EVE Interview
EVE Onli ne’s executive producer on going free-to-play and keeping players interested.
After 13 years of requiring a mandatory paid subscription to play, EVEOnline has switched to a free-to-play model. Free accounts have some limitations, while players who pay a monthly $10 fee get access to all of the game’s skills and spaceships. We spoke to executive producer Andie Nordgren about how this has impacted the game.
Are you happy with how EVE Online’s transition into a free-to-play model has gone? Absolutely, in many, many ways. I am very proud of how we have done it. I put a lot of my own personal care into it, and we put our trust with the community on the line. We thought a lot about how to design it, but also how to communicate to people about how it all works. I’m proud of the fact that people who read our information first about the Clone State system understood what it was and didn’t react very badly. They were like, ‘Okay, this is kind of exciting.’
But people who read the press headlines first, where it just says EVE is going free-to-play, they were like, ‘Nooo! Do not want!’ But the more they researched it, the more they realized they don’t have a problem with it. In general, the community reception has been really good. It helped that we told people so early and were able to bring players into the feedback process.
I have to pinch myself sometimes. Did we really pull this off? Did we really do this to EVEOnline and have the community go along with it? I think that’s because we did it with so much respect for the players.
EVEOnline used to have a 14-day free trial, which I never felt was a significant enough amount of time to get into such a complex game. The hard subscription wall was something that we had to deal with. Once your trial ran out, you couldn’t even log back into the game and try again. If you wanted your character and their ship back, you had to pay the monthly subscription fee. Now expectations for online games have changed so much. There are so many games to play out there, and the old two-week trial period just wasn’t enough for players to get into EVE.
It’s not a game that many people just decide to play. There are people who signed up for multiple trials with multiple accounts, and it took a while for them to get stuck in. I think that’s because EVE is more like a hobby than a traditional game. You might try cycling or golfing, and you won’t immediately jump straight into it. Your friend might bring you along, then later, if you like it, you might consider buying your own bike or racket. It’s a slow process, but now, thanks to the free-to-play model, people finally have that time.
Even with the new model, is keeping hold of new players still a challenge? There’s a lot we can do to make EVEOnline more accessible for newcomers. There are plenty of enjoyable activities in the game, it’s just that they are obscure and difficult to find. For experienced players they’re a lot of fun, but for new people they can be pretty challenging to get into because you have to do a lot of extracurricular reading or research on forums and wikis and so on.
We are making changes constantly to make the game easier to use. For instance, last year we added Fitting Simulation. Before, you had to buy all the modules you wanted to fit to your ship, however you can now simulate it. There are always things we can do better, and we’re currently in the process of streamlining a few things that have been causing people problems.
Do you think that EVEOnline demands more patience and commitment than other games? And is that the way you like it?
Most other games are much smaller in scope. They try and give you one experience and do it really well. But EVE is more like a virtual world with a huge number of activities, and this means that there’s a lot more to learn. There’s a basic level of competency and things to know beforehand that’s required, but once you learn them, you can use them for a lot of things in the game. And that’s another way EVE is more like a hobby.
Nobody expects to get into a hobby instantly. You might have to go to courses, you’ll start out with entry- level equipment. But as you learn more you need better gear. It starts mattering which golf club you have, for example. And there will always be aspects of EVEOnline that are like that, and it’s not unlikely that you’ll have to read up on some of the higher-level stuff eventually.
Have newbie corporations, such as the likes of Brave Newbies and EVE University, become a vital part of the new player experience? That’s the best way to play. If you’re trying to get into a sport, you find a sports club. You do it with other people, and that’s not like an anomaly or anything. You’re enjoying hanging out with the people as much as doing the activity.
But I think we could be better at helping players make the connection with these groups. We want to help corporations recruit the kind of people they’d like to see in their groups. So helping new pilots find a group that they would be interested in. We have a corporation finder, but you have to find that and learn how that works first. That could be integrated better.
If you want to start judo, you don’t try and learn at home by watching YouTube videos. You go and find a judo club. So there’s stuff we can do to make EVE work more like that. But solo players are important too, of course.
What steps are you taking to improve the solo experience? It should be possible to engage with this world on your own terms. It shouldn’t be a mandate to be on comms with other players to play EVEOnline. You shouldn’t be required to join a corporation. There’s still an important solo aspect to EVE. It’s not a single-player game. You’re still surrounded by other people. But if you’re a market trader or a mission runner, you’re interacting with people in a different way than you would playing with a group of people. But we’re not looking to focus on corporation play at the expense of solo pilots.
As long as we’ve been aware of the existence of EVE, it’s always looked beautiful. How important is this to CCP? There’s no version of EVE. It’s the same thing, it just keeps evolving. We’ve invested a lot over the last 13 years in keeping the game moving along technically. The game looks great today, and that’s because we have been relentlessly improving and pushing to futureproof it. EVE has always looked good, and that’s something we’ve worked hard to achieve.
It should be possible to engage with this world on your own terms