Gadgetopia

Bad Crazy in Internet Space: This is a great wrap up of the supposed insanity of the EVE Online MMORPG.

We’ve discussed EVE before, referring to an epic story of orchestrated betrayal that read like a profane spy novel. This post goes further, however, offering anecdotes about how Eve apparently regularly crosses the line into real-life for many of its players.

Seriously, read this:

I was approached by one of the leaders of Red Alliance to help [destroy this ship], but almost immediately we were down the rabbit hole. Much to my surprise, the RA director didn’t want in-game information from me; he wanted us to use the forensic resources of our intelligence agency to trace down The Enslaver’s home address. At a coordinated time, armed with this information, a RA member would apparently cut the power to The Enslaver’s house in the real world, and in EVE a RA capital fleet would assault the abruptly pilotless Titan.

[…] CCP [the makers of EVE Online] often touts this sort of thing with the bland marketing lingo of ‘player generated content.’ What that actually means is that you get to share a galaxy with Russian aluminum magnates, French-Indonesian nightclub-owning hackers, self-aggranziding ‘spymasters,’ and people who will cut the power lines to your house to destroy your internet spaceship. There’s something deliciously addictive about the sweeping, endemic insanity, one of the ever-present yet rarely remarked upon facets of this most unhinged of MMOs.