THE FOREVER WAR


Richie Shoemaker flew over to attend Eve’s 20th anniversary celebrations in Iceland, to see how plans for the game’s everlasting afterlife were coming along


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peak to any games journalist attending an Eve Fanfest for the first time – or after any number of times for that matter – and the consensus is that CCP Games isn’t your


typical game developer. The reason for the distinction is twofold. First, despite


being a global studio with established outposts in London and Shanghai, the heart and soul of the company remains in Iceland. It’s a remote and friendly country that culturally


and economically (and geologically) punches way above its weight. The other is that for all its incomplete or unsuccessful experiments over the years, CCP is utterly committed to ensuring that Eve Online persists. As the game settles into its third decade and as it was on the cusp of its second, the motto at this year’s Fanfest remained ‘Eve Forever’.


EXPAND ALONE If you’ll forgive the ascent into strained metaphor; if games are like rocks flying through space that due to blind luck or divine intervention generate interest, then the most successful are the ones whose increasing mass make it more and more difficult for their creators to escape from. Not that every studio wants to leave its games behind, of course, but most would at least like to get above the clouds to see what’s out there. The problem for MMOGs that is different from long-


A version of Vanguard will be playable next month 20 | MCV/DEVELOP October/November 2023


established franchises (and I’ve just realised here’s where the metaphor burns up in the atmosphere), is that there comes a time when the popularity of a game wanes and there becomes an imperative to either turn things around or get the hell out before things collapse in on themselves (I should have gone


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