EVE Online means a lot more to a lot of people than just internet spaceships. Whether through the building of confidence, a lifeline in times of loneliness, a new revenue stream, or the development of transferable life skills, there are loads of heartwarming stories about the game's positive impacts on its players. For this reward, we want to hear how the game has affected your life. Let us know via text (minimum 100 words) for your chance to win a $3 reward or via video (minimum three minutes) for $15. If you enter with video, we expect some cool visuals to accompany it.
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When I was in a dark time mental health wise, I found Eve Online. As a science and space nerd, especially Star Wars, I was hooked immediately. In the short term, Eve Online became my escape from my environment, an escape I desperately needed at the time. However, as I have left that unhealthy environment behind, Eve has stuck with me.
I stuck with Eve, and Eve with me, because now it is more than just an escape from my circumstances. It is now where I have found a community of other nerds who also enjoy playing this old-as-crap game about flying spaceships around in space, and enjoy playing it with each other. That community is more amazing than anything else I have experienced in my life, period.
So that's how Eve has changed my life for the better - it kept me afloat when I was drowning, and it has been a constant source of joy and community since then.
Definitely, the impact of EVE Online on its players' lives is enormous. But in this case, I want to share a bit of my story.
I started playing EVE Online in 2018, growing and learning along the way. Perhaps the first big impact was meeting other players and forming my first group of new friends, with whom I still play after all these years.
During the pandemic, with all the free time, I created my YouTube channel. Team play and the new friendships that formed were a great support during that period and became the push for this new project.
While the channel now has some relevance within the Spanish-speaking community, there is still a long way to go. But for me, it’s a great way to use my free time, develop new skills to help it grow, and keep creating content. It has also allowed me to talk to many players from all over the world—something I once thought was simply impossible.
Management, empathy, friendship, creativity, teamwork—these are just a few of the things that EVE Online has helped me learn and improve (and, of course, Excel—because we all use it at some point).
Long live New Eden and its warriors of the spreadsheets!
I started playing in 2004 and have played ever since, only really ever being away from game for holidays, house moves, study and illness.
For the first ooooh i dont know - 10 years I was passenger, but it wasnt until i started getting more involved that my contribution, and also enjoyment for the game increased.
It would be disingenuous of me to say anything other than thank you to EVE - its community and the collaborative experience that has been afforded to me. I love EVE. I loev the game play, i love the people, and I feel that it has impacted me in so many ways - i have FC'd more than 1K public fleets now at best guess - spoken at fanfest a few times and I am a better person for the experience that EVE has given me.
I'm an introvert. EVE has helped me develop my interpersonal skills - helped me with speed of thought and helped me with real life strategising and thinking about solutions to problems and listening to information with greater analytical ability. I dont work in that environment, but EVE has 100% helped me! ...& Dont even get me started about spreadsheets! lol
I think eve helped me a lot in a difficult period for me, I had left school and was in a course (something we did in the pre entrance exam) and I entered a new cycle of people in which many saw others not as potential friends, but competitors. Eve was the game that brought me and @henckes together during this period. He asked me to play and I was very wary, but I ended up playing and making friends that I still have today, like his brother, who made him start playing. In short, one pulled the other along haha. I'm still playing, even though my routine has become drastically busier, but I always try to find time for the game.
As an introvert, Eve Online has made me more and more comfortable talking to strangers on Discord, participating in Twitch Eve stream chats, and web forums like JustAbout. I would rarely talk in public chat let alone getting on Discord and speaking to strangers. No other game has made me behave this way, I can say that it has made me less shy in public and helped me at the workplace as I am less timid/shy to speak up or make new people connections.
My story with EVE Online is quite simple and I think it's similar to some of the ones I'll be talking about here. However, that doesn't take away from the weight it has had on my life.
EVE was the second online game I played in my life and the first space game I came across. My brother mentioned the game and we started playing together. I've always been a shy and unsocial person, but EVE online has a lot of communication, a lot, and the game allowed me to break down the barrier I had!
The first contact was by text, but my brother and I gradually began to meet other Brazilians (and people from other countries too) and started chatting on Skype so that our missions would be more precise!
The impact I had had on my day-to-day life. I got better at school, I felt more confident talking to different people, my relationship with my own family improved... It's common to talk about how video games improve various things in our lives, such as reasoning, learning new languages. But EVE was essential for me to start socializing in the right way!
For most of my professional career, I worked in advertising, marketing, and graphic design. In fact, when I first started playing EVE Online back in 2008, I owned a creative agency called Giant Ideas—employing over 40 people and even pitching CCP Games to run their social media. Back then, EVE was just a weekend hobby, a way to spend time with my son. Until 2015, I had never even met another EVE player in person.
The closure of my agency and a legendarily horrific divorce forced me to rethink everything—my career, my passions, and what truly mattered to me. I shifted into consulting, but more importantly, I started focusing on my own creative work, exploring my artistic side in ways I hadn’t before. EVE became a foundation of support for that journey, with the community offering overwhelming encouragement along the way.
Between 2013 and 2014, I began creating a series of EVE-inspired art posters as practice. What started as a creative exercise soon gained traction, both within the EVE community and beyond. Before long, CCP reached out to explore selling some of my work as part of the grand re-opening of the EVE Store—expanding the project to include posters, t-shirts, and more. And in early 2015, I attended my first Fanfest in Reykjavik. (Fun fact: Rixx Javix is named after Iceland’s capital, in case you didn’t know.) That trip was a turning point—not only did I finally meet fellow players in person, but I also had the chance to showcase my work publicly for the first time. More than that, I saw an opportunity to open doors for other creatives in the EVE community.
A decade later, multiple artists now have official partnerships with CCP to create EVE-based work. Andrew, whom I sat alongside during that first Fanfest roundtable, has since published two books on the history of EVE. And I recently spent two years working with a company in Poland—alongside CCP—on a massive EVE-based board game, which will soon be shipping to players.
Back in 2008, I never could have imagined that this internet spaceship game would become such an integral part of my life. That it would take me around the world, introduce me to thousands of incredible people, and allow me to share my art with such an amazing community. EVE didn’t just change my life—it completely transformed it.
One day my Son asked me to come see this new game he had downloaded on his computer. He showed me a spaceship spinning in a station and then undocked it into space. I was hooked. I went and downloaded the game on my computer and asked him what he knew about it. Not much, other than it was made by a company in Iceland. I had always been fascinated by Iceland, the Vikings, the volcanos, it's history. And so I named by new character after the capital and just wrote it out the way it sounded (or as close as I could manage) so it sounded like a name. And Rixx Javix was born.
Hi, Eve online is very advanced game in terms of economic, everything can change drastically in only few hours/days! Game teached me how basic economics can work and how to use it to your advantage,how some changes from the developer (let's say the developer in real life is a country) or the some unexpected events can affect prices on the market! Let's say there's a PI item and there are only a few producers of that item, one of the guys is the main producers with many characters producing this item, and he just burn out and don't play the game. What happens? Input of this item is too low and the prices skyrockets! The same is with factories and taxes(espiecially with consumers one's on cigaretes and alcochol) in real life! If you hear that prices of glass which is used to produce bottles for beer in real life skyrockets or the taxes on alcochol are raised you can use this to your advantage and buy as a shop owner bigger stockpiles of that beer earlier so you can make a better profit of that! The game teached me how trading works in real life! That's the thing!
Even before I started playing Eve Online in 2008 I have always been into website design and administration of servers (full stack dev). Coming into Eve Online, discovering the API, as well as the various 3rd party tools that had been created I felt right in place. I started working with the eve-kill folks and improved the killboard and kept it from imploding in on itself. I also began creating other sites as well as my own killboard and have since been maintained and improved upon that killboard: zkillboard.com. The website has enjoyed an average of 100k-150k distinct users per month for well over a decade!
All of this translates into vastly improving my skillsets in various programming languages (PHP, JavaScript, etc.) which improved my professional life as well. These improvements pushed me further to get an MBA in Information Technology which in turn has provided excellent new job opportunities .
In summary, Eve Online has had a massive butterfly effect on my life from personal relationships (friendship is the best ship), stress management, professional relationships, education, and working knowledge of mixing various technologies. Thank you CCP for a fun game and the unexpected side effect of continuous self improvement.
