At CCP, they want to remain loyal to the brand “EVE Online” , however, they are not planning an EVE 2.
Gamesindustry has published a lengthy interview with CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson. They talk about EVE, the entry into VR, the failures on the way to new successful games like Gunjack, and the recently found success with the sci-fi MMORPG. After all, EVE was on the rise in 2016 due to
- the Skill Trading,
- the Free2Play conversion
- and the introduction of the Citadel.
All three milestones would have been “phenomenally successful.”
The EVE connection did not work with Dust 514
Pétursson also talks about the failures of the past, such as the shooter Dust 514. They wanted to do too much at once, trying to connect a console first-person shooter with the EVE universe and then failing at it. The idea was so great: players in Dust were supposed to be able to call in airstrikes from EVE spaceships and fight on the planets and moons from the MMO.
At the end of the development, they just didn’t have a really good shooter. CCP then tinkered with Dust for a long time, and in the end, it was a decent shooter, but by then the PlayStation 3 was already at the end of its lifecycle, and it was simply too late.
However, CCP learned its lesson from Dust: first, success must be there, only then can the game be connected with other games. Titles like Valkyrie or Gunjack are now successful, having developed their own community and culture.
EVE 2? That doesn’t make sense – EVE is EVE
According to the CEO, they know what they have in EVE. Developing new brands is very difficult, so the focus clearly remains on the “EVE” brand. The interviewer then asks: “EVE 2 confirmed?”
Then the CCP CEO laughs and says: “People have been asking us in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007: When is EVE 2 coming? By now, they have stopped asking that. I think people have understood. EVE is like Facebook. It doesn’t make sense to make Facebook 2. EVE is EVE. As long as we modernize it, in all areas from the business model to gameplay to in-game economy, EVE will continue to succeed on its own. That is our plan.”
More on the upswing in EVE Online:
EVE Online: The space MMO is far from dead – Profit increased in 2016
