Beneath the cold, hard exterior of EVE Online lies plenty of stories from players that will warm your heart. Recently, I became aware of Arrowspeed Bounty, also known as Jennifer–a 70-year-old veteran player who has risen through the game’s political ranks to hold an important position on the Council of Stellar Management, or CSM.
Arrowspeed Bounty was first introduced to EVE Online thanks to some of her gaming friends. After playing the tutorial, she began to join those friends in mining activities but noted that it was “still trial and error” in the early days, especially when figuring out the game’s currency and how to mitigate losing ships. “While it wasn’t the end of the world when that happened, it was still disheartening as the real mission was flying to different places to find the specific parts needed to replace them,” she notes.
After finding her feet in EVE Online, Arrowspeed Bounty joined a small corporation–a community similar to a guild or a clan that allows for collaborative play and contribution to large goals or advanced content. However, greater collaboration doesn’t always make for an easier experience, and Arrowspeed Bounty was quickly forced to learn a new part of EVE Online: Decorum. “As a newcomer to the game, it was expected that I’d learn about undocumented and social protocols by breaking them myself–accidentally, of course,”
A specific learning curve that she still recalls now is the stigma around poaching. Arrowspeed Bounty was running a renter program–a system that allows corporations to rent space from an alliance–when a renter left to join another group. Arrowspeed Bounty approached them and convinced them to come back, which she says caused “a bit of a ruckus” with the CEO of the other corporation. “This situation taught me the rules around poaching, and one I wish I had known when beginning,” she added.
EVE Online became more than just a game to her when she left a corporation due to a conflict with another player, and logged in the following day to “floods” of messages from friends in the corp asking her to come back. “I did go back to the corp that same day, as the realization hit me that a small bump with a single member shouldn’t affect my progress,” she said.
One aspect of joining the EVE Online universe is understanding the passion that players have for the game. “Being a rough-and-tumble style game, players can often be very emotionally expressive. From this, I learnt to take the positive and the negative together and just enjoy the challenge,” Arrowspeed Bounty explained. “After all, my children won’t be starving out in the snow no matter what happens in a game.” Those newcomer experiences remain vivid to her, and she finds them fun to reminisce about, no matter how frustrating they were at the time. “At the start, I had no clue what to do in a fleet, like, what even is a prop mod? EVE lingo was a whirlwind to try and understand and navigate. To this day, I will explain it to people and remain open to being asked questions, and patient about answering them.”
EVE Online’s Council of Stellar Management–or CSM–is an in-game elected group of players responsible for representing the interests of the general playerbase when it comes to EVE’s development. 10 members are democratically elected, with a further two players selected directly by developer CCP Games from the 20 players with the most votes. That might look like suggesting features, providing player feedback, or giving analysis of the game’s current state. The CSM is also asked to attend the CCP offices in Reykjavik, Iceland for five days to work closely with the team on those matters. These votes happen once a year, with members serving a 12-month term, although they can be re-elected for up to three consecutive terms. After this, they must see out a 12-month cooling off period before they can be re-elected again.
Winning her position on the CSM was a momentous occasion for Arrowspeed Bounty. “Watching the voting unfold and holding a hot cup of coffee at the same time is not a good plan! I almost spilt it on my dog, who was next to me on the floor. Seeing that I won was a massive achievement, but it was mixed with a hint of worry,” she admitted. That worry stemmed from not knowing how well she’d be able to actually contribute, but it soon dispersed as she realized she has somewhat of a “unique perspective” being both female and older than most players.
A big part of Arrowspeed Bounty’s important position in the game is earning the trust of other alliances, and the individual players within them. She puts this down to keeping her promises wherever possible, treating people with respect, admitting her mistakes, thanking people for favors, communicating clearly, and taking her hands off the keyboard when she gets angry. “Okay, I don’t do that last one perfectly consistently,” she laughed. “One time when I was passionately and angrily accused of doing something I hadn’t done–using my newly acquired position to push someone out of the area they were playing in–I just about did the ‘sign-off by throwing my keyboard out of the window and never logging in again’ routine. Instead, I tracked down the source of that rumor and insisted that the truth was told. It was, and I later got a very nice and sincere apology. We are now good friends.”
As she’s progressed through the ranks, Arrowspeed Bounty has learned that there are “a lot of really cool people” on EVE Online, and finds that they’re “much more fun and interesting to play with” than she had expected;She hopes that her peers see her similarly, too.
Despite being one of EVE Online’s older players, Arrowspeed Bounty feels that her age is more of an influence on her than on others. “I worry about hitting people’s stereotypes, and so I work to avoid that when possible. Over time, I find that it’s fine to mention my grandchildren or give advice,” she says. EVE players actually seem to be more interested in how she contributes to the game in meaningful ways, rather than whether or not she has grandchildren. “Good, scientifically sound clinical studies have shown that doing complex things, particularly solving problems, slows the ageing process in the brain,” she adds. “You don’t have to solve the whole game in a day, and the ride toward solving each step of the puzzle is a really fun one.”
But, most importantly? “I have been in the boomer generation of rebels my whole life,” she explained “So, here I am now rebelling against the mistaken idea that youth own the gaming world.”
