![]() At the time, we wished CCP Seagull all the best for the future, and we continue to hope she is doing well.Īt this point, CCP Hellmar, AKA CCP Games CEO Hilmar Pétursson, took the reins as the Interim Executive Producer for EVE Online, a role he would hold for around three months. Unfortunately for us all, just two short weeks after taking to the stage, CCP Seagull had announced her departure from CCP Games in an EVE-O Forums post, stating that she was departing for family reasons. Seagull, as Executive Producer, had spent four years earning player trust and the benefit of the doubt. When she made a statement about a change, it happened – even if it wasn’t as initially described – and largely, those changes were positive. Seagull had a reputation by this point of getting things done well. This all sounds great, right? I think we were all on board with whatever Seagull had in mind by this point. And, just to top it all off, CCP would be doing this “while pushing for a healthy ecosystem and a deeper sandbox”. We also heard Seagull talk about pushing the boundaries and having fun along the way – expanding EVE as a game, EVE as a technology stack, EVE as an experience. We also heard about plans for “deepening the sandbox”, creating opportunities for players to “test themselves against others” and to find “more meaningful decisions to make”, coming to EVE through a “richer, deeper experience of space colonisation where you as a player can take over more and more of what is possible to do in this universe”. She talked about game health and balance as a team priority – not just ships and structures, but security and development efforts to make EVE more difficult to bot, and the Little Things that make up the Quality of Life in EVE. CCP Seagull’s Keynote address was a tour-de-force of vision and philosophy, wrapped in upcoming game changes and delivered in just under ten minutes. It should also be noted (though we’ll circle back to this point a little later) that 2018’s Fanfest was the last time we saw an Executive Producer on a stage, engaging with players, and describing a positive future for EVE Online. Fanfest 2018 truly was a no-holds-barred event. Faction Capital ships, Strategic Cruisers, the Monitor, Triglavian Ships and modules, Shield Slave implants… The list goes on, and on. We could (and have, in many articles) discuss the whys and wherefores of what balance changes occurred around or were announced at Fanfest 2018, and that is exhaustive. I could spend half of this entire article expounding on the Outpost changes, which saw player-built stations become faction Fortizars, as well as CCP’s planned and executed replacement of POS functions. It’s difficult to properly summarise the sheer quantity of news we received back in 2018. To top it all off, EVE’s official historian Andrew Groen gave a talk on his second volume of the player history of EVE. ![]() Of course, we also saw some simple comedy “fun” in the form of the EVEprov event, and then the genuine hilarity of CCP’s CCP Games Games, which will see a return to our screens this year. CCP (and others) spoke on a wide range of topics, from the somewhat dry topics of game balance, game design, and Structures, all the way through to the introduction of the Triglavian Collective. Now, the last Fanfest was an interesting event – truly, seriously interesting. And along the way, we’ll talk about the EVE Online community, and where it seems to be going.īuckle up – it’s going to be a long and bumpy ride. We’ll talk about the Eras of Scarcity and Plexperity. We’re going to look at what happened, what didn’t happen, and how well CCP has addressed concerns over that period. So with Fanfest 2022 just around the corner, and ahead of what CCP Paragon described as ‘probably one of the largest content updates CCP has ever done’, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the years since Fanfest 2018. I’m talking, of course, about selling in-game ships for real money with no apparent consideration for the in-game economy, introducing a 33% hike in the cost of a one-month subscription during the worst global living costs crisis in more than 30 years, and a Reddit AMA by CSM XI member Xenuria, which alleged widespread unprofessionalism and a sheer lack of any real management whatsoever. In recent weeks, CCP Games has been mired in controversy, after controversy, after controversy, in the run up to EVE Online’s first Fanfest event in four years.
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