![]() It was an overwhelming experience.”Ī lot of people who’ve tried VR have had a similar Road to Damascus moment, and it’s often during the first encounter. “I looked down at my own virtual body, flew out into space and was blown away. I was getting ready to play and already rehearsing in my head how I could let them down gently after I’d tried it.” The rehearsals were unnecessary. “When the team showed me the first EVE VR demo, I was the skeptic in the room. Surely if anyone was going to give me the full promo-talk it would be Ryan Geddes, CCP’s VR Brand Director? To many, CCP is EVE Online and anything that doesn’t feed back into it is muddying the waters at best. I think he’s also aware that at Fanfest he’s preaching to the unconverted, and many of the never-to-be-converted. He was there for the first round, a couple of decades ago, and has seen failed ambition first-hand. That might sound like a strange word to ascribe to him, ‘pragmatism’, given that during a half hour conversation the day after the opening ceremony we mostly talked about the virtual nature of everything from the economy to my own job, but Pétursson understands the limitations of VR tech better than most. Pétursson’s approach is partly a result of his pragmatism. The statement itself isn’t particularly insightful, but to hear it at a public speech by a key figure in a company investing heavily in VR is far more convincing to me than an exuberant presentation that doesn’t leave room for skepticism at all. The climb-down to realistic expectations could easily seem like an admission of defeat considering how inflated perception of the tech and its possibilities had become, he said. ![]() As well as stating that virtual worlds might be the next step in human evolution, he spoke about the excess of hype that heralded VR’s arrival (or return, more accurately) and acknowledged that it had been unhealthy. ![]() It began with the first appearance of CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, who spoke about the company’s ambitions during the Fanfest opening ceremony. Why, then, are they putting some of their eggs into the VR basket, which seems like another risky venture? I’d assumed the people working with the tech at CCP would be true believers and evangelists, but I was surprised by the way my doubts were often echoed. ![]() Surviving, and thriving, on the back of a complex, player-driven MMO is unusual and anyone trying to start a business on that strategy might well be laughed out of the bank in 2017, but CCP are still making it work. The massively multiplayer game as social, economic and political experiment. As an MMO, it’s an enormous success story, not only in terms of its lifespan and consistently large number of subscriptions and concurrent users, but in the way it breaks the mould established by the likes of Ultima Online. I live in Iceland.”ĬCP make a game that people are often content to read about rather than to play, a game that the company’s CEO told me “is more a virtual world than a game”. ![]() He had no background in the games industry pre-CCP but laughed at my question: “Of course I knew EVE. Throughout Fanfest, I heard people half-joking that CCP is responsible for Iceland’s greatest export, and when interviewing one member of staff who joined the company recently, I asked if he was already aware of EVE before joining. I spoke to VR Brand Director Ryan Geddes and CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson to find out what the future might hold, and why they believe VR is an important part of that future. It might seem strange to see a free-to-play MMO as the financial foundation that a studio relies on, but then CCP are a strange company and to some people their dedication to VR might seem like their strangest move yet. One high profile EVE Online player told me he had no interest in CCP’s VR games but would “rather they have new teams working on VR than moving people from EVE to something like World of Darkness, which was left in the corner like a rotten apple.”Īnother said he was “glad that the VR side of the business will be there to support EVE Online financially.” For a while at least, I figure it’ll be the other way around. It wasn't hard to find the VR doubters at EVE Fanfest. ![]()
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