Originally by: CCP Greyscale

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The EVE setting is, ultimately, about dealing with being human, with all the virtues and vices that implies. Everything that happens within the setting is a consequence of human decisions, human desires and human failures. That, to me, is one of the things that makes it so strong, and such a good tool to explore the human condition - there's nothing that can be blamed on "those pesky aliens" or otherwise shrugged off as "not our fault". The rogue drones fit perfectly into this: they're the consequence of playing god without really knowing what you're doing, and that mistake will probably continue to haunt the cluster for a very long time.

There's several ways you can use sentient aliens in SF, none of which I feel would really work for us. You can use particular alien races to capture specific aspects of humanity, which is an interesting tool but generally ends up creating very homogeneous races that lack depth. You can make them "like humans but with different skin", which adds exoticism and lets you explore issues of discrimination and so on, but also dehumanizes the issues by drawing a very clear "we're different from them" line. You can use them to explore entirely alien mindsets, which is really interesting as an intellectual exercise but moves the focus away from humanity. Or you can use them as "unknowable others", where their motivations and mindsets are hidden, which make great "evil bad guys" if you want to inspire human unity, but in doing so again tend to take the focus off human internal conflict. Any of these "could" work with EVE, but my personal opinion is that by broadening the scope of the setting it'd also reduce its depth and integrity, and I'm not convinced the tradeoff is worth it. YMMV

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