So you boot the computer, log EvE, do your thing, become rich, log off, do things…
But… What about the player? The point of view of the human playing the game and not that of the character in EvE, what’s going on?
Something about human sensibility, or empathy.
I think i heard it called the player experience before. It’s a thing for game designers.
EDIT: Edited for reading comprehension.
Kids, this is why drugs are bad.
There have been a number of studies for MMOs and how players experience them, I’ve participated in a few surveys myself.
I do think Eve is different (or maybe all sandbox games, idk), for those that “get Eve” their RL experience informs their Eve experience and vice versa. Because of the player driven market and the emphasis on player interaction Eve has a richness that I’ve never seen in any other game.
The keys to this are empathy & antipathy, add to that human capacity for imagination and it is easy to see why some players have been active for 10+ years.
Of course there are some players who just see it as more shiny pixels to blow up or collect. This is why “PvE” & “PvP” have become proxies for these different types of players and the flame wars we see regularly.
Eve could as easily be gang-warfare in a major city, or hunter-gathers vs farmers vs warriors on the stone-age Anatolian plains 4000 years ago, it’s the motivations and actions of real people that drive the narratives.
Personally though, spaceships are cool 
Think about your question in a way that makes you in the control room seat giving the orders and that the pilot you gave those orders too is a bio puppet.
You are able to control many bio puppets, either directly or indirectly such as forcing other seated control room humans to log off in rage or invite said human to become friends with where together both humans; ie you and them can sit in your own control room seat (like you are doing now) to command a fleet full of pilots who are all being controlled by their own human around the world sitting in a similar control room seat to play eve online.
I found nothing weird about your question as the same as I see nothing weird within my reply.
o7
Humans have basic instincts, motives and drives. They are driven by their biological programming and cultural conditioning to find ways to express these drives. They also have wired-in pleasure and accomplishment triggers that directly reward them for implementing certain actions in certain ways.
Beyond the biological, humans appreciate certain intellectual and achievement challenges in ways that don’t appear to be directly linked to evolutionary programming.
So the human is playing EVE because it gives them a sense of empowerment, or achievement, or effectiveness, or of being competitive in a positive way. It gives them a sense of accumulating resources, of accomplishing objectives against adversity, of being recognized for their actions.
Their reward centres are triggered by some of these actions so they are rewarded directly. Their addiction centres are triggered by some, so they are compelled to stay at it. Their need for social hierarchy and finding a place to ‘fit in’, an ‘us’ to belong to and an ‘other’ to eliminate, come into play as well.
For many there’s simply the satisfaction of solving an intellectual puzzle: setting up a decent industry chain, managing a complex trade empire, most efficiently clearing out combat sites, etc. These also feed the “winning, resource gathering, being more competitive than the other guy” needs as well as giving a nice intellectual experience, by the way.
You’ll also notice quite frequently on the forums, the people who play or post only for the opportunity to imply “I’m great and a winner and you’re shyte and a loser”. Because some people really crave the chance to express that in some parts of their life. Usually the ones who can’t express it any other way.
It’s not part of your OP, but in my opinion most of this stuff is what CCP just doesn’t ‘get’ about their player base. They don’t seem to clue in that players play to accomplish their own goals in their own ways, and they pay for the opportunity to do that. CCP seems to have the notion that “players will pay us because we’re the only game in town (so far) for this type of entertainment. All we need to do is channel them into the most expensive parts of the game and we’ll make more money! Hooray for us!”
The only real drivers CCP appears to recognize are “I want to be bigger and have more stuff, so I guess I’ll have to pay for more alts and buy more Plex” and “I already spent a lot of money on this game, I better keep spending money or I’ve wasted it all”.
Instead they need to be thinking “How can we make this game extremely engaging for more players by building as many of the things players are looking to achieve into the game and its’ base mechanics? Then we’ll have a great game that people pay for because they want to play it”.
I wish the devs liked Eve and wanted to play it themselves. I doubt they would have come up with Triglavians in their current form if they really played the game. Such a huge waste of effort.
@ Kezrai Charzai
I read your post. I noted similarities to the capitalist model and a parallel to the time / reward invested in the game.
In truth it’s a fair representation of the player experience. In a quantity model. I was looking for a more quality model.
Now i don’t have and clues where to send it, maybe a new player going through the tutorial. The thrill of discovery. The confusion when faced the sandbox model. Corp operations which i never developed. The whole what to do image.
Then if at all possible a big picture. This is more than my ability to make.
What?
The above post brought to you by the letters “W”, “T” & “F”…
That is how I feel about the whole topic.
So drug abuse is the reason why you all don’t understand the question and its relevance?
Well that’s sad for you but it’s a good thing that you try to warn kids about it…
I believe I (and many others) misunderstood your first post, in that case. I found your first post a bit hard to interpret. What I got out of it was “I understand that player characters behave in a certain way because that’s the game, but what motivates the human to play?”
From your reply, which again is a little hard for me to understand, it seems that what you’re actually asking is “I understand what my player character/pilot is supposed to do (in-game actions), but what is my own set of motivations, as the human controlling the character, supposed to be? As in, what’s in it for me? What direction should I be taking?”
Since this is pretty much just a guess on my part (the posts are oddly worded), before I even attempt to answer it I’ll just wait to see if you think this is closer to your actual question.
After reading this I feel the only thing I have to offer is a weird answer.
But after reviewing the weird answer I didn’t feel it was weird enough, so I decided to settle for making as much sense as the op.
Potato chip
My answer : “it depends”
Others’ answer: “42”
even after editing, i (and others) do NOT understand what is your question
“what about the player?.. what’s going on?” is so vague…
Please reformulate
Nice, Daichi, but I prefer this version:
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