Richard Garfield's Ideas On Metagaming And Eve Online

"What is it about the metagame that breathes life into the experience of game-playing? Through the metagame, players are inducted into a larger game community. Often, the metagame is an event in which many, many people are playing—more than can possibly compete in the smaller base game. The event can become so large that no individual can know all parts of the game; while no single participant has the complete picture, each person has insight into some small piece of the game. The contributions of each participant become integral to the game event."

- Dr. Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering, The Duelist #5

I used to play Magic: The Gathering back in in 1995-1997 and used to buy every issue of The Duelist.  I was excited when I found Dr. Garfield's article was now online and could read it again 16 years after I first read it.  The Duelist article was the first time I had heard the term metagame.  Back then the idea of a larger community was pretty cool.  I still think it is cool, but in Eve Online metagaming is a dirty word in some quarters.

Dr. Garfield's writings on the metagame, 8 years before Eve Online launched, foreshadowed the type of sov warfare we see in Eve today.

"Metagames tend to have application or meaning beyond the game itself; often, they seep into real life. Doing well in metagames may require money or stamina; it may even be influenced by things like how you dress or where you live. Some say this detracts from the game, but in my opinion it is neither good nor bad; it is simply a part of the metagame that the base game does not have. Endurance is not essential to winning a rubber of bridge, but it is essential to winning a tournament. In a game of Killer, the fact that you have an 8 A.M. class may play a significant role in your strategy. And if you are in a ping-pong ladder, it may be frustrating that the only person you can challenge is hard to pin down, but that's part of the game, too."

I'm not an expert on Eve's null sec metagame, but I try to read everything I can from people who do.  The talk of where one lives and events totally outside the game in players' normal lives calls to my mind the situation between the Cluster F**k Coalition and White Noise. which led to the CFC overrunning Branch.  And the description of the ping-pong ladder pretty much describes the difficulty of a coalition in Europe fighting a North American coalition.

Before continuing, you may want to read the full column by Dr. Garfield because I am about to introduce the writings of one of the masters of Eve's metagame, The Mittani.  The Mittani's column, Sins of a Solar Spymaster, is full of Eve sneakiness, but I'd like to point to this column "The Art of Nullsec War" as an example of how elements of metagaming apply to success at the very highest levels of Eve political game play.  I'm not going to actually do any analysis because having a high sec carebear pontificate on null sec war is pretty silly.  So what I'll do is post a video that someone did based on the column and let you decide for yourself just how much of Dr. Garfield's thoughts on the metagame actually apply to Eve Online.

Clear Skies 3 Is Now Available

Ian Chisholm sent out the news that all of New Eden has waited to hear for two years: Clear Skies 3 is finished and released!  The Clear Skies movie site has been updated and will direct you to the correct location on Eve Files to download the movie.  I got the news a couple of hours late, which may have helped with my download speed.  I used Torrent which worked incredibly fast for me.

First off, Ian gave the following technical warning on the Clear Skies Facebook page:

"OK bit of an update, I found at the last minute there was a problem with listening to it in stereo. The mix was too loud and distorted. I've fixed it, but it's gonna take another 5 hours or so to re-render the whole project :(

"Speaking of surround-to-stereo issues, it varies between media players, sound hardware, and video codecs if the downmix works properly. Either it does or you get mostly everything in the left channel. There is nothing I can do about this as it's a playback hardware/software issue (one of my PCs plays it fine through USB headphones and cocks it up through analogue speakers, go figure). I hope you won't have this problem, and if you do you can work around it somehow. If it becomes a big issue though, I'll release a stereo specific version at a later date. "

That said, I had no issues with the sound quality.  Of course, I went ahead and plugged my laptop into my 61" television, something that I have trouble doing for movies produced by Hollywood.  Yes, I really wanted to enjoy this.  And I wasn't disappointed.

Clear Skies 3 was the first of the series produced after the recent series of graphics updates, including to planets, and it showed.  The space scenes in CS3 are beautiful.  Yes, Eve Online actually looks that good if you turn the graphics up and Ian took full advantage of the new graphics.  But the Eve player will also probably enjoy picking out the new pieces of the interface inserted into the movie also.

I don't want to ruin the story for anyone, but I will say that Ian draws upon some of the character development and story from the first two parts of the series, so watching those if you have never seen them is advisable to get the greatest pleasure from watching the third installment of the series.  We also get to see some of the additional background of two characters, Mr. Smith and Charlie Fodder. 

The story created by Ian and Ritchie Powles pushed the use of the Half Life 2 avatars to their technical limits, and for the most part Ian made it work.  I will say that CS3 has set the bar high for what CCP needs to accomplish for Incarna and for when avatars can freely roam the interiors of stations in New Eden.

As usual for a Clear Skies movie, the soundtrack was first rate, featuring music by U2, Coldplay, Paul Van Dyk and Mike Oldfield as well as the in-game music composed by Jon Hallur.  I am sure that over the next few weeks the soundtrack will receive heavy air-play on Eve Radio.

All in all a very enjoyable movie experience.  I expect that Ian will add some additional awards to his collection for all the hard work he put into the project.  I know that I've contributed to the tip jar Ian posted on the web site.  He and the entire crew deserve it.

Update: I didn't notice yesterday because I was already in game, but CCP announced the release of Clear Skies 3 on the character select screen.  Nice!

Update2: Chribba posted on Twitter that as of approximately 14:00 UTC that Eve Files had seen close to 6,000 downloads of CS3.

Operation Smile: Clear Skies 3 Teaser Trailer

The initial news reports I had heard mentioned a March 2011 release date for Clear Skies 3.  But a post from John Rourke on the Eve-O forums indicates that the release may be pushed back to April or May.  But we got a teaser video released, and how can that not produce a smile?

Merry Christmas

I hope you have a Merry Christmas, wherever you are.

Eve Cinema Trailer

Since I live outside Chicago, I have a chance to see the Eve trailer appearing in select markets across the United States.  But after seeing the clip on YouTube, I'm glad I didn't make the 30 minute trip to the nearest theater.  I think the trailer was, to use a technical term, meh.  I'll let you judge for yourself.

Operation Smile: This Is War

CCP recommended another player-made video on its YouTube channel last week.  The video is one player's idea of what an Eve trailer should look like.  He used previously published CCP trailers that used the Trinity 2 graphics engine.  Crazykinux's comparison of the old and new graphics engines explains why that was a good choice.

After watching this, I immediately downloaded it and put it on my iPad.  I think after watching, you'll understand why.

My Shopping Spree

While Kirith went on a shopping spree in Jita on Black Friday, I engaged in an equally perilous spree in real life at the local Wal-Mart.  I admit as shopping sprees go, mine might not actually qualify as one.  But the one item I purchased was an iPad.  So instead of shooting Angels this past weekend, I was searching YouTube for videos and downloading my favorites.  Currently I'm in search of videos that show the history of Eve, whether it is lore like Day of Darkness and Day of Darkness II or player history like Tortuga or The Dronelands War.  I also found both the current intro movie and the original one (which I'll find the links to when I get home from work).

For those wondering how I download the videos and then convert them to the Apple iPad friendly format, I use RealPlayer Plus.  I used RealPlayer as my default player for years and a couple of months ago upgraded to the Plus version.  Perhaps something free is out there, but I'm used to RealPlayer and I think I will get my monies worth out of it now.

If anyone has any recommendations on videos to download, I'd be interested to hear them.

Eve Videos and Incarna

On Wednesday CrazyKinux came out with a list of his top 10 favorite Eve videos.  Clear Skies and Clear Skies 2 didn't make his list because the characters are from Half-Life 2 and the shows felt more like Half-Life with an Eve twist.  That's a fair statement.  But that got me to thinking about the machinima possibilities when Incarna comes out next summer. With avatars in the game and with the imagination that Eve's video makers have already shown, will Eve videos begin to challenge World of Warcraft's hold on YouTube?  I'm willing to wager that by the end of 2011, CrazyKinux's list will have a lot more player-made videos on it.

Operation Smile: The Craft of War: Blind

In World of Warcraft, I think the only race in which I would play a female character over a male character is the blood elves.  One reason admittedly is looks.  I like the way the male models look for all races over the female models, except for blood elves.  Blood elf females just look tougher than male blood elves.  Maybe that is because they are!  Exhibit A is this classic video by Percula showing an assassination attempt by a blood elf on an Alliance official in the heart of Stormwind. 

WoW Video: What Hurts The Most

Raiders versus casual players. Role players versus theory crafters. PvPers versus carebears. Players of massively multi-player online role playing games have developed a lot of different ways to play the same game. I was thinking about how the same game can play differently depending on a person’s play style when I thought about the song “Hurts The Most”. Two popular versions of the song became hits in two different genres of music. Below are two World of Warcraft music videos inspired by Rascal Flatts and Cascada. The lyrics are the same but the arrangements and style are very different, just like the way people play MMORPGs.


Rascal Flatts


Cascada

EQ2 Video: Jethal Silverwing's I Want That Rock

Fighting for resources happens in MMOs. Whether the game is a free-to-play title like Runes of Magic, an indy sci-fi game like Eve Online, or the giant of them all, World of Warcraft, sooner or later players find themself harvesting resources. Jethal Silverwing of Online Gaming Radio's Jethal Silverwing Show is a master of the EQ & EQ2 parody song and wrote a song based on Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock about mining that his wife Elquinjena made into a video. The video was shot on location in the Thundering Steppes, a location where I've spent hours harvesting and looking for that elusive rock myself.

WoW Video - Taylor Swift and LightonRox

I've written before that I like country music. One of the up-and-coming artists that I like is a young lady named Taylor Swift. Not only do I like her music, but I like her story. How many other singers have ever released an album at the age of 16 on which she wrote or co-wrote every song and watched that album go triple-platnum? She was also the youngest writer to win the Nashville Songwriters Association International's Songwriter/Artist of the Year award and the youngest to win the Country Music Association's Album of the Year award.

Why do I bring up all of Taylor's accomplishments and stress her youth? Because of the young lady who's work I found when I was looking for Taylor Swift WoW videos. Her YouTube handle is LightonRox and according to her site she's only 14. Despite her age (or maybe because of it) she has produced some pretty good work. Being a Taylor Swift fan, I'll link two of LightonRox's videos, Love Story & You Belong With Me, here. Enjoy.

Clear Skies 2 Is Now Available For Download

Ian Chrisholm has finished the sequal to his award winning Machinima film Clear Skies. The film, Clear Skies 2, is now available for download.

For those who may have missed it, Clear Skies and Clear Skies 2 are based in the Eve Online universe, with exterior shots filmed in Eve and interior shots filmed using Half-Life 2. I watched Clear Skies 2 last night and I think it is better than the original.

For more information on the films and film makers, visit the Clear Skies site. And don't forget to download the movie.