EVE Online is a peculiar MMORPG, in that it seems to generate its own internal dramas; rather than players work their way through publisher-dictated events and plots, the events seem to generate organically out of whatever the players themselves do within the game. A case in point is the now-legendary 2009 destruction of the "Band of Brothers" faction via in-game corporate espionage and high-stakes betrayal.It's not often that something that happens in a videogame makes the news, but this one did: tech journals and geek-friendly websites were awash with reports of what happened. Now those events have been adapted into a four-issue comic, collected together by Dark Horse in a tidy little hardcover book. It has been written by Daniel Way with artwork by Alejandro Arajon, Tomm Coker, Federico Dallocchio and Daniel Warren Johnson.
What fascinates me about this book is not the collection itself, but rather the manner of its creation. This represents a long trail of creativity: the imagination of the people who developed and produced EVE Online in the first place, the players who created the drama within that game, and now the writer and artists who have adapted those players' game experience into a cohesive narrative fiction.
