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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.
GameX 2009: Mobile EVE Online app, codenamed NeoCom, and IM program in development
During their presentation at GameX 2009 on agile game development, Nathan Richardsson and Adalsteinn "Alli" Óttarsson revealed the slide above, showing EVE Online's many facets and how they all tie into one another. But what's this down in the corner? A mobile application and a instant messaging client? While information was scarce, we were able to confirm that CCP is certainly interested in the mobile market, especially with EVE. Neocom is planned to be a multi-mobile platform project, going beyond the iPhone to add "interaction with EVE Online in a meaningful way." The plan seems to be to extend EVE across multiple locations to give players the ability to access all sorts of information from places outside of the game. It was mentioned that Neocom could do things like use corporation chat, check and change trades, and introduce other methods of two way interaction. Later in the day, we'll be putting up our video interview with Alli Óttarsson and Nathan Richardsson on a variety of topics, Neocom included. Check back for more exclusive coverage of GameX 2009!
Have Clone, Will Travel: An EVE Online Wish List
With Empyrean Age and and Ambulation just around the corner, CCP is about to make a lot of its EVE Online subscribers very happy, including yours truly. The idea of walking around in a space station has been a wish of mine for quite some time, ever since I got word that CCP was looking at doing something like it. Of course my EVE Online wish list is much longer and probably won't get fulfilled for some time. Indeed it would keep the Icelandic developer busy for a number of years! Instead, let's narrow the list to the 5 top items and see what we've got.
