Column: 'A Journalistic Bent: Blowing Things Up In Space'

This week's edition of 'A Journalistic Bent,' a regular column in which our roving reporter takes a hard look at all the issues of gaming, games development, and the games themselves, discusses the pure and honest joys space fights in Eve Online. The following extract sets the tone for this week's column: "It's a space game. About shooting. I play it to blow stuff up. Space War? Okay, maybe more Elite. But the real reason I play Eve, the real reason why the game is interesting is that the fighting is awesome. But it's also difficult to describe convincingly. It's also one of the most intelligently delivered combat models in gaming today, but does that make for a good article pitch? Well, I pitched that and a couple of editors mumbled and said something about doing top ten World of Warcraft hats that month... Of course, saying that 'the fighting is awesome' seems trite when boiled down to a handful of superlatives, so I'm going to have to explain why the reason Eve should be valued is not because of its contributions to the machinations of virtual socio-economics, but to its contributions to shoot 'em up entertainment, and to the idea of how combat can be presented in an MMO." You can now read the column in its entirety, including insight from CCP Senior Producer Nathan Richardson (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).