EVE Online embraces democracy

By Oli Welsh Published 20 March, 2008

Player Council announced, elections in May.

EVE Online developer CCP has announced that the game is to become the first virtual world to be run by a democratically-elected governing body of players.

The Council of Stellar Management will be composed of nine representatives and five reserve members, who will be elected for six-month terms. The call for candidacy has already begun, with elections due to happen between the 5th and 19th of May.

The Council will govern the economy and society of EVE Online's world, and well as acting as a link between players and CCP. Elected representatives will also work with CCP on the future evolution of the game.

"EVE Online has evolved from an MMORPG to a virtual world with a virtual society. It is our role as its caretakers to evolve our approach as well, through economics research, political science or other aspects of operations or development," said CCP boss Hilmar Petursson.

"A democratic election process of representatives is one of mankind's greatest inventions. We are bringing a version of that to EVE now with hope of it allowing us to expand EVE Online in a similar way to what we've seen on Earth." Noble sentiments indeed.

The press release also notes that EVE Online's subscriber base is "nearing the quarter-million mark" and claims that this makes it the "second largest MMO in the US and Europe". Budding virtual politicians should note that the game recently launched on Steam.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • AHiFi #1 4 years ago

    Got a trial to play of this. My mate plays it...currently in a fight with the Russians (Red Alliance). They sound dodgy...server exploits from the sounds of it. Hopefully this will clean them up.

  • FWB #2 4 years ago

    Doesn't surprise me that Russians are underhanded.

  • Macross #3 4 years ago

    Hah they might exploit things (allegedly) where they can but they are good to have on your side when you fight with them! (which i have in the past :p) mmm titans.

  • erp #4 4 years ago

    The game doesn't appeal to me personally, but this is pretty interesting news nonetheless.

  • skillian #5 4 years ago

    Me too - I don't think it's something I'd play, but I love reading about it and the whole idea behind it fascinates me.

  • Lorka #6 4 years ago

    Eve Online's really leading the way in some respects. I wouldn't be surprised if other MMOs take inspiration from this to some, controlled degree. The ways in which we're recreating life virtually are evolving.

  • Nithron #7 4 years ago

    It does seem that the guys at CCP put a lot of effort into really progressing the MMO genre, while WoW is really just retreading old ground.

    Retreading it really well, mind you.

  • neuroniky #8 4 years ago

    I've recently started playing Eve again, and its a strange game for me. It is a decent to great space MMO gamewise, but its the metagame that makes it so fascinating. It's probably the only true MMO RPG I've played, role playing is not only fun, it is a necessity to really understand all the fuss about it.

    Only, I can't get into it. I can observe all the things happening around me, and read all sorts of interesting posts on the forum, but still everything seems detached from my ingame experience. Probably I just need to get into an active corporation fast.

  • Macross #9 4 years ago

    Yeah a good corp is all important, if you have a crap one, the game is crap, if you have a good one the game is good. Simple as that.

  • ZuluHero #10 4 years ago

    That seems very black and white - surely a game should cater to all its players?

  • loopy #11 4 years ago

    "That seems very black and white - surely a game should cater to all its players?"

    I think that maybe that's the game's strength, and the one thing that the WoW detractors point to when they want to argue why it fails as a true MMORPG these days.

    In WoW now, unlike the early days, it's ridiculously easy to get pretty good epic items (armor/ weapons) for not a huge amount of effort, whereas in the early days you knew that people who had aquired epic armor and weapons had faced some of the toughest challenges in the game and won, and it did earn them a certain amount of respect from other players (I wasn't one of those epic-clad players before anyone starts pointing fingers).

    I guess that is what works for EVE right now, the fact that to get anywhere significant in it, you have to earn the right to it, and with that comes a certain amount of satisfaction, and the respect of your fellow players.

    I tried it once, but couldn't get into it, but then I didn't really give it long enough, and the lure of WoW was still there (this may not last much longer however). I may go back and give it another go at some point. As someone above posted, it seems to be a fascinating game, but incredibly hard to get into properly, but then that's where the rewards seemingly lie, in the willingness to put in the effort needed to reap said rewards.
    Edited by 2 at 20/03/08 @ 14:20

  • gmmonkey #12 4 years ago

    That's what attracted me to eve. Not everyone can be on top. There's more of a finite amount of resources in comparison to wow. I like wow but it's not as competitive as eve. In eve the "epics" or "officer mods", which they're know as, spawn a finite amount of times. Basically, only a new one comes into the game after another one is destroyed. So they're emore unique. WOWs stuff is not very epic by definition, when everyone has it, or can access it.

  • SirVimes #13 4 years ago

    This is exciting for all MMO's, not just the in-game element and the havoc that will bring, but also for the developer - gaming community relationship. Will developers be able to ride the back of this beast they are unleashing? Will they ration petitions too them? Seems we are seeing a change in ideas for the way devs allow games to evolve, with more customisation possible and developments like these election or Beyond Protocols Senate. This plans to allocate seats, therefore power, by virtue of in game assets and power. This should prove highly charged with the developers emphasis on resource depletion and the increased emphasis on dynamic play this brings about.

    In Fragmented Galaxy, the developers plan to PLAY the Sol government and guide the game from within.Floating ideas like game object manifestations of admin tools for banning, etc. Invasion could therefore be possible with a gamer run government able to influence game development - who knows. Defacto War: Commander in Chief sells parcels of the US virtually for players who can build up a community or army. Here the developers essentially begin the game running the Federal Government and, again, can be overthrown and replaced by players.

    All these MMORTS games are innovative examples of such interactions and all exist within a persistent game.

    This could certainly spawn a new form of news, with game/real world content being sought after. Increased realife online socialising and game events being newsworthy and desired will maybe spawn a form of virtual news service. Increasingly confusing to some I imagine lol

  • Ginger #14 4 years ago

    THis council has been in the works for a year, and there's a lot of cynicism as to whether it will actually have any meaningful impact. Also, the server exploits have been going on for a long while and if I remember rightly (not entirely likely) it wasn't started by RA, but by a UK based alliance in an effort to defend their station at which a titan was being built.

    And it's not provable whether it's deliberate or not, but the main aspect is that the game prioritises in game movement between systems over logins, so when you get >700 people in a system to crash the node, the main attack force is in neighbouring systems. Once the crash happens and the node comes back up, people start jumping in from neighbouring systems, the entire defending force is stuck trying to log in and the system is effectively undefended.

    All caused by a 10 year old server architecture that doesn't allow the systems to scale across more than one node.

  • Hardin #15 4 years ago

    Well I made it. Beaten into second place by just 50 votes ;-)

    Let's hope we can make it work now!