Playing Among the Stars - Part One

CCP's Nathan Richardsson reveals some of the areas under development for EVE Online

Feature by Phil Elliott Contributor

Published on Aug. 4, 2009

GamesIndustry.biz You've now added in-game news items generated from the actions of the community to the character selection screen. How much does that add to the overall experience, do you think? Do lots of people read it, or does it just add generally to the feeling of a living, breathing universe?

Nathan Richardsson

As you say, part of it is an awareness - that you have news, a bit like when you have a news channel on. You watch it with one eye, perhaps.

But a lot of people are reading it extensively, and it's getting better over time - although it'll be more extensive when we've got proper social network applications where you as a personal identity, or as a corporate alliance, can have an outward-facing propaganda channel. I think that's going to really start opening up that aspect of the game, and more people will start wondering what's happening around them - besides of course what's happening in your closest vicinity.

GamesIndustry.biz While most MMOs tend to remain static for long periods of time - maybe they'll add content periodically, but the basic environment never changes - EVE is more dynamic in that respect. Although much of the content will be played by experienced players (wormholes, and so on), it all filters down through the market to impact everybody. How do you balance that, to provide new content for veterans, but still manage the new player experience - is it a problem?

Nathan Richardsson

No, it's basically that we know we can't control it, so we simply go with the flow. We'll be putting more and more tools aimed at allowing the landscape to change, based on player actions, which will make it even more dynamic.

But when we create tools, it's a kind of framework within a box, where you allow a certain set of fluctuations which we feel are acceptable, and not, for example, make a starter area - which would be a bad idea.

It's all about the limitations themselves, and the gameplay inside. Basically our approach is that we have a certain outer boundary, but what happens within we try not to do too much about.

GamesIndustry.biz EVE's a traditionally self-selecting player base, with a lot of complexity - the new player experience has been upgraded a couple of times in the past two years, and you also added the EVElopedia. Do you think that work has had an impact on people staying in the game - is it more accessible than it's ever been?

Nathan Richardsson

I think so, there's a much higher conversion ratio with new players, for example. It's been gradually getting better and better, but there was a good strong leap with Apocrypha... and it's also that we're going deeper into the metrics to see what people are doing in their first week, so we can focus on exposing the fundamental aspects of EVE while not taking three years to get them through the learning cliff of ours...

We've had some pitfalls that we've tried to address, and it's improved the process. We've certainly also done a couple of things that make it more accessible, but it's more that there were these pitfalls that weren't part of the complexity of EVE - they were just stupid.

So we've been addressing that, and doing more in the future based on research into what's happening in the first days - and how we can encourage people to check out other aspects of EVE. Some of them are quite hidden.