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Massively interviews EVE executive producer Andie Nordgren
If you've been following the development of EVE Online lately, chances are you've heard of Andie 'CCP Seagull' Nordgren and her mission to make deep space colonisation and player-built stargates a reality. Andie has spearheaded the direction of EVE's development over the past few expansions and has gathered a considerable following in the EVE community. At EVE Fanfest 2014, we heard her plans to overhaul EVE's outdated sovereignty and corporation management systems, and to eventually introduce new deep space colonisation gameplay. Today CCP announced that Andie Nordgren has been promoted to the position of Executive Producer on EVE Online. I caught up with her for a chat about development on EVE and to find out what this promotion means for the future the game. I've pulled together the important details from the interview in this article, and if you still have burning questions for Andie Nordgren, she's doing an AMA thread on Reddit right now!
EVE Evolved: Getting ready for Rubicon
EVE Online's Rubicon expansion goes live in just two days on Tuesday, November 19th, introducing four brand-new personal deployable structures and revamping PvP across the board with a seemingly innocuous warp acceleration fix. The expansion represents the first step in new Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's plan to bring true player-run deep-space colonisation to EVE Online. The new Mobile Depot that can be placed anywhere in space is possibly the most sandboxy feature since the introduction of player-owned starbases back in 2004. Players have been coming up with plans for the device since its first announcement, but I think we'll see its true potential revealed in the coming weeks and months. If you've been saving up your Sisters of EVE loyalty points to get your hands on the faction's new exploration ships, be prepared to buy and build the blueprints as soon as the server comes up. These will be the first pirate faction ship blueprints that are available in high-security space, and a recent devblog confirmed that players have been collecting Sisters of EVE loyalty points like crazy lately in anticipation of the expansion, but those who get the built ships to market first will make an absolute killing. For the rest of us, getting ready for the expansion means planning where to set up a Mobile Depot for some quick profit-making enterprise or building a few small PvP ships to put the new warp speed mechanics to the test. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the best places to set up a Mobile Depot, re-consider the lure of low-security space, and propose adapting your PvP fleets to take advantage of the warp acceleration changes.
CCP to reveal EVE expansion live on September 26th
Have you ever wanted to be there when an expansion to your favorite game was announced? Well, EVE Online players can experience just that this Thursday, September 26th. CCP will be revealing the space sandbox's 20th free expansion at 4:00 p.m. EDT on the game's official Twitch channel. Before the big reveal, Senior Producer Andie Nordgren will recap the recent past and share the future vision of the game. Then the game designers will step in and reveal the winter expansion, going in-depth on many of its features and showing off concept art for the new ship designs. And of course, the devs will be in chat to answer questions and hang out with players. [Source: CCP press release]
EVE Evolved: Colonising deep space
If you were watching the news coming out of this year's EVE Online Fanfest, you no doubt heard Senior Producer Andie Nordgren's incredibly ambitious five year vision. The past few expansions have been mostly filled with bug fixes and improvements to existing gameplay, but the goal is now to begin delivering an epic vision of deep space exploration, colonisation, and PvP raids on enemy infrastructure. The five year roadmap toward this goal includes the addition of player-built stargates and completely uncharted solar systems to locate, explore and build an empire in. If the very idea of that doesn't make shivers go down your spine, something may be wrong with your central nervous system. CCP has opened new space before with the addition of the drone regions in nullsec and some new lowsec systems for faction warfare, but it wasn't until 2009's Apocrypha expansion that we saw a true exploration and long-term colonisation effort get underway. I think the intoxicating draw of wormhole exploration was primarily due to the fact that the new systems were hidden and the information on them wasn't public. Just adding new solar systems to the existing stargate network wouldn't have had the same effect. Nordgren's vision may take up to 10 expansions to fully realise, but what kinds of features will we need in those expansions to recreate true exploration and deep space colonisation? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the challenges CCP will have to overcome to make deep space colonisation a reality and what small steps could be taken in each expansion to get us there.
96 percent of EVE Online players are male
CCP marketing bigwig David Reid recently told Destructoid that 96 percent of EVE Online players are male. The site also interviewed EVE senior producer Andie Nordgren, who opined that the numbers are a byproduct of genre. "Part of it is due to the theme of the game. Science fiction is an extremely male-dominated domain," she explained. Whatever the reasons, CCP is OK with EVE's current demographics. "It's not a goal for us as a development team to specifically increase the number of female players," Nordgren said. It's "more an indicator than something [to] strive for."
EVE Evolved: Could EVE use twitch controls?
A few weeks ago, the EVE Online community went nuts for EVR, CCP's exciting new virtual reality dogfighter developed for the upcoming Oculus Rift gaming headset. The game demo was produced by a team of just a handful of developers in just seven weeks using nothing but their spare time, but attendees and press at EVE Fanfest 2013 were nevertheless blown away during test sessions. Though EVR isn't going to be integrated with the EVE universe, Senior Producer Andie Nordgren stated in her Keynote address that CCP will be looking into more immersive flight and combat mechanics for some the game's ships. This comment has sparked a lot of discussion over the possibility of finally getting some direct flight controls in EVE. The lack of direct twitch-based controls in EVE is often cited by gamers as a big part of the reason they can't get into the game. There's no active dodging of missiles, manual ship targeting, or really complex tactical maneuvers in EVE, but that's kind of the point. Most ships in EVE are colossal lumbering hulks more akin to today's seafaring battleships than fighter planes, and combat with them is more a game of strategy and teamwork than a battle of reaction speeds. But that isn't exactly true of all ships; interceptors and fast microwarpdrive frigates move at several kilometres per second and are so agile that pilots can already pull off some interesting tactical maneuvers. So isn't it about time we made the combat for those ships a bit more visceral and immersive? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the fast-paced world of interceptors and explore how twitch controls and weapon aiming could possibly be implemented without killing the server.
EVE Fanfest 2013 final day: Trailers, EVE's TV show, and a vision for the future
We usually don't expect to see much from the final day of the EVE Fanfest, but for this year's tenth anniversary celebration, CCP isn't doing anything by half measures. The first two days of the event had a strong focus on DUST 514 and EVE Online, delving into the specific details of DUST's upcoming Uprising update and EVE's Odyssey expansion. I went into the convention centre today expecting a nice slow wind down with the usual CCP Presents keynote looking at the state of the company, but I left with several huge reveals that seemed to come out of nowhere. Not only did we find out that EVE Online is finally getting a collector's edition box full of goodies, but CCP revealed that a new EVE comic book and lore compendium are both on the way. As if that weren't enough, there's also an EVE TV series in the works based on player-submitted stories of true events inside the EVE universe. I couldn't help escaping the feeling, though, that this year's CCP Presents talk was more than a little marketing-oriented. As one of the press put it to me after the talk, it felt at times like watching an infomercial. On the plus side, we did get to see more of CCP's future vision for the EVE universe and an amazing new trailer showing the game's core storyline. Read on to check out the incredible EVE Universe Origins trailer and my summary of the final day of Fanfest 2013.
EVE Online gets 'ambitious' in 2013
Strap yourselves in: EVE Online is pushing the threshold in 2013, and there's no looking back. Two producer's letters today from the game attempt to outline the goodness coming for the game and its players in the coming months. Executive Producer Jon Lander puts it all on the line with his letter: "I think it is time to be a little more ambitious. Nothing crazy or away from the core spaceship game that is EVE, but something more inspiring for everyone." It's this ambition that's driving him and the team to produce "compelling themes" for future content that will take place across all of the game's systems. There's also a letter from new Senior Producer Andie Nordgren, who is now in charge of the product vision and roadmap for the game. Nordgren says that the team will create content for both "instigators" and "enablers" of sandbox fun, but the big priority for CCP is gearing up for the themed summer expansion.
