Copenhagen, Denmark.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during the now daily press briefing on COVID-19 virus status made a surprising change in international policy and guidelines in the combat against the world-affecting COVID-19 virus.
After much study and observation of the MMORPG EVE Online player base—where players from all around the globe engage in everything from piracy to mining basic elements for starship construction—concluded player engagement and the resulting social effects were the ideal hope for humanity during this time of crisis.
“Let it be known that we have never before seen such an engaged and determined player base who distance themselves to such extreme degrees from their fellows!” The Director-General proclaimed after pulling up a spreadsheet on player participation and activity profiles from within the game. Of particular note was how the game retained players even when faced with the most mundane and boring of gameplay elements such as clicking a button once every minute to cycle a mining laser. A reporter was escorted by armed guards out during the Q&A when the Director General was asked about a column showing numbers of Cholera victims in Ethiopia on one of the spreadsheets, the director stared vacantly towards the assembled press for many seconds before moving the discussion on saying it had just been talked about and brought the discussion back to Eve Online.
Speaking later that day via video conference with CCP Games head, Hilmar Pétursson, Director-General Tedros was reported to be in awe of live ingame demonstrations of a player mining with seventeen characters at once, a large asteroid without apparent knowledge of its complete lack of measurable entertainment value. Hilmar commented that if the individual were to work for a single hour in a Somali coal mine it would produce a greater ingame currency value as a result. Later in the interview, further demonstrations of the extreme self-isolation the player base subjects itself to without apparent knowledge of the societal collapse occurring in the real world (IRL) was shown to the awe-struck members of the press. Many mildly disgusted but hopeful that this was the solution to maintaining absolute social distancing was the consensus afterwards. A war-correspondent was later found dead by apparent suicide that evening with a note sadly proclaiming the end of humanity.
To demonstrate the lengths players would go to avoid engaging with the outside world, Hilmar ejected 150 random logged in players and enacted a 15 minute long tedious and mind-numbing captcha system which all players immediately completed within the next 18 minutes and continued to play. CCP has since made all player credentials available to international organisations for the benefit of humanity.
Over the following days a joint CIA-MI6 task force made contact with several players who showed unusually high hours of activity per day; one such individual know ingame as “TheLastSparton” exclaimed complete ignorance at the unfolding Corona virus impact to wider society as he had not left his residence for the past 49 days due to ongoing inter-faction disputes occurring ingame which required his complete attention. Interview minutes released highlighted a particular quote: “Corona does not matter in the grand scheme of things as my killboard has to be as green as possible, it’s all that I can leave in this world when I get podded IRL”. Many other contacted players dismissed all questions saying they don’t drink Corona Beer and refused all contact requests.
The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has since started distributing vouchers to free ingame time and currency to residents in the wider Baltimore Area to better understand how normal citizens would be affected by the now labelled “Spod-Brain Distancing Effect” Eve Online has on its player base. Day on day crime and outside interpersonal activity has since plummeted in the area as well as new Corona cases. A later demonstration on how younger players could be enticed to player Eve longer was a deposit of “NEET Bucks” into their parent’s bank accounts which could be slowly released into their “Good Boy Accounts” as the player continued to play. This currency is now accepted in exchange for various fast food items in all retailers.
Unfortunately, Eve Online play does have some undesirable side effects; which are manageable according to experts. Many players develop an allergic reaction to fruits and vegetables as a result of their prolonged lack of sunlight exposure coupled with a long-term diet of Mountain Dew and Cheetos. Lesser negative effects include random emotional tantrums when engaged in social-platform player voice-conferencing during and out of gameplay, a severe lack of basic personal hygiene measures, sexual aversion to other people which is slowly replaced by the development of sexual attraction to tabulated data usually in the form of Excel or Google Cloud spreadsheets, masochistic tendencies such as “camping” (sitting invisible) in ingame solar systems for hours at a time even when no other player is present, and a few other minor psychiatric conditions.
As WHO continues to roll out universal access to Eve Online as the main policy in social-distancing efforts, many other organisations across the globe have already passed legislation and mandatory quotas for ingame participation by their citizens.
The policy effects of Eve Online access have not been without repercussions; advocacy groups across the globe have formed and similarly demand the immediate closure of Eve Online citing the personal killing effects of Eve Online on their loved ones who never leave their computers save to eat, sleep, or use hygiene facilities. A recent bombing of a WHO outpost in Norway was credited to the Mothers Without Eve Online who have advocated for increasingly violent actions against CCP Games. Kidnappings and torturing of game time card distributors has lead to many officials providing armed escorts; CCP games has had to maintain game time card access as it was discovered free access would result in a small minority of players creating endless numbers of additional characters which CCP servers would be unable to accommodate at a time of increasing new players from around the world. Many would agree that drastic measures must be taken to save society from COVID-19, but many are now asking if Eve Online and the cost to humanity it incurs is worse than the virus itself.
