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EVE Online gives rise to some of the most interesting economic gameplay in any MMO. EVE fans and those who pay attention to these kinds of things may remember the EVE alliance known as Interstellar Starbase Syndicate Operations, which started selling shares in its in-game outposts (huge, player-built and player-run space stations) to the public almost 18 months ago. Now, ISS is going one step further, and is selling shares in the alliance itself. It’s non-voting stock, but it turns the alliance into something different, something that’s rarely if ever been seen in EVE before: a mega-corporation that’s beholden to its shareholders, a company that will publish financial statements, and whose first order of business will be the maximisation of shareholder value. With its IPO, which is still under way, ISS is seeking to take emergent economic gameplay to another level in EVE, and is making a pretty fascinating step toward a new kind of player-generated content in the game. I just had a chat with ISS principals Count TaSessine and Serenity Steele, who had interesting things to say about both their in-game goals, and about the kinds of gameplay they want to help generate in EVE. Their plan is so ambitious that it almost constitutes a kind of user-generated patch to gameplay.

To Serenity and the Count, taking ISS public is like selling shares in a family business. Though the public has been able to invest in ISS’s outposts, the company itself has always been privately held. The issue is for the equivalent of B-shares, which carry no voting rights, but TaSessine says any war declarations will be put to a shareholder vote (ISS has never declared war on anyone), and other major initiatives may be as well.

The issue is also for a huge amount. For the inside view, check out the ISS prospectus, which runs to 20 pages and includes a timeline illustrating the history of the alliance, management profiles, an overview and an executive summary, as well as details of the offering and a fairly detailed business plan (for a company that exists only in an MMO). What’s perhaps more interesting is that the ISS IPO, if it sells according to plan (about 20 percent of the issue has been sold thus far), should generate a new kind of gameplay in EVE, on several levels.

Selling shares in an EVE corporation is not unprecedented. (The shares being sold are in ISS’s underlying corporation, I believe. I don’t think alliances actually have shares.) Shares are more commonly parcelled out to corp members as a way to distribute regular payments to them in the form of dividends. Part of the problem is that there’s no safe game mechanic for buying and selling shares — i.e., you can’t put a share in the trade window. But shares are sometimes sold from one player to another, and as a result, several trusted clearinghouses have arisen for handling such transactions.

That said, I don’t know that there’s ever been a public offering of this type in EVE, and certainly never one of this scope. ISS will sell 50,000 shares, at 10 million ISK each, giving the alliance a market capitalization of some 500 billion ISK (InterStellar Kredits, the EVE currency). For comparison, think about the fact that the battlecruiser I have my eye on at the moment, a mid-sized ship that’s new to the market and which will probably come down in price, costs around 50 million ISK. A battleship costs around 100 million (plus another 50 million at least in fittings and insurance). A carrier costs around a billion. A dreadnought — a huge combat ship — costs around 2 billion. In EVE, 500 billion ISK starts to be a truly staggering sum. At current eBay rates of almost 15 cents per million ISK, that’s almost US$75,000. (Can that possibly be right? Someone check my math. On the other hand, when ISS sold shares in its first outpost, that issue alone raised the equivalent of $8,100, so it’s probably right.)

Having 50,000 shares of a 500 billion ISK corporation floating around the galaxy creates a new aspect in the economic gameplay of EVE itself. Shares of ISS outposts have already become a new kind of item in the EVE marketplace, and are often sold between players looking to capitalize on the rising and falling market. Dividends from those shares have also provided some players with a steady income. Minimum investment in the current IPO is 200 million ISK, which would carry a monthly dividend of 10 million.

But the ISS business plan goes further, and could have a real impact on what it’s like to play EVE outside of just the market. Part of the company’s goal is to make the most dangerous regions of space (”0.0 space”) more accessible to new players or those who do not belong to one of the major alliances, which control most such regions. To this end, ISS has already constructed six outposts that are open to anyone. This is in sharp contrast to other outposts, which are generally used as a base of operations for warring alliances, who offer docking rights only to their allies. ISS’s outposts are designed to be open to all, as a safe haven for “the general public, pirates, alliance players, and players fresh from the Empire newbie schools,” according to the prospectus.

Serenity Steele and Count TaSessine

The company will also begin large-scale sales of powerful “Tech 2″ ship modules. These are rarely for sale in any consistent quantity in 0.0 space, and when they are, it’s at a markup from Empire prices that’s usually more than 100 percent. By creating a market for such modules, ISS hopes to encourage more ship production in 0.0, and to bring more pilots there by making the powerful modules more readily available. ISS will also begin construction of huge capital ships (carriers and dreadnoughts and the like) in 0.0. These too are rarely constructed for public sale in any but the safest of systems. In addition, the company plans to continue its outpost construction program, providing further neutral havens for new and independent pilots and corporations.

If all goes according to plan, the effect should be to make the more dangerous regions of the EVE galaxy — which are also, not coincidentally, the regions with the richest resources — more readily accessible to more pilots. That’s the kind of thing that’s usually accomplished only by a game company, through re-balancing the software code that determines game mechanics. ISS’s IPO could make it powerful enough to do that on its own, which would be fascinating development in the evolution of an online game. And if it works, it’s testament to the wisdom of the decision to make EVE as open a game-world as it is.

ISS’s business plan could have other effects on the EVE galaxy as well. The company plans to make fully collateralized loans to players, who will pay 10 percent monthly interest. If things go very well for ISS, they hope to foster further economic development by making venture investments in player projects both inside and outside the alliance.

In a way, what ISS hopes to accomplish is nothing less than a player-created expansion patch for the EVE galaxy (albeit a small one, as MMO expansions go). If they can do so, it will be a really interesting moment in the history of user-generated content and MMO development itself. Can they? Let’s put it this way: If I had 200 million ISK, I’d buy some shares.