EVE Online
- Platform: PC
- Published by: CCP Games
- Developed by: CCP Games
- Release Date: May 6, 2003
- Genre: RPG
- Multiplayer: Yes
- Online: Yes
EVE Online Interview
-- September 21, 2006 by: Marek Bronstring
Before we get to the interview, I should probably mention the "EIB scam" which happened recently in EVE Online and which got quite a bit of mainstream press attention (particularly in Scandinavian countries). A player had set up what he called the EIB, or EVE Investment Bank, which claimed to function as an unofficial bank for player's virtual money. Of course, the bank got closed soon after many "deposits" were made, and the guy behind it ran off laughing maniacally. The scam is one of the topics I discussed with Magnus Bergsson, as well as how CCP is changing EVE's virtual economy in future updates, the effects of World of Warcraft on the MMO marketplace, and why anyone should be interested in playing EVE in the first place.
Shack: First of all, I have a confession to make: I have not yet properly played EVE. I guess it is because some of my friends have gotten completely addicted to it. But I have played it briefly and I get all the stories from them.
Magnus Bergsson: Okay.
Shack: I understand you are a hardcore player of EVE as well?
Magnus Bergsson: I play more than probably most people at CCP.
Shack: So when you go home after work, you also play the game?
Magnus Bergsson: (laughs) Yes.
Shack:The most recent news regarding EVE has been the new record of concurrent users. It was something like 30000, wasn't it?
Magnus Bergsson: Thirty thousand... five hundred and ... something.
Shack: What, you don't know the exact number?
Magnus Bergsson: (laughs) I am the marketing guy. The developers would have to know the exact number, but it's over 30000.
Shack: How do you explain the recent popularity of the game?
Magnus Bergsson: What happened was, when World of Warcraft came out, our growth kind of went flat for three or four months. It only increased a little bit. But then very shortly after that, about four or five months after the launch of World of Warcraft, the increase just started growing and growing. One of the reasons of course is that World of Warcraft brings so many new people into this genre in general.
However, [Blizzard] are getting them into the game and people are leveling out. It's a type of game you don't play for that long, because it is a leveling game. When you actually reach a certain level you are happy with, you might leave. So we have seen a lot of World of Warcraft users come into EVE Online.
Shack: So you see World of Warcraft as purely a good influence and not as a competitor?
Magnus Bergsson: We had a party the day World of Warcraft came out. We were so damn happy. We knew that World of Warcraft and EVE are so completely different that they would only help us and they have absolutely done so. They have taken a lot of users from other fantasy-based MMOGs, but they have also actually created users for us.
Shack: Right. And what are your thoughts on the many MMO startups that are emerging at the moment? There are tons of MMOs in development and many of them are also sci-fi themed. Do you see those as a threat to EVE Online?
Magnus Bergsson: The more games we have in the sci-fi part of the industry the better it is for us. It brings more focus on sci-fi and away from fantasy. Because fantasy has been a dominant theme. It can only help us, especially when people start comparing games. It's going to be very difficult for other developers to catch up with EVE because it's been in development since, well, for almost 10 years now.
Shack: 10 years? It was launched a couple of years ago, but you're saying it was already in development long before that?
Magnus Bergsson: Yes. It was launched three years ago. They started development -- well, not 10 years ago. We actually started development in 2000, but the company was created in 1996. That's when the idea was born and this one guy started writing down all the script and everything else, so that's ten years ago.
Shack: Let's talk about what's happening in EVE in the near future, like the Kali expansion pack that's still in the works. What's going to change in those updates?
Magnus Bergsson: There are a few things. The biggest thing inside the game itself is the contract system. It is going to play a huge role, as we have seen by the recent EIB scandal and the other scams that go on. Many of them are created because of people entering quite advanced business transactions within EVE. The virtual economy has grown so big and become so mature that it requires much more complex tools.
We created the most complex and extensive contract system in any MMOG. It is absolutely quite amazing. It will facilitate any type of business you want to do, with complete control over the conditions of the contract. Say you are an alliance leader and I want to command ten people to go out and mine one million trit [tritanium]. I can actually create a contract and say 'okay, I want you to go and you have one week to comply to this contract'. When you accept the contract you might get a ship and the modules to fit on the ship, then you go out to mine a million trit, then to complete the contract you have to return the ship and the modules and one million trit.
So you can actually run the corporations [guilds in EVE] on these contract systems as well. It's not just for the business transactions. The flexibility is really tremendous.
Shack: It might create all sorts of player behavior that you can't even anticipate now, right?
Magnus Bergsson: Yeah, absolutely.
Shack: How can you create the terms and conditions of the contract? What is the interface like?
Magnus Bergsson: It is going to replace the escrow windows. The way you construct a contract is so flexible in so many different ways. You can even make an auction contract, so if you want to auction something off you put it in an auction contract and everybody can just bid on it. You really have to see it, because when I saw it the first time, I said 'wow, how am I supposed to use that' because there are so many things you can do with it. It is going to have a major impact on the player base, because it deals with the core of EVE. Well, one of the cores, which is the economic part of EVE, and operating the corporations and the alliances. So this is going to have a huge impact.
Shack: Regarding the game economy, I had the impression that a lot of it is happening outside of the game right now. At least, things like the bank scam are player created and aren't part of the game rules. What is currently your policy on things like that?
Magnus Bergsson: If you don't break the user license agreement we are completely hands-off. People have to deal with people they trust. Of course, trust in EVE Online is a very scarce commodity (laughs).
If someone gets scammed, it really is their own fault. Of course we completely disagree with that type of behavior, because they are taking away someone's money that he worked hard to create and there's real hours behind it -- so that's bad. But at the same time these people have to anticipate that if you give somebody your money, that there is no structure in the game to get that money back. It's just as in real life: if you give someone cash, he can run off with it.
Shack: Do you warn players, through your community?
Magnus Bergsson: People have been playing this game for some time, so they hear about this. The good thing about the EIB scam though is that it has received so much publicity. Because the guy that actually did it, he really wanted publicity. He had created his own video of it and everything.
Shack: Ah really? I hadn't seen that.
Magnus Bergsson: Yeah. And this type of publicity will actually help the player base be aware that these types of things actually happen. So this would probably lessen the possibility of future scams. And that's a good thing.
Shack: Have you verified that it was a real scam? I looked at some EVE news sites and saw some people speculating it might not have been real.
Magnus Bergsson: It was a real scam. But we question the amount that he is claiming to have taken. We are pretty sure it was not that amount.
Shack: You have logs where you can look these things up?
Magnus Bergsson: Yes. Even though we didn't do a very formal investigation, because it is not really our place to look into it that much. He didn't break any laws of the game, so should we be tracking his action? No we shouldn't. But what we wanted to make sure is that the money is not going to leave the game, meaning that he is not going to sell it. So we wanted to track that part of it, but not exactly what else he does with it. We know it's not the amount that he claimed, but we don't know the exact amount. But it was a considerable amount. How much exactly we don't know because the economy is so large with everyone being on a single shard that for us to track this type of money... it's just a drop in the ocean.
Shack: But you do log everything in the game?
Magnus Bergsson: Everything is logged. If we really want to get into it, we can find anything.
Shack: Even things from a few years back?
Magnus Bergsson: Yeah.
Shack: That is pretty impressive. So since the game is obviously in continuous development, you bring out a lot of patches. I guess everyone has their own interests in the game because of the choices they've made or certain skills they've developed, so some people might be unhappy with changes. How do you deal with player feedback?
Magnus Bergsson: We practically live on the forums. We keep a very close eye on what people are talking about. Their concerns, their ideas. Of course many of us in the company are big players as well. We play daily, so we get a very good sense of what is actually going on in-game. If you have been on our forums you will see the type of connection we have with our players. We might actually not come out publically and say 'hey we are working on this right now, relax', but we do follow our users extremely well.
Turn the page to read about things that make EVE Online stand out from other MMORPGs, and why its not too late to jump in as a new player.