GDC Interview: Petur Oskarsson on EVE, and the Future of CCP

It was the third day of GDC, and I was scheduled to interview Hilmar Petursson, founder and CEO of CCP.

It’s not every day that I interview someone with “Chief Executive” in their title, and as a result I redoubled my usual pre-interview research, coming armed with a long list of topics I planned to delve into with him.

But, as they’re often fond of saying in the military: No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

I soon discovered that there had in fact been a slight miscommunication somewhere along the line, and my interview was not with Hilmar Petursson, but with Petur Oskarsson, CCP researcher.

Petur was a nice guy, and very pleasant to talk to (he also happens to have one of the best haircuts in the industry), but, he wasn’t the man I was expecting. Half my notes were immediately rendered moot, and I quickly had to reorganize the other half into a suitable array of questions which, I worried, might fall outside of his realm of expertise entirely.

I’d like to thank him up front for being a good sport when I explained my position, and answering my questions to the best of his abilities. Hopefully, someday soon we can conduct another interview, where I’ve prepared topics specifically with him in mind.

Press play to listen to the interview.

The MMO Gamer: To get us started, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, please introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about CCP.

Petur Oskarsson: I’m Petur Oskarsson and I’m a researcher at CCP. I’ve been at CCP almost five years.

CCP started in 1997. It sprang out of a company called OZ that was a virtual meeting communications company working in Iceland. The idea they had then was to create the best massive multiplayer online game ever. Of course, the two guys who actually founded the company had no money, only ideas and great aspirations, which meant that it took awhile, until funding started running in.

In 2000 the wheels started rolling with trips to E3—God bless its memory—and then in 2001 and 2002 there was an available working prototype, and alpha tests of EVE. Then, in 2002 and 2003 beta testing was commencing, and then EVE went live, May 2003.

We had a publishing contract with Simon & Schuster’s electronic division, but they closed that division, so we had to buy the publishing rights back. In December 2003 we had done that, and we started publishing the game electronically online.

Since then, we have grown from 30,000 subscribers to close to 250,000 subscribers now.

The MMO Gamer: As you mentioned, CCP had somewhat humble beginnings. The company and EVE were things that many people had written off almost as soon as they were announced.

You were just an upstart company in Iceland that many people didn’t give a chance. But, now here you are in 2008, and many of the people who had written you off no longer exist.

What do you attribute that to?

Petur Oskarsson: Some would attribute it to the Icelandic stubbornness, of never actually giving up.

Despite CCP going through rough times financially at least twice—rough times meaning technically bankrupt—we just kept on going, working without any pay for several months, the staff did that. Dedicating their entire time—and almost lives—and getting the backups of families.

It’s just what we had, the ideas and the implementations we foresaw, and how we got support and how we were lucky, kind of made us grow while the guys who were criticizing us disappeared. They had fixed ideas with sometimes too-standard gameplay, while we had something new and something fundamentally different, and that’s what propelled us through.

The MMO Gamer: One thing that makes EVE unusual is it’s one of the few MMOs to ever buck the trend of getting nearly all of its peak subscribers within a month or two of launch, and then entering a slow, gradual decline. EVE has actually been going up every year.

Why do you think that is? What makes the game appealing to new players even as it gets older?

Petur Oskarsson: The way EVE is designed is the reason for this development. Because of the single shard approach we use, everybody’s playing on the same server, and if you play EVE you can contact everybody who plays EVE, no matter where he is in the universe.

That means that the more people you have playing the better the game is, because you have more dynamic things happening, people disagreeing, more and fighting more, which means more fun for everybody—and less fun for those who lose.

But, this growing number of players means that you have more players to talk to, and while we facilitate this growth by adding hardware and making sure our servers run the entire thing—more or less without a hitch—this is a second home, it’s a virtual world, it’s a society that they participate in. And, when people experience something so deeply and fundamentally fun and immersing, they can’t help but advertise it to their friends.

That’s why EVE is getting bigger as it gets older, because it’s just getting better.

The MMO Gamer: Another thing EVE has to contend with that other MMOs might not due to declining playerbase is expansions. You just released another expansion this past December, and I’m wondering now, with the White Wolf merger—which I’d like to get into in a moment—is the EVE team still committed to releasing further expansions, or will they be moving on to try and concentrate on the World of Darkness MMO?

Petur Oskarsson: No, no! EVE has not been forgotten, and will not be forgotten for many years to come. I’ve seen plans of releases scheduled all the way to 2011. So, EVE is not done, we’re just building up a second group to work on the other projects we might launch on the future.

The MMO Gamer: On the subject of that second group: When are you planning to release further information about the World of Darkness MMO? It’s been a bit, sketchy, let’s say, since the original announcement was made.

Petur Oskarsson: Yeah. Let me just say that there are no vampires. Further information I cannot give because I simply don’t know them.

The MMO Gamer: Fair enough. Perhaps you know this one, then: I was wondering what the impetus was behind the White Wolf merger. Did they approach you, did you approach them? Did you want to do the merger with the idea of doing a World of Darkness MMO?

Petur Oskarsson: I can only tell you what I know. I didn’t come to the actual merger, or how it was planned, or what happened. But, the way it was described for me is that, to quote Hilmar, the CEO of CCP: We found a lost colony of Icelanders down in Atlanta, running a company called White Wolf.

For them it seemed obvious to merge and work together. The spirit was so likened, and the ideas and aspirations were really parallel to one another, so it was just the logical step. But, further than that I don’t know any more details.

The MMO Gamer: Alright, let’s get back to EVE, then.

One of the primary concerns that many new players have when looking at EVE is the PvP aspect; in particular, the ganking aspect of PvP. A number of people are frightened off from playing the game by the prospect of, let’s say, being killed repeatedly, over, and, over, and over again.

Have you ever given any thought to—I know you’re very big on the single-server idea—further restrictions, or restricted combat areas, things along those lines, to try and entice more people to subscribe to the game?

Petur Oskarsson: No. EVE is fundamentally a PvP game. Everything there is PvP. The market is player-driven and player-run, all production is player-driven and player-run. So, that’s essentially PvP, player vs. player, even though you’re not firing any guns.

Combat, naturally, is over resources within EVE, and being ganked is—I mean, the gankers are equally scared as being ganked as the solo pilot who is being ganked by them. It’s just a matter of how you behave in EVE, and what steps you take to protect yourself, and what kind of steps you take for revenge.

The MMO Gamer: Barring a reduction in the amount of PvP in the game, have you considered adding further gameplay elements [to entice new players]—other than the obvious ones of ships, items, and new skills?

Petur Oskarsson: Ambulation, the thing where you can walk around in stations is being developed. That will provide a new dimension into EVE, essential to socialization, and facilitating roleplaying.

In there will not be a game within the game, but an extension, an inward growth for EVE, growing into stations and creating some sort of an environment there to allow players to engage in further activities.

The MMO Gamer: One of the things we discussed before the interview that I’d like to get into again is the player council.

Could you go into some of the details about that for our readers?

Petur Oskarsson: Certainly. The Council of Stellar Management, as we call it, started back in 2003 where we hand-picked players from a pool of players who volunteered themselves to discuss with the developers about how the game was being implemented, and how to proceed, and what was wrong, etc.

That kind of dwindled down and died out because of resource issues and constraints on the developer’s time because of the aforementioned difficulties with EVE, and the financial status.

But, now we feel confident, and we see that because of the size of the playerbase is actually creating a society that it requires some sort of regulations, and/or a formal player input. Because of that we are going forth with this player council.

The method will be democratic elections where everyone can actually run as a candidate, and everyone can vote, if they’re 30 days old or so. So, we want to create a group of player-elected representatives that we do not have any say on how they are elected, or by whom, or what they are saying after they are actually elected.

We are getting the pure player experience through them.

The Council of Stellar Management is just another step. We truly feel this will help everybody, both us and the players. We believe that this will not go through painlessly, and will be very difficult to begin with, but, we think it’s really worth it.

The MMO Gamer: What does the future hold for CCP? Aside from future EVE expansions, and the World of Darkness MMO, do you have anything else on the backburner you’re thinking about?

Petur Oskarsson: There is, yes. I can’t comment further on that.

The MMO Gamer: Not even a hint?

Petur Oskarsson: Not even a hint.

The MMO Gamer: Fair enough. Was there anything else we didn’t discuss you would like to tell our readers before we go?

Petur Oskarsson: If you haven’t tried EVE, then try EVE. Our goal is our subscription numbers will actually surpass the Icelandic population this year. The Icelandic population number is about 315,000, so it’s a really, really achievable goal. We are looking forward to creating a semi-nation within a virtual world.

The MMO Gamer: Good luck with that. And, thank you very much for joining us, we appreciate it, and we look forward to speaking with you more in the future.

Petur Oskarsson: It was my pleasure.