Perhaps one of the greatest parts of Fanfest is that everyone there loves EVE. While that may sound like a ‘well, duh!’ statement, you’d be surprised at how many people go to conventions and don’t actually like games that much. This was most evident during the keynotes.

During the EVE Keynote on Friday, CCP aired a trailer showing off . The audience went wild, but one fan demanded more. He turned to the crowd and yelled “COME ON! That’s awesome! AGAIN! AGAIN!” Soon enough the entire crowd stood, and joined him. So CCP obliged, and played the trailer again. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about groundbreaking new content, or brand new ships, or an epic space battle. This is (an admittedly attractive) video of ships, firing missiles. I’ve been to many a keynote, and this level of adoration is… rare.

CCP gets it. Every year, they create a “future vision” trailer, a cinematic look of EVE Online present and future, as the company envisions it. During , the entire audience roared for an ecore. Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CCP’s CEO, came out on stage and said “We’ll play it again, but I wanted to hear you all chant ‘F*** yeah!’ three times!” And the audience obliged, with more fervor than any crowd I’ve ever seen at a keynote.

“We consider EVE Online to be the framework, and that our players are the content” remarked Halldor Fannar, CCP’s CTO. That’s an extremely interesting way to look at your game. It’s almost as though CCP isnn’t creating a game at all, and instead providing their subscribers with the tools required to shape their experience as they see fit.

This seemed to be a pretty common sentiment with players I ran into throughout the show. One player explained: “Most of what we do in the game has nothing to do with the game itself, but the people in it and what they do. It’s mostly us reacting to something that another corporation has done, and the cycle continues.”