An Eve Online first-person shooter is CCP’s greatest folly
-Jeremy Peel, VG24/7
Massively OP posted earlier about a press release from one Sperasoft about how they and CCP are working together on a first person shooter based on the EVE Online IP.
Together for a purpose
The idea of an EVE Online FPS is one that just will not die, and I am honestly confused at this point as to why this is the brass ring that CCP wants to grab so very badly.
We had DUST 514 and the promise of integration with EVE Online back in the day. That was not a success for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the decision to make it a PlayStation 3 title, and shut down back in 2016, though CCP spent time after that closing off the integration points.
Even before the corpse of DUST 514 had cooled there was talk of something called Project Legion, the next FPS CCP planned to deliver.
That, or some elements of it, later became Project Nova, which CCP showed an early version of at EVE Vegas back in 2018. It was hinted that the whole thing was closer to being done than we might think.
Then, about a month later, CCP announced that Project Nova had been postponed. This corresponded with the Pearl Abyss acquisition of CCP for $425 million. (EVE Online was worth more in 2018 than Daybreak was in 2020 I guess.)
We coasted along for another year or so until, in February of this year… which feels like it was a forever ago now… that, whatever Project Nova was, it was becoming something else, though we were not going to get a new name and CCP was going to try and stop talking about shooters until they had something more concrete to present.
That being difficult to parse as a headline, the gaming media mostly went with “Project Nova Cancelled.”
Which brings us to today and a company called Sperasoft and the following announcement:
USA, San-Jose – December 15, 2020 – Sperasoft, a Keywords studio specializing in co-development is proud to announce its partnership with CCP Games, the creators of the world’s largest living work of science fiction, EVE Online.
CCP is a leading video game developer, founded in 1997 in Reykjavik, Iceland. CCP’s mission is to create virtual worlds that are more meaningful than real life. CCP pioneers technology and design that facilitates emergent behavior, empowering people with compelling means of self-expression. With the launch of EVE Online in May 2003, CCP established itself as one of the most innovative companies in the interactive entertainment industry, winning numerous awards and receiving critical acclaim worldwide.
EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) science-fiction game of galactic proportions, in which space flight is the path to all commerce, communication, and conflict. Set in the star cluster of New Eden tens of thousands of years in the future, in EVE Online every pilot’s greatest asset is their starship, designed to accommodate their specific needs, skills, and ambitions. Featuring a vast player-run economy, EVE Online offers an immersive, community-driven experience filled with adventure, riches, danger, and glory. EVE Online is renowned for its scale, complexity, and its gigantic, world record-breaking in-game battles where thousands of players come head to head in a single star system.
“We are excited to be a partner of CCP Games and share in their mission to create immersive virtual worlds” – comments Denis Larkin, Chief Commercial Officer at Sperasoft – “Our experienced team of developers is focused on delivering cutting edge solutions for our client and gameplay innovations for their fans.“
“We’re delighted to be working with Sperasoft on our unannounced online shooter set in the EVE IP,” said Allen Edwards, Game Director at CCP Games’ London studio. “Together, we’re looking forward to delivering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stunningly beautiful worlds.”
The first details about this currently unannounced title will be revealed via www.ccpgames.com/news in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, follow @CCPGames on Twitter and Facebook for updates.
Those are some fine words, with a promise to get some more information in the “not-too-distant” future, and not much else. I am going to guess that puts it in a time frame beyond “soon,” which itself is an unknowable and possibly quite long unit of time.
Sperasoft’s page shows quite a bit of collaboration with some big name studios and titles. But the services they offer appear to be geared towards outsource coding and platform porting, with some live game ops thrown in. So while they have had a hand in on titles from Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed to DC Universe Online and Free Realms… seriously, they have the old Sony Online Entertainment logo on their brag page, a couple spots over from Trion Worlds… it isn’t clear what they specifically did for any of them or if they have ever stood up a game on their own.
Still, they clearly have success, undefined though it may be, under their belt. So they could potentially be a big help to CCP’s shooter ambitions on the technical front.
What they probably cannot help with is finding a compelling reason for an EVE Online shooter to exist. New Eden can be a deep, dark IP, full of lore. But the reach of that lore is pretty small. EVE Online is a successful beyond niche status game in the MMORPG genre, but the MMORPG market is very much niche in the grand scheme of things.
We will have to wait and see if CCP and Sperasoft can come up with some way for a New Eden shooter to stand out in the crowd of shooters that currently clutter the market.
No comments:
Post a Comment