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Concerning the council, I wanted to make sure that the developers had explored what sort of communication that they would need to make the democratic council decisions known to the entire player database. Just like the forums, it’s hard to insure that players are going to read everything, and I asked Nathan about that issue. “We’re going to have a special section of the website devoted to the player council,” Nathan said. “It’s going to archive everything that the council does.”

“It will all be very up front,” Val added.

The elected player council will hear all of the developers thoughts on issues like the implementation of ambulation.

“We want to make it much, much more than a feedback channel,” Nathan continued. “We want it to really revolutionize some of the ways of running virtual worlds. It will be interesting to see how much this truly affects the world. Depending on the number of people involved in the project, it will influence what we fix, what we change, what we add, or even what we remove. Of course, the process will have to work for them, and that’s what we’re currently working on.”

From what I gathered in the interview, much of what the player council will engage in are listening to the developers and learning exactly what they were thinking when they addressed a certain issue, but the council will also serve as a representative discussion group for the players in EVE. “We just don’t want to find a more efficient way to answer player concerns than simply jumping on the message boards every day,” Nathan said. “Most of the time, we’d simply be saying, ‘Yes, we know.’ all day long. There isn’t enough time in the day to respond to every player issue, and that’s what the council is for.”

Even initially, the developers realize that the player council won’t be perfect, and that it will take time for the process to be absolutely finalized. “It’s an iterative process,” Nathan explained. “It will probably take a year or two to figure out the best process involved in getting this done. The process won’t be fun, but it’s going to be extremely valuable compared to the other more informal ways of communicating.”

“For example, we have a large volunteer group that we talk to quite regularly,” Nathan continued. “But that doesn’t have any way to reach all the players. There are 200,000 people in our game! We have no way of knowing that this individual will spread the word to more than his close friends, and then you get no expansion of information. There’s no trickle down effect.”

In the short term, Trinity 2 is the priority, but the Ambulation project is also high on the CCP|WW priority list.

As the conversation headed towards its conclusion, Nathan wanted to give a brief summary of exactly what CCP|WW’s focus was at this juncture. “Trinity 2 is really our big focus right now,” Nathan said. “Like I said, it took 50 man years to create this overhaul, and that was only working on the graphics and not on the engine itself.”

“On top of that, we’re still growing,” Nathan continued. “As long as the players are there, we’re going to be there. It’s as simple as that, and that’s the way it’s been for a long time. And there’s never been a time when the company has been bigger than it is today. We have over 250 people worldwide. The World of Darkness MMOG is still in pre-production, and there are a lot of long term goals associated with that game – Ambulation and Need for Speed being two of them – but we’re getting there with that technology in EVE and we’re working on it all. There’s no rush.”

At this point, I made a comment about that sort of attitude being lacking in the general MMOG development sphere, and Nathan laughed. “We’re here to make games and have fun, not kill ourselves,” he said. “We don’t like to crunch, so we don’t. There are periods when we’re busy, but we don’t do 90 hours a week for months on end. It was like that once – before we launched – but we aren’t going to do that again. It’s bad for moral and it’s bad for health. We don’t want to shorten the lifespan of our workers.”

Thanks again to Nathan Richardsson for taking the time to chat with Ten Ton Hammer about the upcoming events in EVE Online! We always look forward to any news coming from the open-ended game, and I can’t wait to hear about what’s next for EVE and its players!

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