ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the systemic politics of enjoyment created by the contractual provisions and license arrangements that commodify and sell pleasures on a massive scale with powerful consumer investment: massively multiplayer online (MMO) videogames. Focusing on the science fiction MMO Eve Online, this discussion locates the way that players move between the socio-legal milieux created by the contract and license of Crowd Control Productions (CCP) Games and player interactions in Eve. The law of Eve manifests to its players most often when it does not work. In this misfiring of Eve's law, transgression is frustrated by the incompetence of the other to secure the promised enjoyment of the game through its prohibitions. Meta-game discussion of various aspects of the rules governing the game are most frequent, when they under-deliver on their promised outcome or when they run counter to the conservative entropy of the collective desire of the community to enjoy the game.
