Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.04.2012, Blaðsíða 16

16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2012
When many people hear the words
“online gamer,” the image that
comes to mind is a socially crippled
basement-dweller who is glued to
his or her computer and probably
hasn’t seen actual sunlight in years.
people who believe this is what
gamers are like should come to EVE
Fanfest—an annual event hosted by
EVE Online, the tremendously suc-
cessful MMO run by CCp Games in
Iceland.
This year it was held at Harpa, Reyk-
javík’s less than one-year-old concert
hall and conference centre. Seeing the
crowd, you wouldn’t have guessed that
it was a gaming convention. There was
almost no cosplay and people were
very social. By all appearances, this
looked more like a gathering of subur-
ban professionals than a group of video
game fans.
However, these were definitely vid-
eo game fans and many of them were
waiting anxiously for the release of
DUST 514—a free FPS for PlayStation 3
wherein console gamers and PC gam-
ers are able to share the same universe
for the first time in gaming history.
Another highlight of any EVE Fan-
fest is the PvP tournament wherein
teams go head-to-head against each
other, ascending the ranks to the finals.
For the final round, the teams Hydra
Reloaded and Wolfsbrigade sat at their
respective computers, facing each oth-
er, in front of an audience, watching the
action unfold on giant screens above
the players.
GETTING INTO EVE ONLINE
For those not already familiar: EVE On-
line is an online, sci-fi roleplaying game.
You create characters, build space-
ships, and head out into the EVE uni-
verse. You are pretty much free to do
whatever you want out there—you can
safely mine asteroids for a tidy profit,
engage in combat with other ships, or
just about anything else. Most veterans
will advise you to join up with a larger
group of players, called a “corp,” as
there’s safety in numbers. While there
are areas with high security for new
players and low security for more ad-
venturous players, you should basically
assume that this is a lawless universe
where anything can and will happen.
Despite the stereotype of EVE being
a slow game, the actual fighting was so
fast that it was over before I knew it and
Hydra Reloaded, a team from Finland,
had won.
In many ways, one of the winning
team members from Finland explained
to me, EVE PvP is comparable to chess:
there are certain strategies and moves
that can be used to easily defeat play-
ers who aren’t aware of them. “It’s less
about how fast your reflexes are and
more about strategy.”
MERGING GAMING UNIVERSES
Making my way through the crowd, I
bumped into a developer drinking beer
with his friends. I mentioned to him that
I thought the crowd was pretty massive.
“Every year it’s bigger than the year be-
fore,” he said. “I don’t think you can
really define the demographic. There
are people coming in from all over the
world. There’s definitely a lot more
press, but also a different kind of press,
because of DUST 514. Last year it was
more MMO press. Now we have that,
and the console games press, too.”
As the hype this year was around
DUST 514, I asked him how he thought
EVE players would take to it. EVE, you
see, is a PC game—it can be played on
any computer that has the hardware to
run it. DUST 514, however, is a console
game, made specifically for the Play-
Station 3. While traditionally PC gamers
and console gamers occupy two sepa-
rate worlds of gaming, CCP has allowed
these two different gamers to share the
same space in the EVE universe.
“I think that most EVE players will
probably not be playing DUST 514,”
he said, “but they’ll probably appreci-
ate it, as it’ll benefit them. It gives them
a new opportunity to backstab other
players. You can have a player on a PS3
player DUST 514, who laser-targets an
area, and then contacts an EVE player
to bombard the area. That’s something
that’s never been done before, this link
between console and PC gamers, in
the same gaming universe. That’s what
we’ve been seeing with DUST 514—it
expands the FPS into something totally
new.”
The crowd began to fill up as HAM
and GusGus took to the stage. Wander-
ing into the VIP area, I met the guys
from Wolfsbrigade and we chatted
about EVE.
“There is a steep learning curve,”
admitted a team member from New
York. “But so long as you get into the
right corp, and have the right people
around to teach you, you’ll learn quite
easily. This isn’t a game where you
grind, like in World of Warcraft. You set
a skill, and come back a week later, and
it’s done. You don’t need to be logged
in the whole time. But it takes a long
time to be able to go into a low-sec
area and get into some real fights. Oth-
erwise you’ll just be mining in high-sec
like a lot of these people.”
Before parting ways to go see the
bands play he said something that
seemed to sum up Fanfest: “once you’re
in a nice corp in the EVE community,
you almost become a second family.
You love meeting the other people in
your corps, and even other people you
play against. You forget about who’s
in what alliance. You just get together,
drink, have a good time, and once it’s
over, you go back to killing each other.”
Indeed, Fanfest felt more like one gi-
ant party than a gaming convention.
Gaming | Eve Online
The Future Is Here
Words
Paul Fontaine
photography
Alísa Kalyanova
EVE Fanfest 2012 shows where gaming is headed
Since its beginning in 2003, EVE Online has grown to become the largest
massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) up to date. To
explore EVE's massive universe visit www.eveonline.com
www.ishestar.is
For further information check out
our website www.ishestar.is, call
+354 555 7000 or be our friend
on Facebook.
Come ride with us
For almost 30 years Íshestar has
given people an opportunity to
experience the Icelandic horse on
long and short trips. Horses are our
passion.
Come ride with us in the beautiful
surroundings of our Íshestar Riding
Centre. You get free transport from
all major hotels and guesthouses in
the capital area.
ISK 500.- discount!*
Name the magic word,
"tölt", and you will get ISK
500.- discount on the Lava
tour. Only valid when paid
at our Riding Centre.
*Not valid with other oers.
WHAT ARE THESE GUYS
TALKING ABOUT?
As you may have noticed, a lot of acronyms
and game specific terminology get tossed
around in this world. Here’s a glossary to
help you understand what they’re talking
about:
COSpLAY: Dressing as a favourite fic-
tional character in public, usually at anime,
comics or gaming conventions.
CORp: Refers to corporation, which is the
EVE equivalent of a guild—a group of play-
ers who stick together and work together
on missions.
DEV: Refers to a developer, the person
who makes the games work.
FpS: First-person shooter, means that you
are a person with a gun running around
shooting people.
GRINDING: Refers to repeating an action
or series of actions multiple times to build
up a skill level.
LOW-SEC/HIGH-SEC: Low security and
high security, refers to different parts of the
gaming universe in EVE. In high security,
players are generally safe from unprovoked
attacks. This is usually where new players
start out. Low security, by contrast, is a
survival-of-the-fittest environment.
MMO: Massive Multiplayer Online game,
means that many different players log in to
the same server to play and interact with
each other in real time.
pVp: Player versus player, refers to fights
between players, either one-on-one or
spaceship fleets in combat.
pVE: Player versus environment, means
that players interact with the environment
around you, e.g., mining asteroids, rather
than other players.