EVE Online devs on upcoming Equinox expansion, null-sec & the game’s importance in 2024

Eve Online turns 21 years old today, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. We spoke to CCP Games about the upcoming Equinox expansion and Eve’s storied place in the history of the MMO genre and video games more generally.

Equinox is set to thrust null-sec into the spotlight, allowing players to take control of the game’s most lawless region. With rich resources to harness and a ton of new customization features for capsuleers to take advantage of, it marks an exciting step forward for the game’s persistent world.

The expansion is also set to significantly advance sandbox FPS Eve Vanguard, a game that has been developed in remarkably close collaboration with the existing community. The addition of a new map, ways to play and an exciting feature known as adaptive weaponry should provide plenty to enjoy in the coming months.

We sat down with Eve Online’s Creative Director Bergur Finnbogason and Community Manager Peter Farrell to discuss the game’s past, present and future.

Vanguard is an impressive pipeline into the Eve Online universe

CCP Games

Eve Vanguard has made an impressive start to life. Though very early in development, it bears all of the encouraging hallmarks of a game developed by the team behind Eve Online. It builds on the existing universe while offering an entirely new way to explore it. It also acts as a more approachable way to get into the Eve universe for the first time, as Finnbogason explains.

“We’re in the infancy of Vanguard. We are in a pretty strict velvet rope, pre-alpha state where we’re actually locking access to it behind Omega. Initially, we want to build this core player base of Eve players. We want to get the Eve-ness right. We want to get the correct feeling and I’m a big believer in really kind of homing in on a strong foundation if you want to build an amazing building.

“So that’s one of the reasons why we scaled all the way back to a single suit and a single weapon. Let’s get that feeling right and then we can start to build upon it and build on top of it. We didn’t want to complicate Vanguard with a deep Eve connection right from the get-go. To be 100% honest, the Eve connection has definitely developed and changed over the course of the monthly playtests we’ve been running since December because we just see how players are interacting with this.

“There is more confidence in the team, that this is something you know well worth investing in and going deep on. We see how people are using it and that gives us the confidence of really pushing in that direction.

“Over the coming months, we will be seeing a lot more of the sandbox elements starting to show up. More of the classic MMO coming into the game and the experience, but we’ll continue to kind of incrementally test it and make sure that it’s correct. We’re not doing it as a sprint, we’re not doing it as a cash grab. We’re doing it as a marathon, we’re doing it for the long run.

“On the halo effect, we’ve seen this with every game that’s come out in the EVE IP. When we put out a new game in the IP, and there have been a few over the years, there’s always been interest in EVE Online, and there’s always been a halo effect in EVE Online.

“We saw this massively with Dust514, our PlayStation 3 shooter. We have a huge community in EVE today that comes from Dust. We have a community in EVE that comes from Valkyrie, the VR game that we made. We have people who started playing Gunjack, an awesome turret gear VR game.

“That was their entry into the universe. We absolutely hope that this will spark the interest of more people because it’s a universe filled with beautiful stories and exciting things. It’s our duty to make sure as many people as possible can experience the beauty of EVE Online.”

Null-Sec comes to the fore in Eve Online: Equinox

CCP Games

The different levels of security across Eve Online’s sprawling game world has come to be one of its defining features. It informs everything from player behavior to NPC interactions, with Null-Sec regions and constellations serving as the most lawless and untamed of the areas in-game.

The Equinox expansion is set to thrust these areas into the spotlight once again. In years gone by, Null-Sec regions have served as the breeding ground for some of Eve’s most thrilling stories, and the developers are keen to take the lessons learned from other areas of the game and apply them here, as Finnbogason explains.

“We’ve definitely iterated on Null-Sec over the years, but there have been some design challenges that we’ve had to face for a while. There’s a lot of our core community that lives in Null-Sec and a lot of the stories that we read about are these epic Null-Sec stories. So, we have to be careful when we go in and start unfolding it, to figure out the best way to approach the design problems that we’re facing. A few years ago, we decided to start by looking at Low-Sec, which is the space between high-sec and Null-Sec.

“We had an important feature there called Faction Warfare that we knew we needed to give some serious love to. We decided to use that opportunity to prototype some of the assumptions and ideas that we’ve had for years and see if some of those could become a guiding light for what owning space, claiming space, and losing space feels and acts like.

“Over the last two and a half years, we’ve been putting a lot of effort and focus on Low-Sec in preparation for diving into Null-Sec. Low-Sec is buzzing, it’s filled with life. It went from a dangerous, random, half-vacant space to a really dangerous place with the oddest form of organized chaos you can find.

“You go in, and within 15 minutes, you’re shooting something. You have no idea what you’re doing, and you’ve made about 10 friends.

“Now, we’re hoping that we can start to take some of these learnings and apply them to Null-Sec. Of course, there are some initial fundamentals that we need to shape up and clean up. We went through a big period of cleaning up resources and that kind of unlocked a lot of possibilities and options for us to use now.

“We’re reaping the benefit of all the work that the teams have been putting in over the last few years. And we’re taking the first step on this amazing adventure that will probably take a few years to really fully manifest itself.”

The SKINR tool is set to breathe new life into the universe

The announcement of the SKINR tool does not really do the scale of the concept justice. It is a new system that allows players to fully customize the designs placed on their ships. This should lead to alliances flying out in uniform colors and rogue operators with insane designs appearing in players’ peripheral visions.

It goes deeper than that though, as both Finnbogason and Farrell explain.

Finnbogason: “SKINR is an evolution of structure skins, with the idea of getting people into designing their own ship skins. Some of the super cool things that we’re allowing players to do is to basically add patterns, change colors and move patterns around on their ships.

“We’re basically designing this tool with the idea that we want to create a new profession and allow players to become designers, to sell their designs and share them with others. People will not have access to all the colors and all the patterns [in the first instance]. This is something that you will need to discover.

“Some of them you will get from packs, some you will get from daily challenges or login incentives or some of it you will discover while completing content in the game. You might find it in random corners of space while you’re shooting stuff or hacking stuff. There’s definitely a huge collector’s element in this.

“It will also give people a bit of a sense of, ‘oh, I have that special red or I found that special pattern, so I can manufacture skins’, and those will become more desirable. As we have yet to release, there are a lot of details and it’s a pretty huge feature.

“I think it’s almost better to play with it and I think there will be plenty of opportunities to do streams and competitions and things like that.

“EVE is so much about humans dealing with humans. It’s so much about this human interaction and identity and being a part of something bigger, being part of something greater and being able to wear your colors with pride. Being able to put on that badge of honor is such a big part of the experience.”

Farrell: “What I love about this is like, it creates that new job that Berger was talking about where you can just design a skin or design a pattern for your Alliance. Then share it with them and say, ‘Hey, here’s, here’s what you’re going to be flying with.’

“I know some group of players are going to want to pick the ugliest colors. Those who like to fly at the enemy, and terrorize their mental state just by looking at them. Others are going to be like, ‘I’ve got this really cool branding, I’ve got this color that I’m going to use, and I want everyone to see how cool I am.’ Then there’s going to be groups of players that suck at coming up with a cool, cohesive pattern.

“They can say ‘You over there, High-Sec guy that I’ll never interact with, or I had no need to interact with before, can you make me something cool? I’ve seen your designs before, I know that that’s something I like. Make me something dope that I can then spread to my Alliance.’ The fact that you can share these designs is at the core of it for me. I just can’t wait to see these new artisans pop up in EVE.”

Eve Online’s legacy is enormous and it’s here to stay

CCP Games

There are few games that can claim to have a legacy as far-reaching and influential as Eve Online. Some of the greatest and grandest tales in the history of gaming have happened within its virtual walls. With such a long life already under its belt, it shows no signs of slowing down its pursuit of creating a living, breathing universe for players to participate in.

We asked both Finnbogason and Farrell to explain exactly how they see the game up to now and what its role is likely to be moving forward, in an ever-growing landscape.

Finnbogason: “Eve Online is fast becoming one of the most important pieces of art in the 21st century. Yes, there have been amazing games both before and after Eve Online, but it has managed to prove that games are not just a thing you waste your time on.

“It is a universe that is filled with emotions. It’s a universe that gives you the opportunity to laugh and cry and fall in love and hate. You know, it really plays with your core emotions. It’s visually stunning. It’s been visually stunning from day one.

“It fulfills our need for awe and wonder and exploration and the future. It’s science fiction. There’s no magic in science fiction. It’s grounded on the reality that we live in, and it’s a reflection of the times that we live in. Because it’s lived for so long, it not only echoes the story of our players, but it also echoes the story of how we’ve progressed over the last 21 years.

“It’s constantly portraying the time. You have old systems that feel very 2007, you have systems that feel very 2013.

“I never fear other games. I never fear that someone is coming to steal our Eve players. I never fear that will use the word Eve killer or anything like that.

“I’m much more interested in how we can amplify the conversation about gaming. How we can amplify the conversation about technology and the future. How we can amplify the conversation about spaceships and science fiction. I hope and I believe that this year might put a really important mark on that conversation and that discourse.

“We’re just getting ready. There’s a lot left to do. There are many stories that haven’t been told.”

Farrell: “What makes Eve special, obviously Bergur talked about it, is the players. The people who have played the game, are either currently playing, they’ve played before, or maybe they’ve played for an hour. The cool thing is, just by virtue of how Eve is, it’s a single-shard universe, so what one player does, it’s just there forever.

“People have written history books about it. There’s a six-hour documentary that Frederick Knudsen did in October for Down the Rabbit Hole. Eve is this living, breathing thing that you get to be part of and the stories are from the players. The big bad guy isn’t a dungeon boss that we designed or something like that. It’s some guy who decided he wanted to be a jerk.

“Someone then took his group of players to try and beat that jerk. And does the good guy win in the end? We have no idea. Is there even a good guy? Not really.

“It’s been around for 21 years. It has so much history to it. I know that can be intimidating, but you know, the one thing that I always want to tell players starting out is that everyone started somewhere, right?

“The last big war started because some guy who had no idea what he was doing accidentally captured a system that no one expected, because he was just by himself using one of these sovereignty-capturing tools.

“None of the fleet commanders could have predicted this guy was going to do it. No one created a plan. He just went and goofed around and just took the scissors and said oops. These stories are everywhere. It’s just so great and so much fun to see people interacting with this universe.”