CCP CEO talks expansion, warns of big companies becoming 'very dumb, very quickly'
After devoting the last decade to tweaking and maintaining its spacefaring MMO, EVE Online, CCP Games is ready for a multi-product future, CEO Hilmar Petursson explained in an interview with GamesIndustry International.
"That sort of self-division, structuring the company around multiple products, is something that we've taken a lot of time to do," Peturrson admits. "Now we're in that world, we're much better structured to make that a continued success without losing focus on EVE, which is obviously hugely important to us."
Petursson notes that company leaders must emphasize structure during times of expansion, or else risk losing momentum. "There's a lot of focus on learning when you have a bigger company, to make sure the entire system is learning," he said. "The biggest shift was realizing that. A big company can become very dumb, very quickly. The larger the group of people becomes, the more you lose efficiency, fluidity, creativity, and innovation, unless you structure it very well."
The recent PlayStation 3 release of the EVE companion game Dust 514 has also proven fruitful. "We're seeing a different fanbase with Dust, but they behave similarly," Petursson explains. "EVE Online just became more interesting because Dust exists. Dust is more interesting because its in a partnership with EVE Online. We see a lot of power in that idea."
