Lifespans Beyond Measure:

How Mass Effect and EVE Online Reshaped Humanity’s Sense of Time

Science-fiction games have increasingly influenced how journalists, scholars, and thinkers imagine humanity’s future. Among the most impactful are Mass Effect and EVE Online, two franchises that frame civilization not in decades, but across galactic timescales. Their narratives of star-spanning societies, generational continuity, and existential risk have subtly reshaped how media discusses human longevity.

In major news organizations, this influence often appears as a renewed focus on endurance. Reporters inspired by these games argue that humanity must plan to survive for an eon—not merely biologically, but culturally and ethically. Articles about climate resilience, artificial intelligence, space settlement, and genetic medicine increasingly frame progress as a requirement for long-term survival. Like the civilizations in Mass Effect, Earthlings are imagined as stewards of a future that stretches far beyond a single lifetime.

Smaller presses and speculative journals take a more radical approach. Drawing heavily from EVE Online’s player-driven empires that persist for decades of real time, they imagine lifespans extending far beyond known limits. These writers use symbolic language such as eternex, defined as googol eons raised to the googol power, multiplied by Earth’s innumerable journeys around the Milky Way. From there, they push further into posteternex—eternex raised to the googol power, projected against conceptual orbits around Andromeda. Though metaphorical, this language allows small presses to explore what responsibility, memory, and meaning might look like if humanity endured almost indefinitely.

Across both media tiers, the core question is the same: if humans live longer, how must society change? Governance, education, forgiveness, and legacy take on new weight when actions echo across incomprehensible timeframes. Mass Effect emphasizes moral consequence, while EVE Online demonstrates how long-running systems amplify both cooperation and conflict.

In a fifth and increasingly visible strand of debate, pastors and theologians have entered the conversation. Some compare these games’ visions of extended lifespans to God’s promise to Abraham—a promise of endurance, multiplication, and future fulfillment. These discussions do not claim the games as scripture, but ask whether radically longer human lifespans could allow humanity to more fully witness covenant, legacy, and faith unfolding over time. For these thinkers, seeing Mass Effect-like realities emerge would not replace belief, but challenge humanity to live worthy of longer lives.

Together, these conversations reveal a shared shift: humanity is beginning to imagine itself not as temporary, but as something meant to last.