Many people still dismiss video games as “child’s play.” That may have been true in their earliest days, but today they have matured into a realm of adult hobbies, offering depth, imagination, and even reflection. In this post I hope to accomplish two things:

1. To explain how a sixty‑six‑year‑old man can respectfully spend his leisure hours in an online game.
2. To introduce the one game that, in my estimation, surpasses all others in scope, depth, and imagination.

For a man my age—especially a Christian man—such involvement requires discernment. Before committing to a game, I must ask: does it compromise any of my values? Can I guard against excess, ensuring it does not consume my days? Does my affection for the game compete with my love for the Lord? These are not questions to be checked off quickly; they demand meditation and prayer. I have prayed earnestly about the game that fascinates me most, and each time my spirit remains sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Not long ago I gave up something dear to me because I feared its allure might rival my devotion to Christ. If the Spirit prompts me, I will do the same with this game.

The game in question is EVE Online. To call it simply a “game” is like saying Hemingway merely wrote novels. True, but such a description barely touches the depth and character of his work. My initial attraction to EVE was its science fiction setting. Raised on a steady diet of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica (the Edward James Olmos version), I became something of a science fiction connoisseur. When I first saw a promotional video for EVE in 2008, I was mesmerized by its production values.

Over the past seventeen years I have left EVE several times. Sometimes the game felt too difficult; other times I questioned whether a man my age should be playing “children’s games.” I fell in love with EVE before I met Cristina, and she has only one concern: each time I return, I assure her I will stick with it this time. The reasons I haven’t in the past are many, but I believe I have finally resolved them—details I will share in future posts.

I have played many video games in my life and with those in mind, I must say that EVE Online has many distinguishing characteristics: 1) No other game so closely resembles real life — EVE is set in a distant galaxy 20,000 years into the future. That’s not how it mimics reality. It does so by being so much more than the run-of-the-mill “space shooter” game. In fact, I avoid conflict in EVE. Let me share with you briefly my career goals. Presently, I am a miner. I lase asteroids and take the ore into my ore hold, then reprocess those ores into minerals, then take those minerals into the player driven market to sell. This will necessarily entail taking those minerals to a trade hub to get a decent price. Often I will take the minerals into a trade hub and if the current price offers are too low, I will hold them until the going price becomes more favorable to me. This could take months of monitoring the market.

Another non-combatant occupation is exploration, which I may one day pursue. By investigating ancient relic sites, or abandoned electronic site, there is potential of discovering valuable relics or electronics. The down side is the most valuable discoveries wait in the most dangerous areas of space. While you are investigating a site and distracted by doing so, another player — one whose joy is hunting those who investigate relic and abandoned electronic sites — he will most certainly destroy your ship, and probably kill you. Death is not final in New Eden; in fact, death is a skill. There are so many non-combatant careers in EVE I could write a book describing all of them.

2)I was once asked: how does one win at EVE? The answer is not as simple as in conventional games. First of all, EVE is not about winning, but about playing it. I have goals for my time in New Eden: to train in building ship modules, weapons, and structures, even space stations. I also hope to explore further, though I hesitate—the most lucrative exploration lies in dangerous regions, and I have rarely ventured there.

Upon enlisting as a Capsuleer (pilot), one is presented with several career paths:

• Security services (combat)
• Industrial services (mining asteroids, building ships, weapons, and structures)
• Exploration (often in dangerous regions)
• Business (trading, markets, even stock exchange)
• Hauling (transporting goods across space in massive ships) …and more.

It is common to experiment before settling into a specialty. After seventeen years, I now spend most of my time as a miner. Many would find it monotonous, but I find it calming. In the asteroid fields of New Eden I do most of my thinking, and much of the content for The Ordinary Path germinates there.

Yet mining is only one part of EVE’s grandeur. The game’s economy has been lauded worldwide for its realism, often studied as a model for real-world markets. Unlike most games where items are spawned by non-player characters, EVE’s market is entirely player-driven. Every ship, weapon, and resource is mined, manufactured, and traded by real people. Economists have praised this system for following genuine supply-and-demand principles, and CCP even hired Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, a professional economist, to publish quarterly economic reports on New Eden’s economy. Academic studies have confirmed that commodity prices in EVE behave according to microeconomic theory, making the game a living laboratory for understanding markets. As one analyst observed, EVE’s “virtual Wall Street” rivals the intricacy of real-world financial systems.

This is not a post urging you to play EVE. It is a niche game, created by geeks for geeks. If my description sparks curiosity, by all means look it up. You can enlist on a non‑premium basis and taste life in New Eden, the universe of EVE. But my purpose here is to explain who I am.