CCP’s epic 4X space MMO Eve Online is receiving its latest update on June 4th. This is the latest in the series of regular expansions to the game, which have arrived at a rate of roughly two per year since its initial release in 2003. If you already play Eve, why are you reading this? Go over to the official site and see it in detail here.
For players not familiar with the genre, 4X stands for explore, expand, exploit, exterminate– which generally applies to strategy games where the players initially explore the game world, then expand their territory, exploit resources they find and, ultimately, exterminate the competition. Eve itself is in the tradition of classic interstellar trading games like Elite, Frontier, Freelancer, and the X series where players usually control a spacecraft and earn money for themselves by buying commodities in a location where they’re inexpensive, and then traveling to a location where that commodity will sell for a higher price. Usually, that travel will involve the risk of encountering bad guys, other players, etc. Each game enhances this basic model in a variety of ways and, Eve, being on the scale of an MMO has an ever-increasing level of complexity to its game universe.