There are people who basically do play full-time, running a corporation or something, and even kinda roleplay a bit, and some of the best leverage that into what resembles a salary by doing Twitch shows or selling merch and such.

So in essence, the players are paying these people to effectively become NPCs in the game to better their enjoyment of it! And it's been going for 20 years now.

Eve Online is the prototype for the metaverse.

I landed on a number of fun activities that I enjoyed and felt an adrenaline rush while doing solo, like stealing loot from pvpers and, especially, gate campers, disguising myself in a Venture and killing other miners, killing MTUs, and hauling through dangerous places (especially Pochven).

Overall, I think the game became more fun for me solo when I started putting myself into danger and hanging out around pvpers. I had to get accustomed to dying in cheap, replaceable frigates to get a sense of what was safe to fly and not get angry and ragequit the game because of some loss.

I think corporations alleviate a lot of that by having generous buyback programs and, often, free ships for members. Definitely still possible to forego all of that if you’re so introverted you don’t even want to join some corp’s comms.

During my peak Eve time around 10 years ago (I no longer play), I had left spreadsheets behind and was using full on databases to keep track of things and identify opportunities in the market and manufacturing.