If glossy coffee table books on MMORPGs are your thing, you’ll want to pay attention to Andrew Groen’s second Kickstarter effort: He’s seeking funding for Empires of EVE: Volume II, the sequel to the popular first book covering EVE Online’s community history.
“The historical narrative takes place during EVE Online’s most popular and populous era so far,” Groen explains. “Volume II will chart the rising and falling fortunes of massive and often devious alliances of thousands of players, introduce all-new iconic characters, and investigate the climactic battles that have come to define this era of EVE Online like the Supercap Slaughter at Uemon, the last stand of TEST at 6VDT-H, and the $300,000 Bloodbath at B-R5RB.”
As I type this, it’s more than doubled its $12,500 goal already with almost a month left to go (the first book raised seven times its goal), and the Kickstarter is loaded with sample pages, so yep, this one’s happening. Ten bucks will get you the ebook, on upward from there for the softcover and hardcover editions.
And in case you’re wondering why this stuff matters:
“As time moves on, key players and memories of this universe have started to fade, and we risk losing the history of one of gaming’s most unique communities who inhabit one of humanity’s first true virtual worlds. As much as I want this to be a great book for people to enjoy today, I also want it to serve as a time capsule for future generations to understand what life was like in one of the first virtual worlds. I’m writing this because there is simply no way for people to learn the history of EVE, and it’s getting more difficult every day. You can spend weeks reading through the EVE wikis, but they are largely incomplete, filled with jargon, and often written by people who are obviously writing a slanted, one-sided version of history. In EVE, as in the real world, history is written by the winner, and winners make terrible historians.”
We’ll be chatting with Groen at Fanfest tomorrow, so stay tuned!
