EVE Online Makes the BBC

The defeat of BoB in EVE Online was big enough to make it to the BBC it seems.

The story is short and to the point.  The best quote for me was from Mittani:

“We don’t have any advantages, so we can’t obey your stupid ‘space bushido’. We’re going to spy, we’re going to use defectors, we’re going to lie, cheat, steal and be bastards.”

Space Bushido!

But can you say “bastards” on the BBC, or is that reserved for the web site?

Thanks to my friend Steven for IM’ing me with the link!

Gamer Social Networking?

I was looking at my page at GAX Online [long since gone, click links at your peril] the other day and was trying to find the point.

I mean, I get the idea of social networking.  I have a profile on Linked In, a social networking site focused on professional relationships.  I am linked to a whole pile of friends and co-workers and I can see where they are working now and what they are up to whenever the urge strikes me.

And that makes sense to me and because I am me.  For the former, as I said, I can keep track of friends and have a method to get in touch with them, at least so long as their profile is sufficiently up to date.  And for the latter, well, my friends tend to be people with whom I do things on a regular basis and, having had a job since I was 13, there is no more regular group than my coworkers.

But other services and social sites, things like Facebook, Plaxo, or MySpace, don’t do much for me.  There isn’t anything there for me.

But GAX Online is gamer oriented, so I thought I should give it a try.  I do spend a bit of time playing online games after all. (*listens for vocal comment from wife*)  And GAX was put together by the guys from Massively Online Gamer, so I felt I ought to support their endeavor in return for all the entertainment they have provided.

I signed up early one, got my account, created my page, put little bits of information about myself on it, uploaded a picture, added an RSS feed from my blog, asked to be friends with a couple of people, accepted friend invites from a few others, joined some groups, and generally poked around.

And that was about it.

I checked in regularly at first, looked into groups, followed a few of the blogs being run on the site, and watched what was going on.  But over time I began checking in less and less frequently.  Some things I kept up with via RSS, like Brent’s Other Blog back when he was having fun with it and telling people things like their blog probably sucks or that perhaps Tolkien and/or Halo are not that great.  But then he stopped doing that.

It is not that GAX Online is dead.  Every time I go there, activity is apparent, I just have no enthusiasm for it.  It does not seem to be for me.

As a comparison, in a fit of gamer social networking enthusiasm brought on by the launch of GAX Online, I also signed up for GuildCafe just for comparison’s sake.  But GuildCafe stuck even less firmly with me, no doubt because I didn’t even know a half dozen people to put on a friend’s list.  I kept up with that site so little that while they changed their name to GamerDNA in April of 2008, I didn’t even notice until September, and I am not sure I made the mental connection that one was the other until even more recently.  The triumph of apathy.

So there I am.

But just because I can’t find any compelling reason to visit these sites on a regular basis doesn’t mean I know everything that is there.

So my question of the week is what gamer social networking site do you use, if any, and what keeps you coming back to it?  What makes a site like worth it to you?

Or not worth it, if you prefer.