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EVE Online's Executive Producer Explains How the Game is Still Growing

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This article is more than 10 years old.

Last week, I wrote about EVE Online, a space-based MMO which has the unique ability to keep growing despite a seemingly outdated monthly subscription model. In an age of free-to-play, there's something about the game which keeps attracting new players, and convinces them that the game is worth a monthly bill of about $10-15.

The game just recently topped 450,000 subscriptions for the first time in its ten year history, which is astonishing given both its age and model. In an effort to learn how EVE does it, I recently got the chance to speak with Jon Lander, executive producer of EVE Online. We talked about not only why the game has succeeded, but how they plan on dealing with some of its struggles as well. Our interview is below, and both veteran players and the completely uninitiated might want to take a look.

Forbes: Can you briefly explain EVE Online to someone who hasn't played it?

Lander: EVE Online is a science fiction virtual world set in the distant future where a branch of humanity has been stranded on the other side of a wormhole, unable to ever return home. Our players are the descendants of those survivors who have now risen to being the immortal pilots of powerful starships shaping their destiny in a world called New Eden. EVE Online is a completely open world where everyone plays in the same persistent, movement-unrestricted game universe (no sharding) and can become anyone or thing they wish to from a miner, trader, bounty hunter, spy, pirate all the way through to the leader of thousands of other players carving out their own place in the world waging war against another player coalition of similar size over the course of a year or more.

Why do you think EVE is worth a monthly fee when there are so many other free options out there right now for MMOs?

Everything you do in this game is persistent and has an impact on the world. Player actions from 9 years ago are still resonating to this day even while new players are making their own name. The single-sharded nature of EVE along with the fact that our players are the ones who create the content allowing them to do whatever their imagination comes up with really does make our world stand out. Being able to be a part of that and for your history to remain is something that our players deem worthy of a subscription. We also develop the game at a very very fast pace compared with the industry and deliver content, free of extra charge, to our players. We just delivered our 18th major free expansion and have also put out countless improvement patches in between.

What are you doing to make the game a bit easier to get into for new players? How do you balance making the game complex enough to appeal to longtime players, while still trying to attract new ones who could potentially be intimidated by it?

The key to keeping long term players is to not tie their gameplay to content that we, the developers, need to create. Players will always consume developer made content faster than it can be created. So our approach has been to allow our players to create content for each other by giving them the tools to create their own stories and empires. The trick is balancing this kind of long term gameplay with making the game accessible to new players. This has been notoriously hard in EVE but we are taking positive strides towards making the game more accessible. We are presenting information much more readily and sensitive to the situation the player is in so they are less baffled by the scope of the game. We are also finding ways to lead players into the game by answering their question of ‘What do I do next?’ and also by finding ways to put new players into contact with more experienced players earlier whilst giving them a certain amount of protection.

Whether correct or not, many potential players have heard that to truly get the full EVE experience, the game must be played for massive amount of time. That may be somewhat understandable for an MMO, but do you think EVE can be played casually and still satisfy players who don't want to commit that kind of time?

Is it possible to log into EVE for 15 minutes and have a great experience? It’s possible but maybe not common. At its core, EVE is a hard game and people get the most by playing it for a decent chunk of time. However, we know that to increase the popularity of the game we need to find ways to accommodate those who want to play for 30 minutes and have a lot of fun doing so. The difficult part is making sure that we don’t detract from what has made EVE successful for nearly 10 years. We have a number of thoughts and plans for how to do this without dumbing the game down.

What was the thought process behind the introduction of PLEX? Can you explain about how your two currencies interact in the virtual economy, and how it's influenced the game?

Hilmar, the CEO, introduced PLEX. I’m not sure how he came up with the idea but to be honest it has revolutionized both EVE and many other games since its introduction. At its core, a PLEX can be bought for real world money from CCP and converted into 30 days of game time which are added to your account. The key though is that when you buy a PLEX it appears in game as a virtual item. This can then be traded in the in game market or redeemed for game time. What this means is that if you are successful at the game and have a lot of in game currency, ISK (InterStellar Kredits), then you can buy a PLEX from someone and use that to pay your subscription. In effect playing for ‘free’. The person who bought the PLEX for real world money then acquires a lot of in game ISK in order to play the game without maybe having to spend much time playing just to build up ISK—essentially giving them a different “pay-style” that’s regulated by the in-game economy and other EVE players. A great additional factor in this is that it really delivers no excuse for people to use “gold farmers” and we have always been going after those people aggressively.

Expansions are a big part of maintaining interest in a game like this. What elements do you try to put in your expansions that revives player interest? Why release so many, and why make them free when you have a loyal player base who would likely buy them?

We are in the great position that the subscriptions for EVE Online enable us to run CCP and keep the developers going. As such, charging for an expansion seems pretty churlish to our players. Delivering two free expansions a year is pretty tough and is something we are constantly looking at but our players really appreciate the efforts we go to. Over the years we have done many different types of expansions from technologically heavy to concentrating on a single feature through to themed, wide ranging space operas. After 10 years we have a pretty good handle on what our players like most and to be honest it is a mix of all types. That’s hard to deliver though but we’re trying.

What lessons have you learned from the days of the $60 monocle controversy? What did that teach you about the limits of microtransactions?

Be careful when putting in drastically new features into a successful game, don’t forget the core of what brought you success in the first place and offer a lot of different things at a lot of price points, weighted to the ones most people would be prepared to pay.

How do you view lying, cheating, stealing and all around havoc in the EVE economy? How much do you have to police such activities, or are you content to let your player base try anything they can fathom in the game, good or bad?

So long as our players are not exploiting a bug or contravening our EULA or Terms of Service we have always been fairly hands off anything that goes on in the world. That’s what makes it a virtual world that our players are invested in rather than one that we control. At CCP we consider ourselves the janitors of the EVE universe and so if one players does something within the game which others find reprehensible but is within our rules then anything goes. Almost all of the great stories that have happened over the last 10 years have come about by our players doing things we had no idea they would get up to with the tools we gave them.

Why do you think you've been able to sustain a paid subscription model while newer competitors haven't been able to do so? What are you doing differently from your paid and F2P competition that allows you to have both a monthly subscription fee and increasing player numbers?

We have given the game over to our players and we rely on them to have fun in the world, thereby creating content for each other. Our job is to keep refreshing the environment and giving them new tools. That player-centric focus along with constantly improving our technology in our single shard world so that thousands of players can take part in epic fleet fights and build empires they can call their own is something which still captures the imagination of people. The persistence, the friends and social connections people make through EVE Online keeps a hard core player base with us whilst new players constantly come to experience this unique world and try to carve out their own part of it. Couple that with PLEX and the fact you increase in skill over time whether you are logged in or not and you have a pretty compelling proposition.

What's the status of Dust 514? It seems to have been in the works for quite a while now. Any specific reason for the delays? How do you see it changing EVE once its released?

DUST 514 is coming along really well. It will have a fundamental yet subtle effect on EVE Online once it comes to Tranquility (the EVE production server cluster). Just think about it, you will have 2 very different games existing in the same universe in real time. Battles happening on the surface of planets will be visible to spaceship pilots in orbit above them. Requests for air support from DUST 514 will be delivered by EVE Online pilots who are working in the same corporations as DUST players in order to take territory. Players in either game will have access to the same market and social structures. We will introduce these things over time in order to assess what is happening in this unique environment but orbital strikes, shared corporations and a DUST 514 impact on EVE factional warfare will be in there from launch.

Do you have a favorite moment or moments from watching ten years of the game in action?

Too many to mention. As a player for over seven years and a developers for more than three I see many things happening which make me happy, sad, amazed and dumbstruck. Almost all of those are because of something a player or group of players have done that no one even dreamed of before. That’s when we know we have got it right.

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