BETA | DUST 514
Dust 514 puts players in control of individuals on the battlefield rather than the mammoth spaceships that dominate sister title Eve Online (above)
happen as we begin connecting the two games and allowing information to flow between both. That will iterate over time. But the objective is to make Dust 514 be significant to the world of Eve and vice-versa. So Dust players can call in air support or munitions from Eve players.”
SUPPLY AND DEMAND “Imagine fighting a ground campaign for days, perhaps even weeks, against an opposing force – clearly you’ll need supply lines,” says Gunnarsson.“That would require someone in Eve to do that for you. There’s the old saying that an army marches on its stomach, right? Well we want to incorporate those supply lines in the gameplay.
Sony was in many ways more open to
learn with us than
Microsoft was. Thor Gunnarsson, CCP
“This is all higher-level metagaming
aspects of the gameplay, but we understand that for Dust to work as a console game it really needs the casual, pick-up-and-play elements to it too.” This is where the Dust 514 utopia becomes clouded. CCP has never made for a casual pick-up-and-play game, or a console game, or an FPS. It is as green as an Xbox. The company’s Shanghai studio has been working on Dust for three years so far, opting
22 | NOVEMBER 2011
for Unreal Engine 3 instead of its own PC- centric tech.
Gunnarsson says CCP has hired “seasoned
talent” from EA DICE to oversee the project; people who have worked on both Battlefield 2 and Mirror’s Edge. But this is not about directly competing
with Modern Warfare or Gears of War. Those two franchises need to be critically adored on day one to achieve the perfect launch. Dust 514 is a different animal. It will use the PS3’s opened connection to, like with Farmville or Angry Birds, adjust and adapt until its audience is hooked. Gunnarsson explains: “Dust is developed in the same methodology as Eve – in that the launch is just the beginning. We are going to build iteratively in front of our community, with the same tight feedback loop as before. “A real MMO service is one that’s constantly
changing, constantly evolving. I think that our experience running Eve Online, through thick and thin over the past eight years, will be hugely useful to PlayStation,” he adds. For Sony, there is far more on offer than the experience. Dust players need to complete contracts to earn ISK. If they fail too many times and run out of in-game currency, they’ll need their credit card.
THE SONY DEAL It cannot go unnoticed that, after CCP held talks with both Sony and Microsoft, it was ultimately decided that Dust 514would not launch on Xbox 360. CCP has a strong relationship with
Microsoft – in fact Eve’s back-end server tech is based on Windows – so Gunnarsson is politely talking around the issue.
“We’re always keen to collaborate with
both Microsoft and Sony,” he says. “But when it came to Dust 514, Sony was in many ways more open to learn with us. “When we showed the early code to Sony, it immediately gravitated towards this notion of bringing an MMO ecosystem onto the PS3. The partnership with them allows us to take better advantage of the PlayStation Network, which is arguably a more open platform.” While Xbox Live remains sheltered away
from the open web, Microsoft has nonetheless succeeded in focusing on the platform’s strengths. Live and the Xbox operating system are so well ingrained that the whole service is slick and seamless. “That’s a fair sentiment,” says Gunnarsson.
“But we hope Dust 514 becomes a longstanding PS3 service, and we found Sony’s attitude to this to be far more encouraging. Our perception is that they want to support MMOs on their platform, they are far more keen on this notion of games as a service. And they are equally spirited about this notion of an online service model mixed with a boxed product.”
FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE It has not been decided whether Dust 514 will be packaged and sold at retail. The game is expected to cost around $20 and, as a bonus, will be bundled with that same amount in virtual currency. Elementally, it is a free-to-play game that
requires a deposit. “We might do a retail SKU, but certainly not a full-price one,” Gunnarsson says. “We’re still gauging the need for a retail
box, but I’m sure if we do we’ll add in a substantial amount of in-game currency.”
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