CCP announced that their online first-person shooter DUST 514 will be free-to-play. It means that we expect any owner of the supported gaming platform (PlayStation3) to be able to experience the game, at release, in a reasonably enjoyable fashion without having to pay an entry fee. Some players will provide revenue to the publisher by acquiring virtual goods to enhance their gaming experience.
Besides the fact that free-to-play is such an established business model nowadays, with huge hits such as League of Legends and World of Tanks, there are specific reasons why this announcement makes sense. The Eve brand is not known in console gaming circles, despite the buzz that has been growing around the development of DUST 514. CCP needs to diversify its income and there is no easier way to capture the attention outside of its traditional sphere of influence than by giving away the game.
Sony has a disproportionately high stake in this game, since it is both exclusive to their platform and allows them to reach to other gaming communities. If we do not pay the product, I guess we are the product. The competition from Facebook and Apple and who knows what must have Sony desperate to grow their flock and provide a credible alternative. In this world of abundant content, trading the entry fee for future microtransaction revenue makes sense if you are confident in the quality of your game.
Anyway, I am curious to see how the advertised connection between Eve Online and DUST 514 performs and what effect it will have on both gaming communities. Designing it seems like a recipe for headaches.
For Eve, we have one and soon two online games, a few books (my review of The Burning Life), a boardgame (my review), plenty of user generated content... I still think a small game for smartphones would make a nice addition to that.
I hope we can see more meaningful connections like that in the future, within the contexts of the Eve universe and of games in general. I dislike transmedia when its purpose is only to cover all bases.
What next?
There are many other games where I would enjoy this kind of cross-games interaction. For example, month-long play-by-email turn-based strategy games could connect with real time strategy games (for battles) or infiltration games (for espionage), etc. It would make some kind of long gaming continuum. This possible trend might mean some feature-rich games could drop features and those features would become complete games on the most relevant platform. Games might focus on what they do best and connect with complementary games based on previous features. MMOs are very feature-rich so I would not be surprised to see other announcements about games connected to MMOs. Wargaming.net (World of Tanks) might provide the combat game for Bioware's Star Wars MMO, for example!
Games might be created from the ground up with this connection in mind, like DUST 514, or they could reach to other games later in their career. The "connection feature" could redefine online games and the market of games.
Or DUST 514 could tank. We'll see!
Playing with the Company 8: Raise the Jolly Roger!
“You bloody idiot, you know better than to mix yer liquors!”
Kage Baker, The Life of the World to Come
Characters in the Company series have a peculiar look at history. The future depicted in the novels is bland. Past times is where interesting stuff happened: cowboys, Indians, and of course pirates. To truly understand pirates, you need to mix yer liquors. To write about pirates, you need to behave like a bloody idiot. You need, to have a HAT.
Pirates or Ninjas?
The clash of these super-memes is one of the most fundamental oppositions in culture, along with Dionysian vs Apollonian, Elves vs Dwarves, Elephant vs Hippopotamus. Kage Baker definitely sided with the pirates. The yarrr she brought into the world is manifest in one of the main characters in the series. For Alec, every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Sadly, one of his twin brothers leans more on the ninja side.) Do you want to play the part of the good little boy, or do you want to be the rebel? Alec tries to be both, but his heart is true to the Jolly Roger.
Pirates have history.
This is not the first stage in life. You become a pirate, you are not born one. And escaping the rule of law, embracing freedom, is a conscious choice; nobody is forced into the pirate life. In a game based on the Company series, I would like to see players questioning rules and choosing to rebel. What would those pirates face? A totalitarian machine based on the most comprehensive surveillance system ever devised.
The decision to raise the Jolly Roger should come from the players; it should not even be introduced as a viable option. If players feel like using the good boy system, let them do it. And if they don't behave, let them be pirates.
Just send ninjas.
Kage Baker, The Life of the World to Come
Characters in the Company series have a peculiar look at history. The future depicted in the novels is bland. Past times is where interesting stuff happened: cowboys, Indians, and of course pirates. To truly understand pirates, you need to mix yer liquors. To write about pirates, you need to behave like a bloody idiot. You need, to have a HAT.
Pirates or Ninjas?
The clash of these super-memes is one of the most fundamental oppositions in culture, along with Dionysian vs Apollonian, Elves vs Dwarves, Elephant vs Hippopotamus. Kage Baker definitely sided with the pirates. The yarrr she brought into the world is manifest in one of the main characters in the series. For Alec, every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day. (Sadly, one of his twin brothers leans more on the ninja side.) Do you want to play the part of the good little boy, or do you want to be the rebel? Alec tries to be both, but his heart is true to the Jolly Roger.
Pirates have history.
This is not the first stage in life. You become a pirate, you are not born one. And escaping the rule of law, embracing freedom, is a conscious choice; nobody is forced into the pirate life. In a game based on the Company series, I would like to see players questioning rules and choosing to rebel. What would those pirates face? A totalitarian machine based on the most comprehensive surveillance system ever devised.
The decision to raise the Jolly Roger should come from the players; it should not even be introduced as a viable option. If players feel like using the good boy system, let them do it. And if they don't behave, let them be pirates.
Just send ninjas.
Eve Online has shards
The single most vaunted feature of Eve Online, along with the focus on sandbox gameplay, has to be its single shard universe. All players are able to interact with each other in the context of the game. The single shard leverages the full potential of the community.
This is a marketing lie. Another shard of Eve Online has existed for years in China. My understanding is that this quasi-clone of the original version was created to comply with Chinese rules. Some of these rules are about the nature of content, e.g., the possibility to destroy a capsule ("podding") has been removed. Other rules are about capital ownership. CCP just announced a new partnership with TianCity to publish Eve Online in China. I thought this press release would be a good occasion to reflect about the Chinese shard.
Right now, the Chinese players explore a world that is but a copy of the one explored by the global players. They cannot interact with other players. In my opinion, being exclusive in such a way betrays the ethos of Eve Online. This is obviously a business compromise, but the role of content creators is to accommodate business and technical impediments.
What would have made sense, if the law compels CCP to prevent Chinese customers to interact with non-Chinese, would have been having the Chinese customers play in a different part of the game universe. Trouble is, this will not happen. The background is intricately burrowed into the game system as in, a massive quantity of game objects are not background-neutral. Ships are obviously the result of the industry of specific civilizations. The same for Captain's Quarters, faces, plenty of skills, etc. A whole new series of stars and planets would have to be generated and named. The expansions have been built around a peculiar narrative, etc.
But still, it bugs me. I need to rationalize this other shard because, in the back of my mind, I still hope that at some point a grand unification of the Eve universe will happen.
Then again, maybe an entirely different set of human empires is located on the other side of the Jovian empire. The Joves are not talking, but have been feeding these empires with technology originating from Dodixie and Amarr. Or it could be a case of the parallel universes.
In the future, I hope this situation gets solved. Perhaps TianCity will go beyond publishing a clone. To keep with the spirit of Eve Online, they ought to make sure that their customers can explore a world that is truly theirs and not a carbon copy of the first one, minus some stuff that the Chinese government dislikes. This way, the fantasy that there is only one instance of the Eve cluster will be maintained.
This is a marketing lie. Another shard of Eve Online has existed for years in China. My understanding is that this quasi-clone of the original version was created to comply with Chinese rules. Some of these rules are about the nature of content, e.g., the possibility to destroy a capsule ("podding") has been removed. Other rules are about capital ownership. CCP just announced a new partnership with TianCity to publish Eve Online in China. I thought this press release would be a good occasion to reflect about the Chinese shard.
Right now, the Chinese players explore a world that is but a copy of the one explored by the global players. They cannot interact with other players. In my opinion, being exclusive in such a way betrays the ethos of Eve Online. This is obviously a business compromise, but the role of content creators is to accommodate business and technical impediments.
What would have made sense, if the law compels CCP to prevent Chinese customers to interact with non-Chinese, would have been having the Chinese customers play in a different part of the game universe. Trouble is, this will not happen. The background is intricately burrowed into the game system as in, a massive quantity of game objects are not background-neutral. Ships are obviously the result of the industry of specific civilizations. The same for Captain's Quarters, faces, plenty of skills, etc. A whole new series of stars and planets would have to be generated and named. The expansions have been built around a peculiar narrative, etc.
But still, it bugs me. I need to rationalize this other shard because, in the back of my mind, I still hope that at some point a grand unification of the Eve universe will happen.
Then again, maybe an entirely different set of human empires is located on the other side of the Jovian empire. The Joves are not talking, but have been feeding these empires with technology originating from Dodixie and Amarr. Or it could be a case of the parallel universes.
In the future, I hope this situation gets solved. Perhaps TianCity will go beyond publishing a clone. To keep with the spirit of Eve Online, they ought to make sure that their customers can explore a world that is truly theirs and not a carbon copy of the first one, minus some stuff that the Chinese government dislikes. This way, the fantasy that there is only one instance of the Eve cluster will be maintained.
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