EVE Evolution and Risk: CCP on the Freedoms of EVE Online 1
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One of many of EVE Online's space stations. |
Icelandic developers CCP are based in the northernmost capital city in the world; tiny, friendly Reykjvik, with its black mountains, expensive beer and icy seas. It's a geologically dramatic backdrop for a community whose continued success is doing much to redefine the landscape of MMOs. This is not a project that has relied on predefined templates for its success, and CCP are forthright in their opinions as to the significance of the directions their project has taken. Now independent and publishing online, CCP are writing their own future with the beautiful and foreboding EVE Online - a game whose beauty, like Iceland itself, is something of an acquired taste.
Answering our many questions on the growth of the iconoclastic space RPG was Nathan Richardsson, who left Iceland Telecom, the company that handles CCP's server hosting and customer support, to become senior producer on the EVE project in early 2004. He first talked a little about the origins of CCP's attitude toward game design – an attitude that has created a game in which real losses are possible.
“The founders had two passions which they wanted to join,” explained Richardsson. “The sci-fi feel and vastness of space from Elite and the social interaction of massively multiplayer and player vs. player gaming from Ultima Online. I should also add that they were quite active PvPers in UO and this is the main reason for our emphasis on PvP. We feel that the emotions involved with losing something of value is just as important as gaining something of value, it makes a very immersive experience. There have to be lows to make the highs more enjoyable. PvP allows us to achieve that.”
It's worth noting that EVE has two strands of character development: one that simply adds skill points hour by hour as the character gets older, and one by way of actively building up assets in game. Learning can only be erased in the very worst situations, but losing assets is all too easy. Huge losses, potentially setting back the accruement of wealth by days, or even weeks, are a regular feature of gaming life in EVE. For this reason alone, the game has seemed awkwardly intimidating to many gamers.
This interest in player versus player competition has set EVE apart from other MMOs. In terms of ruthlessness and the intensity of conflict over the game's resources, no other game comes close. A recent heist, initially an in-game grudge but escalating to a mass infiltration and betrayal in one of the game's player-corporations (guilds), led to the ‘theft' of around $16,000 worth of game assets (based on Ebay prices for traded game cash). All of this took place entirely within the game mechanics, with a touch of out of game collusion. In fact, CCP had always expected players to come up with events like this by themselves. Their faith was not unfounded: events like this are a dramatic illustration of both the commitment of EVE players and the complexity of the game world that allowed them to pull off such a plot. Player alliances, player economies and player wars have emerged in EVE since the earliest weeks of its launch, and with CCP's most recent content patches, which allow for mass player-organization and the creation of player-owned structures, these socio-political machinations have reached a new intensity.
Gamasutra: Are these events a direct result of CCP's (rather vocal) dissatisfaction with contemporary MMOs?
Richardsson: Our strong belief in PvP and a single universe is probably the main differentiator between us and other MMOs. We strongly believe that MMOs should focus on social interaction between people, but many MMOs tend to go in the opposite direction. We don't like instancing and we don't like sharding and we believe that too much focus on player versus environment is taking us more closer to the newly coined term ‘Massively Single Player Games.'
We fully understand the reason behind sharding, instancing and the PvE focus. A lot of players want this kind of experience and these tools are far more commercially viable to fully control the experience and content created. We however decided to take the more difficult path and try to take on those obstacles head-on. It certainly has a lot of unpleasant side effects and EVE will never be a mainstream game. We're complex, we're open ended, we're fully PvP oriented and you can lose six months work in a second. But we believe this is what makes EVE so unique and we're trying to follow this vision and principles as well as we can.
Gamasutra: So CCP has a distinct philosophy with regard to game design?
Richardsson: Power to the players. Nothing compares to a player that is enabled to affect the universe. We create tools for players to create content. For example, a massive alliance of corporations – our versions of guilds – with real, legendary players, leading them, controlling large areas of space and building up infrastructure is truly awesome content. We can never create that, but we can create the environment and tools enabling to happen.
We're also very iterative in our work and keep continuous feedback cycles on the features we do, then regularly improve them based on that feedback. The community is an incredible source for how to improve the game and what they do within the game gives us constant inspiration for what we should implement next. Being so open-ended means the players do what they want and we try to keep up and add support and tools to take emerging behavior further. Embrace and evolve are the keywords here.
Gamasutra: The activities of the players really do seem to have had a major effect on the direction of EVE – the loophole of ‘can mining' (which made mining asteroids far more lucrative than CCP had intended) is well documented as an unforeseen consequence of players exploring their environment – but to what extent do you think that the players actually define the developmental direction of EVE?
Richardsson: The players are the foundation for what we do next in EVE. We follow what they do and listen to their dreams and again: ‘embrace and evolve.' When playing ourselves, we try to put us in the position of “what would I really like to do here?” and then try to develop that.
We set the course a long time ago on what we wanted to do and we are very open about ideas. Openness creates a certain atmosphere where early in the development cycle you get player reactions and suggestions, which help make the feature better. It's kind of like “open source” development of ideas and as a result, players have a lot to say about the features.
Of course, it's not all as peachy as this sounds. We do lots of mistakes and in most cases we simply can't do what players ask for. We regularly have to do bad things, nerfing some aspect of the game or changing it. It's constant balancing and we often piss people off, but it's a necessary evil with PvP games, you always have to be on your guard for imbalance and as a result, we lose a lot of customers for it. But it's something we accept for following our vision.
