i wanna be a spaceship manager

So I was thinking today about a game I’ve been playing recently called Football Manager Live. It’s an MMOG where virtual managers buy a team of footballers, coach them and then stick them in a formation that suits their abilities before pitting them against other teams, either in friendly matches or player-created leagues. Generally the higher you finish in a league, the more funds you get to buy better players.

Initially I was quite excited by FML. It has a skill-training system fully-based on EVE’s (lots of offline training), you can run the client in the background all day without having to pay too much attention to what’s going on in the gameworld (usually just transfer mails and chat rooms), and if you need a break from work, you can quickly and easily find another manager to PvP against in a friendly soccer match, or a scheduled league game.

It’s not a very visual game. All the players in your team are represented by stats, with each of their physical and mental attributes, as well their footballing skills, rated between one and twenty.

The reason I mention the game here is because it suddenly struck me today that there is an equivalent to FML in the EVE universe. Well, not really, but almost… Imagine if the great EVEmon was given a chatroom and a text-based battle system where you could field a fleet of your fitted ships and manage them in some kind of Alliance Tournament. You could create leagues, offer prize money, then when it got to the battle, you could order ships to attack, defend, orbit, etc, all in a real-time overhead view where you’re dragging lines across the battlefield like some frenzied general with a chalkboard.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of there being a Spaceship Manager Live game, and the more feasible it seems. I’m not sure the EVEmon guys would agree with me though.

so many goblins, so little time

A couple of months ago I was asked by a  friend of a friend if I would like to edit a magazine. Without thinking too much about what I was letting myself in for, I said yes. The magazine is called MMOZine and from that you can probably get a good idea about what it concerns itself with. It’s not quite a magazine in the same sense that EON is, since it’s only available online and can be downloaded for free (yes, for free), but it’s a magazine in that it is planned, written and produced to the traditional conventions of a magazine. In other words it’s a pain in the ass to put together when compared to websites (in my experience at least): You have to gather everything by a deadline rather than publishing as-and-when, by which time you must also make sure you have all the page elements ready for proofing and design (body text, panels, captions, straps etc), rather than just running it through some content management template.

None of these issues are that big a deal since I’ve been doing this magazine shenanigans for a number of years, but what was a considerable shock to the system was just how time consuming persistent world games are to visit, even for a short while. Keeping up with EVE was difficult enough when it was mildly complicated by occasional forays into LOTRO, but when you suddenly find yourself having to re-acquaint yourself with World of Warcraft and Warhammer and get to grips with “lesser” games such as Runes of Magic at the same time, the spare time just vanishes in puff of subscription fees. I’ve seen more goblins and their derivatives in the past two months than I ever thought possible.

A large part of my reasoning for helping out with MMOZine was to get myself out among the general populace again and get some perspective on EVE and it’s place in the greater MMOG universe. That one aspect alone has been worth the journey: It’s quite an eye-opener to go back into New Eden when you’ve been on a whirlwind tour of every persistent world out there, seeing how they all handle character creation, how progression is managed and so on. Communication is something that in EVE really stands out after you’ve had to work though other worlds and their endless spam messages. Actually on that point I liked the way in FM Live that if you spam the mailing system you not only get a warning from the moderators – a public one, you lose in-game currency. Something the EVE mods should consider, perhaps?

With another EON deadline looming large on the horizon I’ve made my way back to the loving arms of EVE after finishing my first MMOZine as editor. It struck me though how almost impenetrable and confusing the official EVE site is. Seriously, if it wasn’t for the fact that location of certain areas have been branded into my subconscious mind over the course of many years, I would have been utterly lost. I do hope CCP are working on a thorough redesign because it must surely put a lot of newcomers off.

The ninth issue of MMOZine (my first as editor – feedback welcome) is out today. I should warn you that there is almost nothing about EVE it in, partly because I found other games were more worthy of the coverage. That may sound like a heretical thing to admit but MMOZine aims to offers a concentrated dose of general persistent world news and views, aimed very much at the rank-and-file of the online gaming fraternity. It would be a massive abuse to ram MMOZine full of EVE material just becuase it may be easy to come by. There are many more games than EVE in the online world (few better it must be said) and some are of far greater interest to some gamers than EVE will ever be. Maybe it has something to do with all those goblins. Be assured that I intend to discover why in the fullness of time.

back to the edge

After returning from picturing Fanfest V in the latest EON, Postcards from the Edge is calling out again for in-game images to adorn its pages.

Reading over my previous call for images I’m reminded that I never made good on my offer to send magazines out to those who had their’s published. As I admitted in my previous post I suck at credits, more than I realised. Time to make amends…

get voting!

Voting in the third annual EON Awards is now open! Spread the word and as members of the EVE community we can give ourselves a collective pat on the back for being awesome! Go to www.eve-online.com/eonawards.

pushing the envelopes

The latest issue of EON, the fourteenth, is on its way to subscribers around the world. I went to the MMM office yesterday to help with envelope-stuffing duties and to check out the magazine and I have to say that I’m really proud of it. Of course I’m contractually-bound to say that about every issue, but in truth it usually takes me a while to enjoy a new issue, but this one I ripped through as if seeing it for the first time (which I was, in a sense). I shall update the site later to include the new cover and contents, so stay tuned.

Massive thanks to everyone who helped with this issue. The star cast of writers includes EVE TV’s StevieSG, The Blogfather, Karox Lominax, and even flashfresh was entrusted with a pen (which he wielded with a level of sophistication unbecoming of a nasty pirate-type). Blinky’s WDA is a classic – too good not to have been used in a news story. We had some great Fanfest and band photos, from CCP’s Ben Maths and Tinna Arnardóttir, as well as images from Brian Knight, Ben Cousins and others that I can’t remember if we used or not. I suck at credits. I think I’ll be owing a lot of beer to a lot of people.