A History of the Great Empires of EVE Online

Andrew Groen, who has written for Wired and the late Penny Arcade Report, has decided to take on the history of EVE Online.

In order to fund this project, he has launched a Kickstarter campaign. Of course he has.

The campaign is to fund the printing costs of such a book. He needs $12,500 to print the minimum run of 1,000 copies. Given that he is already past the $9,00 mark, just hours after the campaign opened, it looks like he will make his goal.

His introductory video, which is something that Kickstarter really pressures you to have, is actually worth a watch. WordPress.com won’t let me embed video from Kickstarter (they only like YouTube) so here is an awkward screen grab from it.

Andrew tells his story…

He has been working on the history for six months and, while there is work still to be done, he is now setting himself up with an eye towards printing and distribution.

The book itself will focus on null sec, where the wars of sovereignty have created so many stories. From the Kickstarter details:

This book will take readers from the very first day the servers switched on to the formation of the first regional alliances, through the Great Wars of 2004, 2007, and 2008, and into the modern era of huge power blocs of coalitions. It’s a journey through the politics, warfare, and culture that have shaped Eve into the game we read about in the headlines today.

This is, of course, the part of EVE that separates it from so many other games. Raids, battlegrounds, quest chains, or even one-time events like GuildWars 2 has run for the last year, don’t garner the same sort of attention as the ebb and flow of politics and war in the outer ring of stars in New Eden.

Interestingly, for the “Risks” section of Kickstarter information, there is none of the usual “things might go south” or “I might just walk away with your money” sorts of statements. Instead, Andrew seems more worried about the nature of the content he is trying to produce.

Deception: I’ve been warned by members of the Eve community that there are some who will attempt to deceive me into writing their own version of events to make their organizations look better. The Eve wikis are proof of this fact as they’re often rife with hyper-partisan history. The only way to counteract this is through extensive reporting and interviewing. Only by getting multiple perspectives on situations can you dig through partisanship. I’ve dedicated myself to doing dozens of interviews to make sure all information is as balanced as possible.

Jargon: When discussing the high-level events of Eve it’s easy to get bogged down in jargon that the average person – and even many committed Eve players – don’t understand. Some accounts of Eve history are so riddled by jargon that they’re illegible to anyone without years of in-game experience. In my work, I always place an emphasis on making sure everything is understandable for everyone without dumbing things down or making writing boring for experienced players. To that end, I’ll be working with a team of editors from both Eve and non-Eve backgrounds to ensure I’m getting a variety of input before publication.

We shall see how that works out. That he already has endorsement quotes from The Mittani and Helicity Boson might make the first goal a bit hard to swallow.

The Kickstarter itself has only two tiers. For a $10 pledge you will get a .pdf or Kindle version of the final book. For $25 you will get a softcover book and a .pdf or Kindle version, though you’ll have to kick in a bit more for shipping outside of the US. I am in for the softcover book.

The campaign is set to run for 30 days, finishing up on Sunday, May 25th.

Addendum:

Well, that didn’t take long.