with stars). It’s a stage that for most western studios – perhaps with the exception of Blizzard, which will no doubt be celebrating World of Warcraft’s 20th this time next year – CCP appear to have been phenomenally successful at staving off. It’s hard to say what the secret formula is, but keeping
Eve Online updated through regular updates and expansions has helped a great deal, not just with fixes and new features, but renovations that ensure that Eve looks far, far younger than its calendar age would suggest. This is a game, it should be pointed out, that went into full-scale beta a full-year before the first Call of Duty was even released. MAKING IT SO Part of the appeal of both Eve and CCP is the latter’s approach to development, which CEO Hilmar Veigar
The unveiling of the expanded Eve Memorial in Reykjavik
Pétursson, putting it down to a collective form of imposter syndrome, where, because the studio from a different country had found success with a different game, CCP somehow felt they had to do everything else differently as well. “[These days] we have less of a need to yap about every single thing we are doing to somehow justify our existence.” And yet, despite CCP being tighter-lipped, Fanfest
The opening ceremony of the Eve Fanfest 2024 Dev Pub Crawl
Pétursson has characterised as a form of janitorial oversight. It’s a Star Trek ‘Prime Directive’ approach, basically; to not become entangled in the machinations of the masses, and to only step in when there’s a breach of protocol or there’s a proverbial tear in the time- space continuum - i.e. something breaks (which for a game closing in on it’s 50th major update, isn’t entirely uncommon). Less evident, though not entirely camouflaged, is the
studio’s once-puppyish eagerness to please. This was characterised best of all by a feature for planetary flight that was demonstrated at the very first Eve Fanfest in 2004. Despite expressly saying it was created out of curiosity and shown for fun, for years the inability of Eve’s spaceships to wage war across mountains and seas was cited as evidence that CCP was failing to deliver, if not on what was promised than certainly on what was possible. “We certainly had a tendency of announcing every
single idea we had in our head and making PowerPoints for Fanfest and talking about it ad nauseam,” says
October/November 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 21
is still the best place to yap, or rather, to listen in on the yapping of others. Curiously, the main forum for this isn’t the keynote stage or the panel discussions, but the Dev Pub Crawl, where small groups of players and developers head into the night and where the subject of EVE is always at the heart of every conversation. Tough questions are asked, honest answers are given, and because both have invariably been lubricated with alcohol, any uncomfortable or compromising truths usually dissipate by the morning.
FROM DUST TO DUST In the group I was part of, there was a lot of talk (instigated by me, admittedly) around Vanguard, CCP’s second stab at adding a first-person shooter element to Eve Online. Dust 514 was the first. Released ten years ago, it was essentially CCP’s take on Battlefield and a
Havoc is the latest Eve
expansion and will pave the way for the first interation of Vanguard
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