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CCP's Sean Decker and Hilmar Petursson on the future of EVE, DUST 514, EVE-VR, and mobile gaming
Earlier today, CCP Games announced that industry veteran Sean Decker is coming on board as Senior Vice President of Product Development. Sean's laundry-list of industry experience includes a recent 12-year stint at EA, where he headed up the Play4Free division. This has naturally led to some trepidation within the EVE Online community, which has been extremely wary of free-to-play and microtransaction-based business practices since the Monoclegate scandal in 2011. I caught up with Sean Decker and CCP CEO Hilmar Petursson last night to get the low-down on Sean's role, how he will influence EVE and CCP's other products, and what the future has in store for DUST 514 and EVE-VR. Sean is to be the head of product development across all of CCP's games, not just the free-to-play titles, but I wouldn't worry about EVE going free to play any time soon. "I don't think [free-to-play] is the be all and end all business model," Sean told me, adding that he understands that the subscription model better fits some games. Read on for more information on the future of EVE Online, DUST 514, EVE-VR, and CCP's first foray into mobile gaming.
EVE Mobile is coming according to Jon Lander
If you've ever been involved in a discussion about EVE Online, you've heard it referred to as a sequence of spreadsheets which occasionally let you fly a spaceship. Which certainly has some basis in truth. Certainly it's a game with many possible systems that could be ported to a mobile client, something that CCP's Jon Lander is claiming will be a reality in the near future. Lander has moved from being EVE's executive producer to mobile development, but his new position is clearly still tied to the same game. Rather than simply being a series of spreadsheets for your smartphone, Lander has made it clear that the mobile team wants for the various EVE mobile apps to be functional games in their own right. It's a field that CCP has explored before, stopping either due to technical hurdles or business concerns. But Lander's confident that players will be using the mobile applications by the time next year's Fanfest rolls around.
EVE Evolved: Hands-on with EVE's virtual reality demo
As EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest slowly got underway, the press were led into a small upstairs room with chairs lined up and ominous-looking black headsets. The headsets turned out to be expensive prototype devkits of the Oculus Rift, a recently kickstarted PC peripheral that aims to make immersive virtual reality affordable for gamers. VR headsets are traditionally heavy monstrosities costing thousands of pounds and usually have input processing lag that make them unsuitable for high-action gaming, but the Oculus Rift is a light and highly responsive device currently clocking in at a more reasonable $300. We were sat down to take part in a demo of EVR, a new virtual reality multiplayer dogfighter that uses art assets from EVE Online. It was an incredibly immersive experience for those of us unfamiliar with the Oculus Rift, and even members of the press who had used the device seemed impressed with the game. Fanfest attendees were equally excited when a trailer for EVR was shown at the EVE Keynote on Friday, and many attendees got to try the game first hand last night. But what impressed me the most was the story behind the demo's creation and the possibilities that Oculus Rift could potentially open up if support for it were brought to EVE Online. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my hands-on impressions of EVR, delve into the story behind its creation, and speculate on how Oculus Rift support could revolutionise EVE.
EVE Fanfest 2013 day two: World of Darkness, Odyssey, and EVE Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift
EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away. The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time. Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.
EVE Online executive producer moving to concentrate on mobile
It looks like EVE Online's Jon Lander, otherwise known as CCP Unifex, will be moving on from his position as executive producer of the 10-year-old single-shard space MMO to concentrate on CCP's "emerging mobile strategy," according to a recent dev blog. Lander helped steer the team through EVE Online expansions Crucible, Inferno, Retribution, and the upcoming Odyssey. Don't worry, though; Senior Producer CCP Seagull and Development Director CCP Ripley will continue on with production of the game. Odyssey's release is still set for June 4th, and CCP promises that the transition will have zero impact on the quality of the upcoming new expansion. Even more intriguingly, CCP wants to fill the position that Jon vacated with a candidate from outside the company. The dev blog wonders whether you have what it takes to take on the massive responsibility of running the world's biggest collection of pew-pews, or maybe you know someone who does. Good luck!
PAX East 2013: An interview with EVE Online's Jon Lander
The next expansion to EVE Online was announced during this year's PAX East. Odyssey will usher in to the game a host of improvements ranging from better exploration mechanics to a redistribution of resources, ensuring that players have plenty to do with their internet spaceships over the summer. But what are the longer-term impacts of these changes? What can players expect from this expansion and more moving into the future? How does all of this play into the soon-to-launch DUST 514? I'm admittedly not a regular EVE Online player, but I was on the show floor for the big announcement, and I had a chance to ask CCP executive producer Jon Lander a few questions after the presentation. The first one was the one that sprang to mind after viewing the announcement (which you can do as well with the video just below): Is this an expansion meant to add something new to the game, or is this meant to fix things that are broken?
EVE Evolved: Bring on the big expansions!
I don't normally jump out of my seat shouting "hell yes!" to an EVE Online dev blog, but this week's announcement on the direction of future expansions has me a little bit excited. In two somewhat dry and lengthy posts, Executive Producer Jon Lander and Senior Producer CCP Seagull detailed the approach they intend to take to ongoing development in 2013. Instead of announcing any big headline features or making vague promises, the developers looked back at the success of 2009's blockbuster Apocrypha expansion. Apocrypha was hands-down the best expansion EVE has ever had, adding 2500 hidden solar systems accessible only through shifting unstable wormholes. We saw a renaissance of exploration, collaborative research, and colonisation efforts that defied EVE's war-like reputation, and moreover, we saw a rebirth of small-scale PvP. The magic sauce that made Apocrypha work was lateral design: Rather than add one massive vertical feature, the expansion offered a little something for everyone. Apocrypha was EVE at its best, and hearing that developers are going back to that style of expansion honestly makes me a little giddy! In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the future for EVE's expansions, why the Apocrypha model works, and why I'm optimistic for 2013 and beyond.
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.
CCP unveils EVE Online: Retribution, coming this winter
Earlier this evening at the VETO EVE fan gathering in London, CCP announced EVE Online's 18th expansion: EVE Online: Retribution. Due in December, this latest content overhaul promises to bring some of the biggest changes yet to the space-themed sandbox MMO, which is steadily ramping up for its 10th anniversary next May. We sat down with Jon Lander and Kristoffer Touborg, EVE's executive producer and lead designer respectively, to get a first-hand look at some of Retribution's key features as well as the enormous pile of tweaks, updates, and adjustments players might expect with any CCP-helmed update. One thing is certain: After Retribution, the world of internet spaceships will never again be the same.
CCP's Jon Lander discusses the emotional attachment players have with EVE Online
In a recent interview, EVE Online's Senior Producer Jon Lander expounded on the bottom-up philosophy that CCP practices for its massive space sandbox. He discussed how EVE is focused on building tools for players to use instead of cranking out content for players to consume. Lander credits the game's success to listening to the player base and the developers who are more intimately familiar with the ins-and-outs of the game world. He states, "What we've done is we've devolved an awful lot of the power of the decision-making and the accountability for what we do in the games to the people who know best, which are the developers on the ground who've been doing this for a long time." He also noted that the company learned a valuable lesson when it deviated from that philosophy in 2011 and the company took its success for granted. EVE also benefits from focusing on building a social system instead of content. "We build a social engine that people actually love, hate, despise each other, love each other, backstab each other, and play the good Samaritan," says Lander. "People know each other, and there is this history. They feel a big emotional attachment to that, and that keeps them coming."
E3 2012: CCP says it wants 'EVE to be around in 10, 20, 30 years'
CCP's E3 2012 setup was dark, infused with Jon Hallur's soothing sci-fi synth tones, and entirely appropriate for huddling conspiratorially in a corner booth with producer Jon Lander and creative director Torfi Frans Olafsson. The three of us chatted for about 30 minutes, covering a wide range of topics including EVE Online and its new Inferno expansion, DUST 514, and game money for real goods. In a nutshell, Inferno has been more of what the doctor ordered for the MMO genre's elder sandbox statesman. "We are on the cusp of breaking our all-time subscriber record right now," Olafsson told me, and that's no small feat for a polarizing title in a genre over which burnout and next-new-thing syndrome reign supreme.
CCP contemplates selling more EVE Online physical merchandise
Fresh off a successful attempt to sell graphics cards for virtual currency, CCP Games is mulling over additional in-game sales options in EVE Online for real-life merchandise. Senior Producer Jon Lander said that this will be the beginning of a trend: "It was an interesting experiment and one we're going to follow up." The studio recently made 100 Nvidia graphics cards available to players in the game for 20 Plex apiece and sold out of them in two minutes. In addition to items like graphics cards, CCP is looking into ways to create and sell EVE Online merchandise. "We need to just look at what the right opportunities are now," Lander said. "We've got lots of people beavering away trying to work out what the right thing to do is." Due to players' ability to buy and sell Plex for other in-game goods, Lander reports that 25% of EVE Online players are able to enjoy the game for free.
EVE producer: F2P converts were 'failing,' subs still viable
The death of the subscription model has been greatly exaggerated, according to CCP. This view isn't terribly surprising if you consider the fact that the company's fortunes ebb and flow with sub-based EVE Online. What is somewhat surprising is the frankness with which EVE producer Jon Lander talks about the free-to-play mania that's gripped western dev studios in recent years. "You look at the companies who did go free-to-play. They retrofitted it on, and that was because their games were failing. They didn't care about the tiny nugget of players who were still playing, because they knew they would get a huge number of other players and it would be more profitable," Lander told PC Gamer, before going on to explain how such a retrofit would kill EVE's essence. Overall quality and the desire for long-term play also factor into a title's business model, Lander says. "If you have a really good game [...] and people want to spend a long time playing it, not like a month or two but like EVE players for years at a time, they're prepared to pay a subscription fee for a good quality gaming experience." He also mentions EVE's PLEX system, which allows for real-world money to be injected into the EVE economy sans shady third-party brokers. And of course, CCP is experimenting with free-to-play via its new DUST 514 shooter, which Lander says was built from the ground up for the new business model. It's not necessarily the future, though. "People say the subscription MMO is dead. I fundamentally disagree with that. It's simply not the case," he says. Hit the jump for video excerpts from the interview.
New CCP interview recaps recent EVE turmoil, looks forward
"It's not our game," says CCP's Jon Lander. He's talking about EVE Online, and he makes no bones about the firm's role in the ongoing internet spaceship drama that is New Eden. "We're the janitors of it; we sweep up and make sure the power's still running and whatever, but it's their game. EVE is the sum history of their personal interactions, and we don't own that. We just look after it." The "their" Lander refers to is the game's playerbase, of course, and he tells GamesIndustry.biz that despite the turmoil of the last 12 months, the EVE property is none the worse for wear (and in fact it may be getting stronger due to a design re-focus and the imminent arrival of DUST 514). Ultimately the interview brings no new information to the table, but it does serve as a handy recap of recent EVE events. It also offers up more than a few juicy quotes from both Lander and lead game designer Kristoffer "CCP Soundwave" Touborg.
EVE launches in Japan, adds multilingual search tool
Japanese sandbox fans are saying domo arigato this morning as CCP and Nexon have officially launched a localized version of EVE Online in the land of the rising sun. Japan boasts the world's fourth largest gaming community, and CCP has added it to an impressive list of conquests that include English-, Chinese-, Russian-, and German-speaking markets. The company is handling all of the game-related conversion tasks via its in-house localization system, while Nexon is responsible for various marketing and support initiatives. CCP has also added a multilingual search tool to the EVE client. The new functionality "helps weld the disparate language groups present in EVE into a more global and unified game experience –- truly demonstrating the impact and value of the single shard server model," says senior producer Jon Lander. [Source: CCP press release]
EVE Online senior producer stepping down
Big changes are in the works for EVE Online's management team, as senior producer Arnar "CCP Zulu" Gylfason is stepping down. In a brief blog post on the game's official website, Zulu describes EVE's past 18 months as "an incredibly intense time" filled with "quite a few harsh lessons." Taking over for Zulu is Jon "CCP Unifex" Lander, who has been playing EVE since 2005 and heading up CCP's Carbon technology team since 2009. Lander spends his introductory post outlining the challenges in the offing for CCP's sci-fi sandbox, and he also mentions that the dev team currently numbers close to 200 people. In a nutshell, it looks like EVE is heading back to basics, as Lander says that the team "will be concentrating on those features we already have in the game after eight years of development." Finally, all capsuleers who have an active subscription on December 31st will have their character names and images launched into space aboard a high-altitude balloon (yes, really). Head to the official website for more.
