EVE Online, the spaceship-based massively multiplayer Intro to Accounting course, is getting its own show. But it's not adapted from the plot, or even loosely based on the world. The stories are being pulled straight from the anecdotes and experiences of the players themselves. It's a brilliant and novel move that will no doubt falter and explode in its creators' faces. But just because something is guaranteed to fail doesn't mean we shouldn't try it. The EVE show illustrates a relatively new concept: adaptations that are not only cross-media, but stride the line between interactive and passive participation. If you survive an epic enough double-crossing space battle in your game, all the while spewing pithy one-liners and making the hard choices others are scared to, you could theoretically turn around and sell that story to Hollywood. How crazy unlikely was that scenario, even two years ago?

I know the EVE/TV connection isn't unique. There are probably a thousand painfully pretentious pixel-art games that tie into YouTube in novel ways, but the really exciting part for the audience happens when the pure art concepts start leaking into the mainstream. And that's just now kicking into high gear:

If you're into generic space marine action and you're sick of literally every single other game that's been produced in the past 10 years, you can hop into Dust 514 and take your bottled-up aggression out on other virtual warriors across a series of different planets. The difference here being that, floating above that planet you're fighting on, EVE Online players are sitting in their mammoth bankships, strategizing and calling down orbital strikes. They can even hire groups of mercenaries -- the space marines playing Dust -- to carry out their cold and unfeeling whims, seamlessly merging the calculation of interest rates with the act of lobbing grenades into beefy dudes' groins.

I have no idea how well they pulled it off. I know the concept has a long way to go, and it's not fully interactive yet: You can't ditch your EVE ship to get viciously teabagged on Planet Grit below, and you can't teleport up to the EVE ships above to take out a space-loan -- but that's still two vastly different experiences merging two vastly different types of player, and having them interact, play with, and change one another. It's only a start, sure, but even journeys into fiery, raging badass start with baby steps.