(I was going to hold off on posting this till closer to the due date. However, seeing some of the posts already being made, I’ve chosen to throw it out there now for your reading pleasure so as not to seem like I’m stealing from anyone else!)
Welcome to another installment of the EVE Blog Banter, a recurring EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux, which invites EVE bloggers to address a common topic for a period of one week. Posts run the gamut: short, long, humorous, serious, and everywhere in between, but always fun to read! This month's banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks: "What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?"
For a sci-fi MMO, Eve certainly stands out at the top. It’s large, it’s versatile, and it offers a wealth of paths for those who like to play the game their way. You can be a pirate. You can be a miner. You can even be the next Emperor Palpatine of Nullsec if you have the drive (and a little Jedi magic wouldn’t hurt). But yet, if you’re the great emperor looking to find your perfect empress….well I hope you’re gay. Like, in the homosexual way gay. Because otherwise you’d better really flash them pretty teeth and hit the gym if you want to compete with the likes of Mr. Roc Weiler, who one would believe already has the edge on the only all-girl pirate corporation I know of, the Hellcats.
But why is this so? How is a man supposed to strive to be the next Captain Kirk of Eve, exploring the depths of space, wooing every gorgeous woman he meets along the way….when there is so few women to be found? What could Eve offer that would finally bring those women out of the shrouded nebulas to once more mingle amongst the stars with the rest of “man” kind. One would think the female population to be just as rare and mysteriously reclusive as those creepy Jovians!
But alas! There may be a cyno beacon in the distance after all and they call it Incarna.
Okay, so no. It’s nothing really ground breaking. Nothing extraordinarily original or highly complex. In fact, it’s probably going to be like 90% of the answers to this challenging question. I mean, I thought about saying that CCP should give you the ability to make more attractive male characters (lord knows how freakishly ugly or hideous most the characters are) but that just wouldn’t leave me much room to expand on so….Incarna it is! Oh, and for those who don’t know, Incarna is an upcoming release that good ole CCP has been haunting us with for sometime now, never really writing on veldspar when that will be. I mean seriously! Maybe if they’d just hire Chreeba? ….. just sayin…
But anyways… sit down for a second and let me tell you why Eve needs this. Why I think CCP needs to push themselves hard to realize this goal. And let me tell you how it relates to the female population.
I don’t want to throw all women into a single box and claim that all women are the same. If that were so, based on current statistics, there would be NO women in Eve. (thank god for cloning else the human race would be doomed!) So obviously there is some key ingredient that Eve is missing. Something that would bring in all those ladies New Eden is currently not seeing….which obviously means I’m excluding all those exotic dancers I know you guys are carrying around in your cargo holds! I believe the missing ingredient is what I’ll call Social Character Immersion; the ability to actually BE your character as you interact with your other pod pilots. The ability to see who it is you’re talking to and actually feel like your talking to them. The ability to dress and fit your character to represent your mood or just who you are.
Men in general are highly competitive. There is always a level of testosterone willing them to beat the other guy. The bigger the gun. The bigger the muscles. The bigger the….err…well anyways… When a woman comes on scene, she generally has to work extra hard to prove herself capable of competing with “the boys”. (Either that or she’s drooled over so much she ends up being flushed right back out with all the saliva…) With the release of Incarna however, it will open up a whole new world of social interaction, one that I feel will appeal to women much more. No more chatting via the chatbox to some soul you are completely disconnected from. Yes, it’s all bits and bytes, but being able to even see a real humanoid representation of a person is much more pleasurable then just staring at some static photo. Its reasons like this why virtual worlds like The Sims and Second Life are so popular amongst the ladies. Virtual social interaction.
But wait! There’s more!
Not only will Incarna give people the chance for virtual living, but from what I understand, there will also be various mini-games to be played. I can’t even begin to tell you how many women I know that have no real interest in long, heavily involved games. Instead, they’d rather sit down, enjoy some casual conversation, and play silly little games to pass the time. It doesn’t need to be anything too in-depth (and that’s not saying women are air-headed) but just garnering enough attention to keep it interesting. Mix that together with the virtual, social interaction and I can easily smell a win situation.
Incarna will bring a new era to Eve. It will be an entirely new galaxy that I believe will finally bring out the ghosts of New Eden…the true sleeper race. The women of Eve.
So have faith Captain Kirk. There may still be hope for you yet!
And here are just the first 10 of the other Blog Banter participants to get you started:
The Ladies of New Eden
Is EVE a man's world?
Sorry, No Pink Spaceships Here Please
EVE Blog Banter: Chicks 'N Ships
Eve Blog Banter: The Girls Who Fly Spaceships
It’s not about fluffy bloody Kittens people!
Space Boobies Are Bad, m'kay?
Special Blog Banter: I Like Girls
Special Edition or making Eve More Casual
I wish my wife played EVE
For a much more complete list (which appears to be growing daily), check out Crazy Kinux's full list of participants and their entries! And even better, get involved yourself!
Posts
