My Favourite Eve Videos

I wish I was artistic. I really do. Unfortunately I've been cursed with, as per the Captain Edmund Blackadder quote, "...all the artistic talent of a cluster of colour-blind hedgehogs..... in a bag". I can do the odd half decent pic once in a blue moon (the dancer in the captains quarters in a previous blog turned out better than I expected but that was more luck than talent) but generally I'm not the "arty" type. I'd love to do videos. I've even had a go, but they are not up to scratch. So I am relegated to watching Eve videos on YouTube and muttering "I wish I could do that!".

The Eve Online community at large has this amazing ability to create Eve related "art" which is uncommon compared to other games. Why does Eve have this when many other games don't. I've run a few picture competitions in corp in the past. One category for serious "artistic" Eve screenshots/pictures and one for funny Eve pictures. Obviously the funny category was the most popular and we got some truly amazing entries. Many were just slightly edited Eve shots with a caption referring to an in-corp joke (like the 8-year veteran CEO who kept getting podded as he didn't know about the "warp to 0" button in the top right and was always busy right clicking the context menu to try and warp out) and some were lovingly crafted Fail/demotivational/your doing it wrong style master-pieces.

Before I show some of my favorite videos I'd like to throw some ideas out there to why we have so many people in the Eve community who can make these things.

The Eve Online Learning Curve of DOOM - Eve is not (or was not) an easy game to get into. CCP have been putting a lot of time and effort into making the "New Player Experience" better. However, I found it, and I'm sure many others found it, to be a challenging game to get into (then again that was a few years ago, I hope it's better now). I remember my first experiences of PvP. I was in my pod more than a combat ship! Eve is also a harsh gaming world where your hard work can be lost in an instant. People who can stick at this game and get their head around the mechanics obviously can use the same attributes in other areas of their life. Eve takes work and a little dedication to get into and art definitely requires the same attributes.

Maturity - I'm talking age here, not actually maturity. I mean log onto voice comms for Shadows of the Federation sometimes and you'd think we're a bunch of teenagers, not mostly a collection of late 20's and 30-something people many with families! It is said the human male gets to the age of twelve and suddenly they are interested in cars and boobies and basically don't move on from there. However the average physical age in Eve is 31. We oldies tend to have attention spans superior to your average cat.... or teenage gamer!

Sci-Fi Geeks - Come on, everyone who plays Eve has a little Sci-Fi geek inside them. And we Sci-Fi geeks can be creative... with Sci-Fi obviously! When you think of fan fiction, fan art and the like are you thinking about games like Call of Duty? No? Battlefield: Bad Company 2? Portal? Minecraft? Civilisation V? No, no, no and no. You're either thinking sci-fi with aliens and spaceships or fantasy with wizards and dragons etc.

Eve Online as a Hobby - Generally a lot of players see Eve more than just a computer game. Its a hobby, its an addiction, its more than just gaming. For a start you are reading this Eve blog! I'm writing it. This weekend there are people in Las Vega's attending a mini-fanfest. Yes, Eve is so much more than just a run-of-the-mill computer game.

Anyway, here are a few of my favourite Eve Online videos which make me smile whilst also muttering "I wish I could do that..."


This is War.
I love this song so any video that uses it gets my vote! The author has taken CCP promo video extracts and edited them together to the tune from 30 Seconds from Mars. The finished article looks and sounds great....

I love New Eden.
If anyone has Sky TV in the UK you must have seen this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC1yLD7R0ZU advert for the Discovery Channel (I read on Wikipedia it was a worldwide campaign so you may have seen it elsewere). It was on every 10 minutes before I left the UK and was driving me completely and utterly "bum-de-ar-da"! The Test Alliance parody always makes me smile :)

CCP - HTFU
So CCP got some flak about making a rap video rather than fixing bugs. Seriously guys, erm, HTFU? Can you ever imagine Blizzard doing one of these? Warning - not safe for work or little ones!

CCP - The Butterfly Effect
OK, so we all know this has never happened in game and is one of those "Well... it could.... technically......" but I feel it's a great advert for the game and gives people who don't play Eve a perspective of how big this game actually is. I use it when chatting to people who have never heard of Eve to give them a very quick introduction. The latest one from CCP, I Was There, is also good, but doesn't portray the sheer vastness of the game like this one does. Oh and the reference to chaos theory makes it all the more geeky ;)

Clear Skies I, II and III
What can I say. Absolutely fantastic! A film set in the Eve universe using the Eve-O client for the in-space bits and the Halflife Engine to do the "in person" bits with the two merging in places using some blue-screen tech. The main website is www.clearskiesthemovie.com and the video linked below is the trailer for part III. OK it's not a Hollywood blockbuster, but the fact that a guy was able to make this series at home is mind boggling. Download the HD version of III and watch it on a 42" HDTV. I did, much to the annoyance of the wife! And remember.... IT'S HOTDROP O'Clooooooooooooooooooock!

Any of the Eve "Downfall" Parodies.
In case you haven't seen it, I haven't, "Downfall" is a movie about the end of World War II. There is a scene where the German leadership are in the bunker and Hitler learns that, well, he's fracked. And thus starts a quality emo-rage in German. There have been many parodies of this, just simply adding subtitles, from Usan Bolt breaking the 100m record to the Eve Online speed nerf. Oh and I've also got to add another more recent one. This is obviously from the same movie but a different scene. "CCP" try to batphone in another DoS attack to stop the "NeX/P2W/monocle riots". Warning - Probably only funny if you don't speak German. Also subtitles are a bit mature with some Effin and Jeffin.

SoTF Recruitment 2011
Made by the fair hand of our very own Eelis Kiy. I think one of our corpies summed it up best... She captured SoTF in a nutshell. Drink and explosions!

Please post comments below linking your favorite Eve video's if you think I'm made some glaring ommisions! I'd love to see them.

EDIT -

Damn you Eelis! Damn you......