EVE General Discussion

i just finished watching it. overall, i thought it was pretty solid.

the only negative aspect was the sound recording - it was awful. they actually resorted to inserting english subtitles for people speaking english.

Seriously? Then I may look at it, I just started watching the documentary, didn't get sh-t of what the first guy was saying and figured I would wait for a subtitled version.

i was speaking only about the quality of the sound. i thought the overall production level was high, but i was surprised they didn't care enough to rent or purchase some decent recording equipment.

It should never bother you at all. In fact, be grateful for it because it shall forever be used to remind CCP that they should never take anything for granted especially their own player base. I was there in 2011 when it all went down in Jita 4-4, when the Fearless/Greed is Good? leak emerged, when the annoyingly defensive dev blog about $1,000 jeans was posted by CCP, when people reported that parts of their hardware were burning out because of the extremely, and poorly, optimized Captain's Quarters they were forced to go into upon docking.

I found a Guinness Book of World Records for 2011 (Gamer's Edition) which featured CCP as breaking the world record of having the MOST NUMBER OF PLAYERS THREATENING TO WALK OUT. This is no joke. I read the book and saw it written there at a local Barns & Noble store back in 2012.

Here is a link to a Massively Article to back up what I said.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/15/achievement-unlocked-a-look-at-the-guinness-world-records-of-on/



Not exactly the kind of PR CCP was looking for, was it?

Thanks for all the positive comments, I'll make sure to pass them onto the team who are very happy to have passed 30,000 YouTube views in the first 48 hours. :)

I wrote a blogpost to provide some insight into the ATOIS team's journey. You can read the illustrated and linked version on my blog, but in case you were interested, here are the words:

Behind the Scenes of A Tale of Internet Spaceships

The indie documentary examining the MMO EVE Online that began in early 2013 as an ambitious but underfunded Indiegogo crowdfunded project was finally released over the weekend. The team of Swedish media students behind it are still reeling with surprise at gaining over 30,000 views in its first 48 hours.

Petter Mårtensson, Philip Raivander and Elin Thedin wanted to find an interesting take on the unique relationship between CCP and and the EVE playerbase during a visit to the 10th anniversary celebrations at Fanfest in Iceland last year. When the team interviewed folk about the so-called 'Summer of Rage', the topic invariably drew impassioned responses and opinion, moreso than any other subject - in no small part because events surrounding it had a more significant impact on CCP employees and players than any other event in EVE's history.

It was evident that it was a story that wanted to be told and, despite some recent negative comments regarding the the decision to focus on the events surrounding the Incarna release, I think it was entirely the right choice as The Tale to reflect the highs and lows of CCP's relationship with their Internet Spaceship community.

Supporting the ATOIS Team

Of course, I'm a bit biased given that I've been a quasi-team member throughout much of the production, although I've been clear in my mind that it was entirely their project. I was just grateful for the opportunity to help out.

My involvement has been an enjoyable, slow-burning experience which started some time before Fanfest 2013. It was an exciting and ambitious concept led by the three Swedes including my sometime fellow EVE player and journalist friend Petter Mårtensson.

Somehow, I became charged with bugging various Fanfest-bound EVE personalities until they agreed to be interviewed by the team and I recall Fanfest 2013 being an exhausting experience. The entire time in Reykjavik I rushed around like a man possessed trying to make things happen, not only for the ATOIS team, but also for another documentary team lead by Keza MacDonald (then of IGN, now Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku UK) and also fulfilling my obligations as a correspondent for GameSkinny. Somewhere in all that I was trying to be an enthusiastic EVE player and catch up with friends too.

With the prerequisite Fanfest hangover and 36 hours of footage in the can, I parted ways with the ATOIS team. I returned to the UK and they headed back to Sweden to embark on their mammoth task of reviewing footage and moulding a coherent story from the endless talking heads. From afar, I provided moral support and rough copy reviews as well as research and writing services as required. I wrote the narration ably delivered by CSICON podcasting mogul Breki Tomasson (who previously starred in an EVE audio drama I wrote a few years ago) and am particularly proud of the (admittedly slightly cheesy) ‘...like Wall Street, when Jita sneezes, all of New Eden catches a cold and when Jita burns, everyone feels the heat.’

An Ambitious Challenge

The original hope was to have the finalised film ready for an exclusive premiere at Fanfest 2014, however the team's ambition proved to be one that required countless man-hours which needed to be squeezed in around their study and work duties. It became clear that to do an hour-long film justice, the Fanfest deadline was going to have to slip.

Further challenges arose from the fact that the $3000 raised had meant that equipment sacrifices had to be made, especially with the echoing background acoustics of a space-nerd filled Harpa centre often polluting the interview audio.

But there were some great moments and it’s been killing me not being able to reveal them for so long; Mark ‘Seleene’ Heard’s tone-changing ‘giant mistake’ line, ‘Crazy Uncle Unifex’ Jon Lander’s stage dive, Alex ‘The Mittani’ Gianturco’s unsettling habit of looking down the barrel of the camera, the hilariously 80s A-Team CSM montage and many more.

Sweden Bound

However, the team persevered and on the 11th July 2014, they held their premiere in their home city of Malmö. I was fortunate enough to attend and unfortunate enough to have been press-ganged into their last-minute frantic preparations.

On the morning of the premiere, final touches were still being added to the film. I joined my host Petter on a cross-town trek to Philip's apartment where the glassy-eyed video editor had been working on the film through most of the night.

As Petter and Philip reviewed his latest amendments, it was amusing to note the familiarity and fondness with which they discussed their interviewees. 'Brendan [Drain of Massively] is a lovely guy, but his beard is a ***** to colour-balance,' he told me. Philip explained that he had spent so much time working with images of the featured individuals that he feels as if he knows them and he's worried that if he ever met them again he'd freak them out by being over-familiar whilst they wouldn't have a clue who he was.

The final cut seemed to take an age to render and compress, with hours of progress-bar watching leading me to make the unkind remark that it was starting to feel like EVE gameplay. Eventually we headed out to the venue of the premiere to set up.

"Crazy Uncle Unifex" lol - now that you mention it, he did seem to have a bit of a slightly mad uncle aura going on at times...

Probably safe to assume film students might learn a lot about that field making this. Good. It turned out well.