freedom and depth - limited though it is by EVE's contrived space war - that make this a unique model for political play in a game. Without the single-cluster galaxy such opinion-wrangling and power-playing would be impossible. If MMO development learns nothing else from EVE, it should be that allowing people to play emperor over other people is always a good idea.