‘… but the war with ourselves.’

Hilmar Veigor Pétursson used this words to describe CCP, his major massively multiplayer online game company responsible for the creation of EVE Online.

CCP was founded in 1997 with the idea for a massivly multiplayer online game and no clues of game development. In the year 2000 the company acquired 1.5 million dollars from private investors. Only one year later they experienced the actual costs for game productions and ran out of money. Only five people were payed and continued to work on EVE. The rest of the team worked unpaid for the timebeing. A year later they found a publisher and signed a deal. In 2003 they released EVE Online. Due to some difficulties later on, Simon and Schuster, their Publisher, stopped working in the games business and CCP started to self-publish EVE Online.

Since then EVE Online has gained over 300.000 subscribers and is played in over 230 different countries.

Hilmar differentiates between MMO’s of two kinds. The first one is called ‘Themepark’ and includes games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest. They are flashy, easy to access and have a lot of content. On the other hand is ‘The Playground’ which includes games like EVE Online and Ultima Online and are played like sandbox games. You need to defend your world, immersive yoursel in it and build a social network.
Hilmar showed us that the security inside a sector in EVE is high but outside of a sector non-existing. Players conquered these outside sectors and organized themself after their origin and formed different alliances. They have been at war since then and this kind of social networking motivates the players to continue with their journey.

There is a lot besides the game that has to do with the EVE Universe that has been created by the community and developers. EVE.tv, EON Magazin, Fansites, real news from real people and soon they will add novels and their own social network site like facebook specialized on EVE.
The EVE Media was a great way for the developers to stay in touch with the community but the community itself did alot, too. There are mods like ‘Day of Darkness’ or ‘EVE Commander’.

By showing a trailer Hilmar explains the concept behind EVE. He compares it with the Chaos Theory also known as the Butterfly Effect. “The actions of one player affects everything”.

Till today CCP released eleven expansions that made the game easier to access and some new features like politics and democratics. One of the new upcoming features is called ‘Incarna’. Incarna are avatars that can be used to walk around in spacestations. All these expansions are included into one subscription fee.

But enough of EVE. Hilmar presents us with an brand new trailer of CCP’s hidden project called ‘DUST 514’.

DUST is in development for consoles and is described as an massivly multiplayer online FPS with RTS elements and is deeply connected to EVE Online. A player in EVE can command a team of mercenaries in DUST to infiltrate a territory in EVE. This way there is a community crossover between DUST and EVE.

At the end of the keynote, Hilmar states the fact that game companys contribute to the export rates of a country, like EVE Online did for Iceland with 40% in the year 2007.

But now, you should experience the trailer of DUST yourself and have a look at CCP’s upcoming MMO: