Eve Online Correspondent Contest, Ender Black

We recently ran a contest to find someone to write about Eve Online.  The contest was simple, submit a sample of their writing style in 1,000 words or less.  We would take those submissions and with the help of CCP, we would select one winner to not only write about Eve Online and get paid, but we would also sent them to Eve Fanfest in Iceland.

We received a lot of submissions and it has taken longer than expected to get through them all.  While we continue to work with CCP to select our winner we are going to post some of the entries here on the blog.

Today’s entry was written by Ender Black, host of the podcast Pod Goo.  After you read what he has to say, swing on over to his podcast and check it out.

I am the writer you need to cover EVE Online for Guild Launch.  I am mature, witty, and analytical.  EVE Online is my passion because of the unique experience it offers every person who digitizes themselves into a capsuleer and a capsuleer’s unique ability to carve their own destiny.  EVE Online is not like any other MMO; it has no endgame.  The reason I enjoy running a podcast covering EVE Online is it allows me to participate in a discussion with my fellow capsuleers and share our different exploits and triumphs and bitter defeats.  It is this knowledge that your experience is not my experience, that the battle you fought yesterday has repercussions today, which keeps me writing and talking about EVE.

I have been flying in internet spaceships since 2004 and have been blogging and podcasting about internet spaceships beginning earlier this year.  I am familiar and conversant with most every aspect of the game.  My listenership on Pod Goo has steadily increased every episode and I think I am becoming something of a known quantity within New Eden and I would love to share my growth and outreach towards your goals as well.  Because I am well experienced in a multitude of game play types within EVE Online I can write towards directed subjects or find interesting topics on my own.  Another quantitative advantage to choosing me as your EVE Online correspondent stems from my connection to EVE players outside of my blog and podcast – I am a regular contributor to the discussion on Twitter and Google+.

Perhaps you have listened to a few of my faltering starts at Ender’s War College?  In this series of discussions on the Pod Goo Podcast and the Fly Reckless Podcast, it is my intent that the War College be a mechanism to transfer the lessons I learned about leadership in my twenty year Navy career to EVE Online.  The goal is to teach players how to be a better Fleet Commander, CEO, or Director by understanding how to bend the will of your subordinates in such a way they fight for you and not against you.  I think there would definitely be crossover here between what I do and who Guild Launch supports – the Corporations.  Would it not make sense for your company to not just support EVE Online corporations with tools to communicate and monitor their activity but to also teach them how to grow together and stem off organizational cancers and overcome challenges that cause lesser corporations to fold?

The market is saturated with news of EVE Online sovereignty changes and scandals so there is little meat left on the bone.  On the reporting carcass there is still a lot of nutrition to be found exploring the extremities of the intersections of real-life and EVE.  In fact, CCP wants us to push those boundaries with their “EVE is Real” marketing campaign.  It is at these intersections that I find the most interesting stories.  I know I am on a good story when I tell my mother about it and she asks if I am talking about a real life event or “my silly game” – when the two become confused it becomes interesting.

EVE Online is a game of relationships.  In fact, I submit that what makes EVE so interesting is that it follows the First Law of Geography, “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”  The human geography of New Eden is also an area that I want to explore in writing about EVE Online and its many Butterfly Effects.  How does the downfall of a corporation or sovereignty holding alliance affect the market in Jita or does an influx of minerals from wormhole space retard industrial growth in nulsec?  Topics such as these, from corporation and human management theory to geography of interactions are a bounty of material from which to draw.  A good writer covering EVE Online always remembers the importance of the relationships involved and the key to the story are the people involved.  As Shakespeare wrote, “O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in it!”  I want to write about these people.

I will not use up my allotment of a thousand words, because I know you will have many entries to read.  To summarize my strengths:I know how to communicate to the EVE Online community.

• I am known by the EVE Online community (and not in a bad way).
• I write well.
• I am a self-starter and I do not miss deadlines.
• I love to stretch metaphors and analytic rabbit holes to their breaking point in describing the New Eden universe.