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There's a scene in the US TV show The West Wing where Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, under pressure and about to lose a key Senate vote, is calmly reassured in the Oval Office by his boss, the President of the United States. "You know what the difference is between you and me?" President Bartlet asks. "I want to be the guy. You want to be the guy the guy counts on."Deep into Season 4, Josh is a political fixer slowly coming to terms with the fact he can't solve every mounting problem the Bartlet Administration faces. The lasting appeal of The West Wing is its focus on the characters that form the machinery inside the White House - the stuff you usually don't get to see. It allows you to watch these unsung heroes toiling to achieve remarkable things.
As an Eve Online player, the experience of being a small cog in a bigger machine feels familiar. The ageing sandbox spaceship MMO has seen great player-run empires rise and fall as rivalries unspool over many years. When you read about the epic space battles of B-R5RB, 6VDT-H or Asakai, consider for a moment that everything must be player-built, that wars are not scripted plots but are groups of pilots in their thousands emerging into conflict. The sheer scale of the logistics involved boggles the mind and - if you are someone so inclined, like me - the appeal of Eve Online is being able to play a role in enabling these epic arcs to occur.
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