EVE Online is a socially complex, science-fiction-themed universe simulation and massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) first released in 2003. Notorious for its colossal battles and ruthless player culture, it has hundreds of thousands of players today. In this fascinating book, scholars, players, and EVE’s developer (CCP Games) examine the intricate world of EVEOnline--providing authentic accounts of lived experience within a game with more than a decade of history and millions of “real” dollars behind it.

Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business features contributions from outstanding EVE Online players, such as The Mittani, an infamous member of the game’s community, as well as academics from around the globe. They cover a wide range of subjects: the game’s technicalities and its difficulty; its projection of humanity’s future in space; the configuration of its unique, single-server game world; the global nature of warfare in its “nullsec” territory (and how EVE players have formed a global concept of time); stereotypes of Russian players; espionage play; in-game memorials to Vile Rat (aka U.S. State Department official Sean Smith, murdered in the 2012 Benghazi attack); its gendered playing experience; and CCP Games’ relationship with players; and its history and legacy.

Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business is a must for EVE Online players interested in a broad perspective on their all-consuming game. It is also accessible to scholars, game designers seeking to understand and replicate the successful aspects unique to EVE Online, and even those who have never played this notoriously complex game.

Contributors: William Sims Bainbridge, National Science Foundation; Chribba; Jedrzej Czarnota; Kjartan Pierre Emilsson; Dan Erdman; Rebecca Fraimow; Martin R. Gibbs, U of Melbourne; Catherine Goodfellow; Kathryn Gronsbell; Keith Harrison; Kristin MacDonough; Mantou (Zhang Yuzhou); Oskar Milik; The Mittani (Alexander Gianturco); Joji Mori; Richard Page; Christopher Paul, Seattle U; Erica Titkemeyer, U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Nick Webber, Birmingham City U.

Marcus Carter is a research fellow in the Microsoft Research Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces at the University of Melbourne.

Kelly Bergstrom is a postdoctoral researcher at York University.

Darryl Woodford is is a visiting fellow with the Digital Media Research Centre and the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology.

"This work serves as an excellent consideration of the world of EVE Online for any researcher."—American Journal of Play

"Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business is one of the most comprehensive collections of works on EVE Online ever produced, but written in language that is accessible to the uninitiated reader. It captures a side of EVE that is often lost in academic writings, and each chapter stands as a snapshot in time of one of the world’s most unique and well-studied massively multiplayer online games."—Brendan Drain, MMO expert

"A book as unique as EVE itself—it will make you think, help you understand a game you may never play, and afford a glimpse onto a less traveled byway of the gaming universe. The roster of authors is delightfully varied, with contributions from archivists, developers, players, PhD students, and researchers, broadening inquiry into a thoughtful, engaging treatment of a cherished game."—Bonnie Nardi, author of My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of “World of Warcraft”*\

"By addressing everything from collaboration to conflict, from economics to embodiment, the authors of Internet Spaceships Are Serious Business use the specific case study of EVE Online to investigate how emerging digital technologies reshape selfhood and society."—Tom Boellstorff, author of Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human