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Gamasutra recently spoke to producer Thomas Farrer of Shanghai-based CCP Asia's Dust 514, its PlayStation Network shooter which operates on the same servers as the Reykjavik-based mothership's MMO EVE Online. The two games are fundamentally joined, and players of one game will have a meaningful effect on the players of the other.
"We're not looking at innovating at all the kind of typical areas that you see. We're looking at the way you connect to the world that you're playing in, and the way that you connect to the communities and people that you're playing with," Farrer told Gamasutra.
But there's another side of that story. Since the shooter hooks so fundamentally into the MMO, a conversation with someone on the MMO side was also important to understand the scale of the company's vision for the shard universe.
To that end, Gamasutra also spoke to Torfi Frans Olafsson, EVE Online's creative director, about these plans. What follows is an interview about how the seeds of these ambitions were planted before the company even began.
"We think the shooter market is ready for this. People want to do this," Olafsson told Gamasutra. To find out why, read on.
I find the link between the two games fascinating because, as far as I'm aware of, nobody's really doing anything like it.
Torfi Frans Olafsson: No.
From this point forward, you have to make design decisions in tandem, ultimately.
TFO: Well, some of the things.
Obviously, not for everything.
TFO: Yeah. That's been really exciting. It's been a challenge as well. We have teams working at either office, working on connecting the game and aligning the connection. There's been a lot of flights back and forth to Shanghai. We have really good video conferencing equipment and a lot of meetings and so on.
But in the end, I think we pretty much have the same... We know the design principles of CCP really well, which rely heavily on emergent empowerment of the users, basically trusting the player and being somewhat fearless in your designs, throwing things out and just being ready to react. And not putting people on rails is a huge thing for us. We get hugely annoyed when we're on rails in other games. So, it's going really well.
The fact that you can patch EVE as much as you want. That's not something you're going to run into with the PS3. There's going to be cert. So, does that scare you?
TFO: It's a client. We run the server, so while it's difficult to patch the client, it's much easier to make minor adjustments and tweaks to the server. And also if you're simply changing the balancing, that can be done like overnight. That can be done without changing any client code.
We have a lot of experience in this. We have been running EVE since 2003, so there's been a lot of improvement on that end. We have a lot of experience in changing the engine of the formula one car while it's still driving.
That's true. It's just that the console space is a new space, which has a lot of significant differences.
TFO: We just think it's exciting. We think it's great, like it's a challenge, and we're learning something new. But we also brought along a lot of really hardened console veterans onto our team. So it's not all news to us, even though the old CCP, like the original EVE development team, we are learning new things.
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My friends won't be able to play DUST with me. Why? Because I don't have and never will have a PS3. They are severely inferior systems, propped up by an imploding company's previous brand name, trying to spread to every aspect of communication/entertainment while constantly removing features, charging more and more for services/subscriptions, and closing-down the system more and more to customers. If I want a space heater that looks like a George Foreman grill, I will buy one of those instead.
Not one of my 15 or so EVE-playing friends owns a PS3. There were 15,000 more 360s sold this week than PS3s(vgchartz.com). In America, the gap was closer to 20,000. It's a poor business and game environment decision, and not a particularly time- or money-saving step for development. While I and many friends are fond of the idea of DUST, if it's not available for PC or 360 as well, none of my EVE-playing friends will have to worry about playing alone - or at all.
They do not allow for regular, often large, free updates. They do not allow for the game to reach outside the Live network to the PSN gamers and the PC gamers to do cross platform play.
PS: Your fanboy is showing. Spend less time trashing a roughly equivalent machine and more time playing games. If you and all of your friends can't afford EVERY console and a gaming PC this generation, then get a job you lazy bum because you are missing out on amazing experiences.
The rest of the gaming community will wait for you.
I can't help but like the basic concept behind the game but I feel that CCP may be slightly to small to pull it off without doing undue harm too their other games.
As for your "PS" comment, I won't even dignify it with a proper response.
Might be for the best, as I had a hard time seeing how they could tie the two games together without design elements weakening the shooter experience.
Nearly all FPS players are on consoles these days, so they went where the gamers are.
I'm not looking to troll you here, but what information is your statement based upon?
Now I am making some assumptions here and I could easily be proven wrong when they finally show game-play footage etc. but for the time being I feel the PC would have been the easier and generally more viable option.
Although I've wanted to get back into EVE, this will not be what does it for me unless the title gets released for the PC as well. I don't own a PS3 and I never will.
Yet theres no talk of player centric stuff that actually makes us FEEL like we are in the game, like will they have Dolby Axon, what kind of movement system do the characters have, do weapons affect movement, are they using ADS, stuff like that.
But in doing so, they can not provide a PC version for Dust, since PC-players with a mouse+keyboard control have a significant advantage over console gamers with controllers. You can't allow that in a competitive multiplayer game. It would deter the console gamers and thus destroy their commercial interest.
Either they would have to gimp down the controls on the PC or buff the consoleros somehow (e.g. aiming aid). In both cases they would deter the PC gamer group. In the end they would create a lot of frustration and hate between both groups.
I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that.
Even if I really wanted to return to the Eve universe, it makes no sense to buy a console for that and while playing a shooter feeling handicapped all time.
On a smaller scale they probably don't want to make Dust eat away from their Eve subscriptions, but this can not be the main reason. Die-hard fans would play both games on the PC.
Also software piracy (PC) can't be any valid reason since it is a pure online game, where you can weed out illegal copies.
Consoles being the main market for FPS games (if that indeed is so, IDK) can't be a significant reason since other AAA FPS titles are available on PC as well (BF3? CoD MW2?), only that the PC and console gamer populations probably will not be mixed at the same servers in these games. At least I assume that. This approach might not be applicable for Eve since they have a single-shard gameworld and this probably would make things much more complicated on the social level of Eve+Dust.
P.S. Waiting for PS Next, too ;-)