EVE Online: The Butterfly Effect
by James Egan 
Jul 29th 2009 at 11:45AM
Filed under: Sci-fi, Video, EVE Online
The sci-fi MMO EVE Online has proven to be a popular game among some of the writers at Massively, and with good reason. After having spent years playing in sharded environments, plus the simple fact that it's a break from the fantasy genre, the single-server design of EVE is refreshing. Putting all of the players in this "sandbox" setting -- the galaxy of New Eden -- also creates a unique world dynamic where the actions of pilots on both individual and collective levels can have an impact on the rest of the game's players.
Anyone who's played EVE Online for any length of time is aware of the benefits of the sandbox, but CCP Games has decided to visualize the game's social dynamic with a project called "The Butterfly Effect." This video is a theoretical and beautifully-presented look at how the actions of a lone assault frigate pilot can resonate throughout New Eden. The Butterfly Effect starts out at the smallest level where a choice is made by the solo pilot, to either aid or kill another player in distress, and how that individual's actions and choices in EVE ripple outwards, ultimately affecting the game on a galactic scale, and thus thousands of other players.
While there's more we could say about EVE's open world game design, we'll just let the video speak for itself. We hope you enjoy Massively's video embed of The Butterfly Effect.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yacoodle said on 12:03PM 7-29-2009
I'm getting kinda tired with massively as I feel all of it is based around EVE. Its almost as if massively was paid by EVE to speak about it.
I'd question how much of the reader base here actually plays EVE, or even enjoyed/understood its convoluted interface.
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foofad said on 12:10PM 7-29-2009
I played it and enjoyed it. I even enjoyed the video, though I was expecting something else a bit more indepth.
Matter of fact, I'm even trying to scrape up the money to resubscribe. Fancy that. =]
PotajiTo said on 12:27PM 7-29-2009
I don't play EVE right now, but I've been playing for more than 2 years and always enjoy hearing about it.
reudey said on 12:40PM 7-29-2009
Agreed. The amount of Eve news the last six months is disproportionate to their market share. Most of what they post about Eve isn't news at all, but very thinly veiled advertising. I wonder if it's a package deal with all the regular ads on the site or just a free service Massively provides to it's advertising customers.
enkrypt said on 12:30PM 7-29-2009
Yea, they need more stories about how to collect rat paws.
Karl Gookey said on 12:40PM 7-29-2009
It doesn't seem like it's mostly EVE to me. The news on first three pages are a total mix, with a mixed majority of EVE and Second Life with WoW being a close second.
If what you are saying were the case, firstly Second Life and WoW wouldn't be in the majority (it would just be EVE) and there wouldn't be so many other general and minority game MMO posts.
Brusanan said on 12:50PM 7-29-2009
It's not Massively's fault. Blame the other MMOs for sucking so much.
Hub said on 1:04PM 7-29-2009
Anyway, didn't we do pages worth of 'news' on Free realms for a month or so. At least EVEs stuff is a good interesting read for non players like myself.
Sandbox so has to be the way forward. Screw this solo crap and repetitive raids bosses with instructions on exactly where to stand and when to fire.
foofad said on 1:26PM 7-29-2009
By the way, just to prove what a silly accusation this is, I went ahead and took a tally of how many pages of content various games have compared to Eve.
World of Warcraft unsurprisingly has 98. Warhammer has 53, City of Heroes has 30, and Age of Conan has 37. Eve comes in at 56. Warhammer has the highest saturation of news considering its recent release. When you take into account that Eve is ancient, 56 pages of news compared to WoW's 98 and WAR's 53 is nothing.
SgtBaker said on 2:36PM 7-29-2009
I play EVE and I enjoy EVE stories a lot.
EVE is probably the only MMO that is significantly different from the others and it's certainly from completely different universe (pun intended, laugh now) compared to the leading fantasy gear grinds.
EVE is also the only MMO that doesn't suck.
More EVE stories please.
PeterD said on 3:02PM 7-29-2009
Yacoodle, the fact that you think this in spite of empirical evidence to the contrary suggests that the reason you think it's saturated is because the EVE stories are so memorable and the others are not.
EVE takes well to being reported on because as a sandbox game it's more like the real world -- there actually is NEWS coming from in the game. It was these sorts of stories that got me to try the game in the first (and second, and third) place because you just don't get them in other games.
Granted this particular article is essentially an advertisement, but they do 'advertisement' pieces for all their games, and it's based solely on what developers give them to work with, not what they decide they want to promote. It's not as if massively has a daily limit on posts that forces them to pick between two competing articles.
Yacoodle said on 5:24PM 7-29-2009
@PeterD
"based on empirical evidence"... you really don't have to add "empirical" because all data is empirical. Secondly, the evidence shows that EVE is second. Of course WoW is ahead of the bunch, more people play it. Massively DOES report on EVE more than MMORPG for instance.
The writers of this site love EVE, they even say it themselves. While I agree that the stories from EVE can be interesting, so are a lot of other games. Its just that they have more writers playing EVE than the other games so they report on it more. I am just frustrated because I played EVE for as long as I could before I got tired of the way you control your ship and the interface.
And finally, the fact that EVE IS ancient and getting this much attention goes to show a certain LOVE from massively on this game.
EVE's 1 shard structure with its politics are awesome, but the shear fact that a smaller group of people play EVE than most other MMOs just has me question why they choose to report on it so much (2nd place according to the person who researched it).
Karl Gookey said on 12:11PM 7-29-2009
That's the best advert for EVE that I've ever seen. So true too.
It actually makes me really excited to be already playing EVE.
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Kyrt Goa said on 12:42PM 7-29-2009
Such a good video, but the voice-over left me wanting more of a movie trailer kind of voice.
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chronofile said on 12:56PM 7-29-2009
Just perfect.
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AnMith said on 1:05PM 7-29-2009
I think that this is a great video. I shows in laments terms why EVE is one of the best MMO environments out there.
Now in response to the accusations that Massively is secretly EVE news site.. thats bogus. Yes it is true that massively covers EVE very closely, but can you honestly not see why?
Exhibit A: A lot of the Massively crew play EVE and enjoy it. Why wouldn't they want to write about the game they love to play?
Exhibit B: EVE has a lot of INGAME news and content that to outsiders is considered to be non-relevant. The single server environment that this video showcases give a glimpse of the news that can come from the single server nature of EVE.
One of you made the comment that EVE's coverage is not compatible to their market share... if that was how game news was decided all we would hear about is WOW. Seriously, there are plenty of WOW only news sites, go read them if you want more wow news.
/end rant
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Goonja said on 1:17PM 7-29-2009
I always like to hear about EvE because CCP did a good job and all EvE videos official and fan made are among the best.I played EvE a few years back and I can tell you that EvE deserves all the attention it is getting.
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torak said on 1:21PM 7-29-2009
Dunno if saying that massively is deliberately promoting EVE is fair to say.
I'm not a big fan of EVE, I've tried it several times and just can't get into it (it feels to much like a spreadsheet management game to me with space in the background) but it is unique in the sense that it is a primarily player driven world.
What other MMO has a dynamic like that? I mean you look at games like AoC or WAR (both decent, fun games) but aside from new content additions, there isn't much to really write about.
Although "WAR" has RvR, it's more or less "non - dynamic". It doesn't matter for the most part who controls what. Either side can continue business as usual in a zone no matter who controls it. The RvR is hollow. Same goes for AoC. Siege away, it makes no dynamic world impact on anything aside from an instanced area.
This is were a lot of MMO's have fallen down. They stripped away the players ability to influence the game world in favor of point collection systems.
That's not to say they aren't "fun to play" but definitely not as immersive. EVE on the other hand IMHO (meaning to me) is extremely immersive but not very fun to play...
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Aetrix said on 1:40PM 7-29-2009
I am SO damn tired of the carbon copy shitty themepark MMO parade that has been dragging its ass up the street for the past 6 years. Even if EVE wasn't such a great game, it would still deserve all the attention it's been getting simply for it's uniqueness.
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Bryan said on 1:45PM 7-29-2009
Yeah, I'm not an Eve fan either, and not because of anything to do with this video. It has to do with the interface, the game mechanics themselves, the feel of myself in the game. I didn't get any of that each time I tried the game. I always felt extremely detached and basically bored with having to learn how to fly my ship, go mine, or do whatever. It just didn't grab me.
I like the sandbox concept, the butterfly effect if you will, but how I control my character/ship in that sandbox is a major issue and a possible gamebreaker, as it is in the case of my time with Eve.
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