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.
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...
That post came from the trenches. I was tired all the time, I was stubborn with my gameplay and blogging, and I was absolutely not giving up my game time.
Fast forward to 2026. The kids are grown. The house is quieter. The evenings are mine again. I should be living the dream, right?
Well. Sort of...
Here's what nobody tells you about coming back to EVE after a long absence: the game kept going without you (of course it did!). And so did you. You're no longer the same player. The game's not the same game — it is in a way, but it's also so different. And that freedom you spent fifteen+ years fantasizing about? It feels different than you thought it would.
So in the spirit of the original, here are the updated Commandments.
Not for the parent surviving the chaos — but for the returning capsuleer looking at his docked ship and wondering where the hell everything went.
I'd just finished writing about the Sunesis — my fast-align small hauler, Athena's Wings — and how she could haul almost 1,200 m³ of cargo while warping in 1.75 seconds. Sub-two. Practically uncatchable. The whole point of the ship.
Then the Catalyst major update dropped on March 18th, and CCP decided the Sunesis had been having too much fun.
Just like that Tom Petty song, I've been learning to fly over the past few weeks. Not in the poetic, soul-searching kind of way — more in the 'please don't let me die on this gate' kind of way.
A few weeks back, a new acquaintance within New Eden (thanks for the intro, Rixx!) asked me to help gather a ton of stuff scattered across a few dozen systems — some in high-sec, some in low-sec. We're talking stations I’d never visited, assets worth Billions of ISKs, collecting dust like forgotten relics of a past life in space. The kind of stuff you want to move quickly while unnoticed.
To pull this off, I needed a ship that could do three things well: carry a decent amount of cargo, move fast, and — most importantly — get out of dodge before anyone could lock me down. Not just fast. Sub-two-seconds-to-warp fast.
Enter the Sunesis.
Alright. We did the thing.
Rixx Javix and I have officially launched The Safe Spot "The Rixx & Kinux Show" — a bi-weekly EVE Online podcast — and I'm sitting here with that strange cocktail of feelings you get when you ship something you actually care about: excited, anxious, hopeful.
Excited because I'm back in New Eden after a long time away, and EVE still has that "you're never fully in control" living on the edge magic, and I get to talk about it with my good friend Rixx.
Anxious because launching anything public is basically inviting the universe to throw tomatoes while you're still adjusting the mic stand (speaking of which, I'm still waiting for my Blue Yeti mic ordered this past Saturday, but stuck in some warehouse somewhere this side of the Hudson).
Hopeful because this isn't some one-off "hey we made a thing" moment. This is a long-term project — something Rixx and I have been talking about, poking at, shaping, and slowly building for months.
Here's what makes EVE Online's economy different: destruction isn't a failure state—it's demand.
When a fleet of battleships explodes in null-sec space, that's not just content for a killboard. It's an industrial signal.
Somewhere, a manufacturer needs to replace those hulls. A miner needs to harvest more ore. A hauler needs to move materials across hostile space. A trader sees opportunity in the price spike.
Most MMOs fake their economies the way movie sets fake cities—the storefronts look real until you try to open a door. EVE does the opposite. It builds a system where players are the economy, and then it designs that economy to consume what it produces. Loss drives replacement; replacement drives industry; industry drives logistics; logistics drives trade; trade funds the next round of chaos.
Rinse and repeat.
That's the hook in Economics Explained's “The Economy of EVE Online” video I'm sharing below. Though it's a tad outdated, it still captures this fundamental insight: EVE turns players into producers, movers, traders, and destroyers—because the economy only works if people do all of it.
This article unpacks why EVE's economy feels surprisingly real, even to people who study real economies for a living. I'll keep it as simple as possible.
I’ve never been deep into the roleplaying side of EVE Online—not like the pilots who fully live their New Eden personas every time they log in. (Is that still a thing?) But I’ve always liked giving my characters at least a bit of background. The old RPG player in me still enjoys a good story.
With my current character, Crazy Kinux, there was a chance to do something that actually tied the “Crazy” and the “Kinux” together. I played around with a few ideas, and the version below is what I settled on.
Curious what you think. Do you roleplay at all in EVE?
Caelin "Crazy Kinux" Kinotsuki
For years, Caelin lived the standard extractor’s routine—long shifts, quiet camaraderie, and the simple satisfaction of meeting quotas.
That ended the day his crew was caught in a Gallente ambush.
They were operating in a contested border system, running a routine extraction. Nothing unusual. But with tensions high between the State and the Federation, a Gallente strike group jumped in and misidentified the wing as a Caldari recon element. They attacked immediately.
Caelin survived only because his pod was thrown clear during the first pass. He drifted for hours before a State patrol recovered him.
Everyone else in his crew was gone.
A funny thing happened when I started cleaning up my blog a few weeks back. I was just “archiving” old EVE Online posts, fixing dead links, swapping in updated YouTube videos… totally innocent stuff. Right... And then, somehow, I found myself dropped straight into the deep end of the nostalgia pool. One minute I’m fixing a broken link or looking for a working link to an EVE Fanfest video, the next I’m getting bombarded with “Come back to EVE!” ads like Hilmar had personally noticed my footsteps into my EVE archived content.
And honestly? The pull was too strong.
Mix in that "Making of EVE Online" documentary, and the full-on marketing push for Catalyst, CCP’s latest expansion, and resisting New Eden became a losing battle. So I took a peek. Just a tiny one. And, well, you can guess where this is going.
I’ve only been back in the game for, what, the better part of a week now? But it already feels like that surreal combination of coming home and discovering someone completely renovated the place. Sort of like driving by your childhood home. The neighborhood layout is the same… everything else has been upgraded.
I'm was usually pretty quick to post the EON table of content when I got my issues in the past. Unfortunately I was still very much taken away by Real Life's responsibilities when I got the 15th issue of our beloved magazine.
