EVE Online: The Best Game That's Not

Is it the best game ever? Is it the most boring game ever?

It's unique, if anything. A small MMO usually relegated to nerdy corners of the Internet, EVE has a fascinating aura about it. And it's legitimately one-of-a-kind.

The game is a space-based exploration game, a truly open-world universe. The players are the ones that make the game tick; it's as if the developers who made the game created a universe, and then left the players to their own devices. Players mine asteroids, found in asteroid belts around the galaxy, to gain specific minerals needed to craft ships and other devices. Players barter goods through the intergalactic market, many players making an in-game living merely flipping resources, buying low and then selling high at other space stations.

I was told by a friend that after making games for everybody else, game developers had now made a game for accountants.

There's also the PVP aspect of it, too. Players band into corporations, which band into huge alliances, controlling massive swathes of the galaxy and juggling non-aggression pacts and agreements that have large impacts on the entire game. It's moments like these--especially when actual war begins--that bring EVE to the brief attention of the public eye, as ships that were the work of countless hours of countless numbers of people are destroyed in massive battles.

Because EVE has, since 2003, been run on one single, continuous server. Everything is permanent. There is no reset, no game saves, no way of recovering what has been destroyed. (There is insurance.)

It's in these and other ways -- the tangible interaction of players, the high stakes, the grind and dedication and focus required to rise in the game, the permanence and risk, subtle but always there -- that make the game most like real life. There are histories written, stories told of the wars of years past, and the rise and fall of power.

But because it's still the most like real life, it's also the most boring. Most of the game is a grind, either mining for materials, buying and selling materials for profit, organizing corporations; hours and hours of work go into this game, but it is not for everyone. It's fascinating, in a way; real life, but with better graphics. I downloaded it; tried it out, but I'm not going to become obsessed with it. I can't say I personally would want to; it's really cool, but I don't have time, and even if I did, would I spend it on EVE? If I wanted to spend so much time on something so realistic, I might as well spend it on real life, if only real life had warp drives.