EVE Online leadership compatible with businesses

Posted by Dan on July 23, 2008

Forbes.com has a very neat article on leadership qualities in the MMO EVE Online, and how they are compatible with business leadership in the real world. The irony, of course, is that “guilds” in EVE are called “corporations”, and “groups” are called “gangs”, giving it a very similar structure to how corporate America runs itself. For those of you unfamiliar with EVE, it is a very PvP heavy game that rewards large fleet battles where players are encouraged to fly support ships, and not just the biggest baddest bruisers they can fly. Corporations can register a headquarters on a certain station, and collect tax revenues, and often have outsourced mining and industrial operations, as well as hiring security forces to escort their logistical operations. It’s a very management heavy game — the saying goes that EVE is best played with a spreadsheet rather than a powerful graphics card — but it shows just how accurately games can simulate a market economy and business systems.

From the article:

Sometimes, reality mimics fiction–or at least videogames. CCP, the publisher of EVE, formed a nine-member Council of Stellar Management, to which the players elected Conover. The council functions much like a board of directors for the game. CCP even hired an economist full time to study the behaviors of EVE.

Conover admitted that while the game’s business environment, set in outer space, behaves like one in the real world, there are some major differences. “EVE” and most games like it encourage risk-taking, but “you can take risks in a videogame that in business [would make] the shareholders revolt,” he said.

Interestingly, some of the comments to the Forbes piece are critical of Conover, CEO of the corporation “Goonsquad”.  The criticism exemplifies the public image problem that many real world corporations have. I guess even the comments prove Forbes’ point.

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