It's an undeniable fact that the friendships made in eve have a positive impact on its community. We managed to contact Arnor Maximilian shortly after he published his Master thesis in sociology about the impact that EVE Online has on the real world and wanted to share his findings with our amazing capsuleers.

Making ISK in Eve is very easy if you make that your goal. After that goal is established, it just takes a few years to end up with 100's of billions of ISK without much effort. Many ISK making activities in the game can achieve it such as Mining, Mission running, Manufacturing, trading, and so on. EVE Online is widely known for the most expensive Player-vs-Players Wars in the history of MMO gaming, with the Bloodbath of B-R5RB which causes approximately $300,000 (real-life USD) losses to its' participants, and took nearly 21 hours.

Surely many have noticed the popular opinion that computer games affect people inoverall negative way. That gaming has negative effects on academic performance, consumespeoples time and traps them inside this world of imagination. However, the world imaginaryrefers to a place where the players actions would not affect the real world or have any realconsequences. This research paper was aimed to disprove this belief and expose the trulyundenying link between the real world and EVE online. This was done by using sociologicalqualitive research techniques based on several in depth interviews with long term EVE onlineplayers which were coded based on Bourdieu’s sociological theory called theory of practise.Video games have changed drastically over the years like many of our other modernmedia. In the past computer games were simply categorized the same as movies and bookssince they often had simple narrative and the user had no control over the actual story. Pongfor example was developed by Atari 1972 a very simple game where the main goal was toshoot a tiny square past the opponent, claiming a point. The only rules that applied in thisgame were based on the ingame hard code that was unchangeable for the regular user. Thisdefined the separation between the virtual world from the real world. The real world wasmore complicated since the ways people react and behave to different circumstances areunimaginable. Normal people don‘t follow scripts like in the movies or video games, we havecomplicated unpredictable behaviour based on society’s social rules. Rules that are constantlychanging and bending within our social structure.

Now fast forward to the present, where the video games have become online andfilled with people with complicated social rules. The difference between worlds has now beenofficially broken since both worlds have emerged. The way people now play, how they win orreach the games goal has become personalized. A great example of different goals could befound in the interviews. One’s goal could be mining asteroids, controlling a large-scale groupor a small group of pirates, even working the market or focusing industrial work. Butsometimes these goals were simply making friends, or even foes. But still like any other goalpeople need to work towards it, and some people have it easier in a video game because oftheir real-life skills. People can use real life skills to empower their gameplay in the virtual world. Theseskills explained from Bourdieu’s theory of practise and is called sociological, economic,cultural and symbolic capital. Capital in short is what people have access to in life and makesup for what is called habitus which controls how we feel, what we say, what we do and howwe act. It’s our experience throughout life come to one shaped by our environment like familyand friends, gender, education, location, school, work etc. This capital was analyzed in theinterviews and categorized as external and internal capital which was the main concept thatestablished the link between the real world and EVE online.

The external capital stands for the real-world resources the players have while theinternal capital stands for the ingame resources they have. The players can use theseresources to affect their gameplay and the ingame world. A good example of a player usinghis external social capital within the video game is where he joins EVE Online with real lifefriends. He then gets advantage over those players without friends. Of course, this is not theonly thing that matter in the game world, just an example of a small advantage. The playermight not even be thinking about this advantage. They might just want to enjoy the companyand the social aspect, but reaching that goal would still be based on their real-life socialcapital.In many cases the social experience is the players biggest enjoyment of the EVE online.The interviewees described how the people they played with were more than just names onships. They were real people whom they cared greatly for. Many had made very close andserious relationship over many years. Here‘s an example of a player describing his experience:

We have made tons of really good friends and it‘s just awesome, and maybe not peopleyou meet every day. But there‘s always this connection, a bond between you and the playersyou‘ve met, EVE is just something that connects us. ... I remember especially during oneChristmas, we were just hanging out on skype playing EVE together for hours and hours. It’sone of the most fantastic experiences I‘ve ever had. ... People were sharing things, helpingeach other and for me, it was more about the company than anything else.

The players were in many cases the main reason why people kept on playing EVEOnline. The game was basically the glue that kept their virtual social world together, theirinternal social capital if you will. Internal social capital is however not always something just stuck in the video game world. In every interviewees case they had developed a friendshipthat translates over to the real world. Sometimes the friendship brought on some economicbenefits, like an access to friend’s house for vacation in another country. In an extreme casea friendship might even end up in marriage.

The second capital discussed in the paper was the economic capital, which usuallyrepresented currency ingame called ISK, or real-life currency. The movement between theinternal and external economic capital was discussed by the interviewees in couple of ways.First regarding people selling ingame items for real life currency and vice versa. However, thisof course is highly illegal in most video games and will result in a ban. The other movementwas quite simple, and it was the exchange for real life money for ingame time or otherbenefits through CCP.

The third capital is cultural capital and was mostly analyzed in the players behaviourand what kind of people they liked to play with. Most people play with those who speak thesame language. But the difference between players nationality can appear in more than justthe language. They can have different social rules of what might be right or wrong, how tobehave in certain situations, what is socially acceptable and what’s considered taboo. Thereal-life personality translates into the game and can affect what kind of group playerbecomes a part of. But of course, like other capital, people ingame can affect the real worldin more ways than just perspective, both in a negative and positive way.

The fourth and last capital is symbolic capital. It appeared when people and groupsgot recognized in the game, even got famous for certain actions. However, their repetitioncould be both negative and positive, based on perspective. This symbolic capital could evenreach out of the game, where certain players got known in the real world. The intervieweesalso mention some examples of where external symbolic capital had moved into the game.There some celebrities started to play EVE Online got instantly known and respected by thecommunity.The final conclusion of the paper closed the loop on how EVE online and the real worldconnects trough the actions of the players. They have the capability to use both internal andexternal capital to affect their ingame and their real-world surroundings in a major way byplaying the game. A great example is EVE fanfest which is a huge festival which effects the real society in Iceland in a major positive way. The festival is something wouldn‘t be possiblewithout the influence from the virtual world of EVE Online world and its player base. But inthe end, for so many players EVE Online is something that’s been a part of their life for a verylong time. Trough the game they made some serious social connections that translated overto the real world and sometimes not. But for them and so many more, EVE Online is so muchmore than just a game.

Real Life Money In The Game Eve Onlin

Real Life Money In The Game Eve Online