CCP Games, we gotta talk. You’ve been trying to make the EVE Online “universe” thing happen a long time. You’ve put out so many EVE-related spinoffs that I’d need to drag Brendan into the Daily Grind to put them all into a timeline for me because heck if I can keep EVE Valkyrie and Project Nova and DUST 514 and EVE Gunjack straight. EVE itself seems to fine-ish, and I guess NetEase is happily milking EVE Echoes. But nothing else CCP has done has managed to stick.
CCP (and by extension, Pearl Abyss) surely isn’t oblivious to the threat of being a “one-hit wonder”; Hilmar Petersson has acknowledged the concern with defiance in the last few years, saying the company will keep trying in spite of its failures, which is frankly commendable. But then here we are just a few years later as CCP continues its wind-down of VR projects, and the company is telling fans it’s going to “focus [its] efforts on new developments in [its] evolving portfolio of EVE Universe titles.”
Maybe this is the smart thing to do. Maybe this is exactly what Pearl Abyss wants since it’s got the whole EVE IP free and clear. Maybe they do have infinite money to keep trying to make EVE-2-but-not-quite without actually cannibalizing EVE itself. But I have to wonder whether it’s what the multiplayer market actually wants, given all the other misfires.
Do you want another game in the EVE universe? What should it look like? What would you do if you were CCP?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
