Geekspace for Women

Posted by ubergeeke on May 7th, 2008 in blogpost

Where are the women of Eve Online ?

Like any MMORPG, it’s difficult to find women who are playing because you can’t tell by a character name. You have to ask. Who flies around space asking, "Hi! Are you a girl?"

I’ve been playing Eve Online for over a year now, and my friends are sick of hearing about how cool I think it is. Furthermore, I can’t get any of them to play. They don’t have a buff enough system for game play. (Build a new one!) They’re afraid they’ll get sucked in. (Come on! It’s a *game*. You’re *supposed* to get sucked in!) It costs too much. (The cost of a week’s worth of espresso drinks, maybe. But coffee is *bad* for you.)

Those are the gripes that drive me nuts, because they’re basically all just code for "I don’t want to play". I could understand that, if folks would just come out and say it. I don’t want to play World of Warcraft , no matter how awesome people tell me it is. Not my thing. If I want to hack mythical creatures to little pieces, I’ll play Diablo II .

What’s not to love about Eve? The graphics are beautiful. The game itself is organic, and one of the few games that I know of where you can change aspects of your character type after game creation. Translation: if you create a warrior in another game, you’re a warrior until you completely rebuild a new character. In the last year of playing Eve, I’ve been a steady miner, changed my mind and decided to chase down pirates, run a ton of missions, opted out of that to go into item production, traded in the market, etc. Whatever I’m in the mood for. Tons of variety - this game never gets boring.

On the other hand, the major gripe I hear is that the tutorial is a pain, and the game has a steep learning curve. This is completely valid. I agree that the tutorial is time consuming (it can take three hours or so to get through it; took me longer because I didn’t do it in one sitting) but in the long run, it’s time well invested. And don’t skip it: my brother got bored with it, left the hangar in his newbie ship and just started shooting things. Unfortunately, he chose to shoot at a station, and Concord blew him to little tiny bits. The tutorial is challenging, but it’s nowhere near the worst tutorial I’ve ever endured. That title goes to Assassin’s Creed, whose tutorial drove me so crazy I nearly broke the damned console.

Still haven’t sweet-talked you into trying it? Here’s a bonus:

For women who’ve never played Eve Online, or played and then decided to quit mid-tutorial, I offer you a bribe. (It’s not working on my friends, so now, in true XPrize fashion, I offer it to the world.) This is the first step in the process of getting women together who are playing this game.

Sign up for a trial period, and get through the tutorial. Then come back here and email me at ubergeeke@dotfiveone.com (or via the email form on the Contact page). Give me your character name and I will send you 1 million ISK (in game credits) just for trying it out for those two weeks. The only thing I ask is that if after those two weeks you decide you don’t want to play anymore, you either give the credits back or give them away. I don’t care where they go, as long as they go to someone who will use them.

This is a good deal: new characters only get about 5000 ISK at the start of the game (though they may have upped it since I signed on), and you can lose that quickly. I’m offering *each woman* who joins up a million iskies.

Join me on the dark side!