When I created Safiya for Coriolis: The Great Dark, I had a pretty clear picture of the kind of campaign we were about to play. Or I thought I did that is.
Exploration. Expeditions. Ancient ruins. Dangerous places beyond Ship City where having a Roughneck who could repair machinery (and crack a few skulls when necessary) would come in handy.
Instead, we've spent our first few sessions investigating a murder.
So much for the plan.
AI can turn an ordinary conversation into a minefield remarkably quickly—and EVE Online is no exception. Rixx and I wade into the debate from our sometimes differing perspectives, beginning with “AI slop” and the increasingly blurry line between AI-generated content and work that remains human-led but AI-assisted.
We discuss how we each use (or deliberately avoid) these tools in our creative and professional lives. Taste, experience, judgment, fact-checking and accountability don’t magically appear with a good prompt, but does every use of AI deserve to be thrown into the same bucket?
I've been writing on CrazyKinux's Musings in one form or another since 2005. Long before ChatGPT, Claude, image generators, or any of the current AI tools existed, I was writing about EVE Online, about the community of players & bloggers, sharing things I had learned, interviewing people and generally following whatever rabbit hole happened to interest me.
So AI didn't suddenly make me creative, but it's definitely changed how I create.
He almost ignored it.
There was nothing unusual about receiving messages in space, but this one was different. No corporate header. No security tag. No context. Just a name he had not seen in a very long time.
Cassian Drake.
The text beneath it was short.
Jita 4-4. 2200.
The Glass House. Come alone.
I need the favour back.
He stared at it for several seconds, then checked the routing data attached to the message.
Drake was not the kind of man who crossed dozens of systems for a casual conversation. If he was willing to travel that far just to ask for a favour in person, whatever had happened was serious.
Reluctantly, he set course for Jita.
This week, Rixx Javix and I sit down with Jim Halescott, one of EVE Online’s most unconventional entrepreneurs. From thousands of characters and an industrial network stretching across New Eden to an ambitious plan for something resembling a galaxy-wide chain of convenience stores, Jim has built an EVE career almost entirely outside the paths the game officially gives us. What sounds absurd at first gradually reveals itself as a remarkably sophisticated operation involving manufacturers, haulers, intelligence gatherers, market manipulation and hundreds of working relationships.
I went into Season One of Dark Matter knowing absolutely nothing about it—which, in retrospect, was probably the best possible way to experience it. A former coworker had simply told me I had to watch it. That it would blow my mind.
And yes, suffice to say, my mind was thoroughly blown.
There’s a point in the season where you think you understand the ramifications of the Box and the alternate realities it opens. Except you don’t. You’ve barely scratched the surface. By those final episodes, the full breadth—and potentially infinite consequences—finally begins to sink in.
That’s what stayed with me.
Not simply the science-fiction premise, but the uncomfortable personal question underneath it: how many different lives might each of us have lived? What if we’d been more cautious, less cautious, more direct—or simply made one different choice at precisely the right moment?
Season Two premieres August 28, so now is the perfect time to watch the first if you have not seen it — or in my case, binge it again so everything is still fresh for Season 2.
I've only watched the Season 2 trailer twice, so I genuinely have no idea where the story goes from here, and that’s precisely why I’m excited.
Watching Silo with my teenage daughter has reminded me of something I hadn't expected.
We're watching the same show. But we're not watching the same story.
She's experiencing Silo exactly as it unfolds on screen. Every mystery is new. Every revelation lands for the first time. Every theory is still possible.
I've read Hugh Howey's trilogy — Wool, Shift, and Dust — at least twice, if not three times. I've lost track.
I don't just remember the story.
I remember the characters. As actual people.
And that's made Season 3 a surprisingly more difficult experience so far.
After a nearly month-long hiatus, Rixx and I are back from the summer lull and easing into one of those deceptively simple EVE questions that quickly opens up into something much bigger: what does it actually mean to win in a game that never really ends?
We start with vacation, heat, and the usual New Eden summer slowdown, then wander into sandbox metaphors, piracy, loss, leadership, friendship, aging, and why EVE is less a game you beat than a place you keep returning to.
Before we recorded Episode 11 of The Safe Spot, Rixx sent me three simple rules for EVE Online: all rules apply to all players equally, EVE is about spaceships, and nowhere is 100% safe. That was the spark for the episode — the idea that beneath all the mechanics, balance passes, doctrines, wars, and player drama, there are a few foundational principles that explain why EVE works when it works.
But the idea stayed with me after we finished recording. Those three rules felt less like a closed list and more like the beginning of a larger conversation. They made me think about loss, trust, information, inconvenience, player history, and all the strange social machinery that makes New Eden more than just another online game.
What follows is a further exploration of those rules — not an official rulebook, and not a manifesto anyone needs to agree with completely, but an attempt to name the principles that feel foundational to EVE Online. Read them as a returning pilot. Read them as someone who's been around long enough to remember when some of these things went without saying — and who's watched what happens when they get ignored.
No guest this week — just Rixx and me catching up, comparing notes, and accidentally wandering into one of those bigger EVE conversations: what actually makes the game work after all these years. A little summer lull, a little corp movement, a little real-life desk tinkering, and then straight into the rules beneath the rules.
It's late. I've been dabbling with my Caldari Navy Hookbill fitting for the past hour. Trying to figure out what's the best setup for my first foray into Faction Warfare (or Factional Warfare?). I think I've got a good fit, but I'm not convinced.
Then comes the next question: what next?
I've joined the Caldari faction, read through all the WARNINGS, but I have not a clue where to go next. The Militia tab popped up, but the conversation doesn't seem too friendly (aren't we supposed to be in the same camp?), and I resist the urge to ask. I'd rather test the waters by myself first, though that might be a bad idea, since I'm now a flashing little blip on someone's overview.
Then I remember Rixx telling me about using Plexes to get into PvP.
So I message him. "I'm in a Hookbill, looking to find Plexes. How does one do that? Please don't laugh..."
Ten episodes! 10!!
I honestly can't believe we've hit double digits. Most podcast series — EVE or otherwise — never make it past the first handful before fading out, so the fact that Rixx and I are still here, still recording, and still having an absolute blast feels like a milestone worth celebrating.
And we're not slowing down. No siree, Bob!
We've got so much more in store.
So, in this episode we welcome Black Rise Regional News — let's call him "Burn" short for BRRN — to The Safe Spot. Burn is a Caldari faction warfare pilot, UCN director, and the creator behind one of EVE's most unique written content projects: a regional newspaper covering the wars, politics, and shenanigans of Black Rise and surrounding space.
Rixx and I dig into how Burn went from flu-ridden backlog gamer to militia diplomat and propagandist-in-chief, and I listen in while the two of them swap faction warfare war stories along the way.
I mostly listened and took notes on this one — these two had a lot to talk about!
That's the only way I can describe it. Seven days, almost no major announcements, no lore bombs, no surprise developer streams — and yet the whole EVE ecosystem felt coiled, tense, pointed at one fixed date: Tuesday, June 9th, 11:00 UTC.
The Cradle of War expansion drops in less than 48 hours and the pre-launch machinery ran full-tilt this past week: expansion notes published early, a developer roundtable posted to YouTube, and the Mastery Pack sale running down to its last hours.
Oh, and NoizyGamer quietly dropped some of the most interesting player-retention data of the year. We'll get to that in a minute.
Let's jump right in.
Hey everyone, we're back after what felt like forever. I got pulled into the Habs' Stanley Cup run (no shame, that was a hell of a series for our Montreal Canadiens), and we finally sat down for episode 9 with our very first official guest: Oz.
Both Rixx and I were genuinely stoked about opening the format up to guests, and even more so that Oz agreed to be the first one through the door. I came in with way too many questions lined up like a checklist, and Rixx, true to form, just rolled with the conversation in full Buccaneer bravado.
Very different styles, yet somehow it worked.
Last Thursday evening, while the Habs plowed through the Carolina Hurricanes, my roleplaying buddies and I were rolling up our characters for a first run within Coriolis: The Great Dark.
I picked a Roughneck, with Machine Tender as her specialty and Mechanics as her innate talent.
Your archetype already tells you what kind of story you came to play. A Roughneck says: "I want to be the one with grease under my nails when the lights flicker, the one who notices the hum in the bulkhead before anyone else does."
Not the diplomat or scholar. Not the mystic or poet. The hands.
What is Coriolis: The Great Dark?
Players take the role of Explorers: salvagers, scholars, mystics, and roughnecks crewing fragile ships on the edge of known space. The play loop leans toward investigation, exploration, and atmosphere — closer to Alien, Dune, and The Expanse than to a tactical shooter.
Combat is fast and lethal. Faith and technology share the same table. And the universe, more often than not, is watching you back.
This one's our reaction episode to EVE Fanfest 2026, which wrapped up the day before we recorded. Rixx and I sat down Sunday evening to talk through everything — the Polaris Award he picked up while not even being in Iceland, the Cradle of War reveal, the Google DeepMind sit-down, where Vanguard and Frontier are headed, and a pile of asides along the way.
It's a long one, but a good one.
Pour something cold (or hot, in Rixx's case) and dig in.😂
Back in the heydays of this EVE blog, I used to do this thing called the "Speedlinking New Eden", which was a weekly wrap-up of EVE Online news, and then some. So with the excitement around the Fenris Creations rebrand, the Google DeepMind announcement and EVE Fanfest 2026 wrapping up, I thought I'd rekindle this initiative.
Fanfest week. Three days of keynotes, reveals, and blood donations (yes, literally). Fenris Creations came out swinging with a three-expansion arc, a new extraction shooter playtest, a survival sandbox reset, and enough coverage to keep you scrolling for a week.
Let's go.
Earlier this week I wrote about the Google DeepMind and Fenris Creations partnership and came away cautiously excited. So I took Friday off from work to make sure I could watch the LIVE broadcast from the Harpa Concert Hall. Then earlier today, Hilmar and DeepMind's Adrian Bolton took the Fanfest stage for 'The Infinite Game' session, and I walked away with considerably less.
The above video was added on Fenris Creations channel on May 25th, 2026. I thought I'd add it here for full context.
Like a lot of those who listened in, I came away fairly empty-handed from that conversation. Not disappointed, but very much hungry for more. As in a lot more. Yes, yes, there was lots of framing, lots of "excitement" about the partnership's potential, about AI lifting the popularity of games like Chess and Go, but very little about what it actually means for the game we play.
So I thought I could give it a try myself and dive into how I'm hoping DeepMind's research could realistically be applied and leveraged in EVE. Basically trying to add the substance that was missing from their talk. Trying to imagine what that near future could be.
I'm probably going to be way off mark, then again maybe not. We'll see.
But I thought I could give it a try.
Here goes nothing...
What a time to be an EVE player!
When the news dropped Wednesday last week, I wanted to sit down and start writing immediately. CCP Games rebranding as Fenris Creations. Entering a research partnership with Google DeepMind. Damn!! But the hot take is rarely the right take. So I shut up, read everything I could find, and gave myself a few days to let it settle.
It's been nearly a week since the news dropped, and this is where I'm at three days before Fanfest starts: I'm excited. And I'm eager to learn more when DeepMind founder Adrian Bolton takes the stage alongside Hilmar at Fanfest later this week, even though I won't be there in person.
I've also been following EVE's development since the late nineties, which means I know how to be excited and skeptical at the same time. I've had practice.
So buckle up folks, cause Kansas is going bye-bye, as this is going to be a "DeepDive" into the biggest EVE news in years. Pun very much intended!
