Underneath all of that architecture -- the display, some of the faster computing that's going on server-side behind the scenes -- in rebuilding a lot of that code, have you thought more about scalability this time around?

HP: Definitely. We foresaw massive fleet battles in the beginning. But they have risen to a scale that we didn't really anticipate... to have 500 people in an all-out shootout, all graphically rendered on a PC is something that we couldn't necessarily have built a better strategy for. But our new engine definitely enables that on hardware that is out today. Our old 3D engine is not really able to leverage the GPUs of today and tomorrow to enable those experiences to be completely smooth. But our new engine has the tools in place to allow people to get rid of the client-side latency part of massive fleet combat.

Have you thought about future generations of hardware as well?

HP: 3D engines as you create them today are structured around shaders. And as the graphics systems evolve, you have the ability to do more and more sophisticated shaders. Our engine is structured in a way that it provides facilities to shaders to take advantage of the hardware. So as you get more sophisticated hardware, you can easily upgrade your shaders and get better effects from that without having to change the overall structure of the 3D engine that much.

Most of the more recent 3D engines that you see created today use that approach, and we have very much taken advantage of that and we have people, much more capable than I ever was back in 2002, to really understand the way today to build a future-proof engine so we won't have to go through this massive effort of re-creating again. We can continue to evolve the look of the game over time as the capacity of the hardware allows for it.

You're upgrading portions of the game -- hardware and software -- that work behind the scenes. So basically you have functionality which will just become more efficient. At the same time, you're working on new features -- new technology -- that you're implementing in the engine and networking. And on top of that, you're adding new gameplay features such as the Ambulation project. So how much attention do you put toward something new versus fixing things from the past or becoming aware of things that you might have to deal with in the future?

HP: As the company has grown, it has very much been the challenge of juggling multiple goals. We have been continuously evolving our project management infrastructure. We do a lot of scrum-based sort of agile development initiatives now, and those have helped a lot. Especially around cross-disciplinary initiatives such as Ambulation which has to involve artistic elements, game design elements, and technology elements and also, just our overall vision for the game.

Ultimately the game is about people, for people, and not having people there has always been a challenge to explain, that the game is about people when all that you have to show is space ships. So Ambulation for us is very much... a tool to better explain what EVE is all about. It's about people, and all of our emergent behavior comes from people interacting with each other. So we're putting more of a human face on the game. And also, it just looks amazing... what the guys have been doing representing a person in the future, working around a space station. In my opinion, this is maybe way better than people what people have strived for before. We wanted to do for the character aspect what we have done for the space aspect in terms of feeling real and almost movie-like.