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With a comeback success that is rarely seen in the MMO marketplace, EVE Online and the developers at CCP Games have grown far beyond what many critics thought they could achieve when EVE Online first hit store shelves in May 2003. They've continued growing, amassing such record setting marks as 36,000 users concurrently online in a single world and 170,000+ users currently subscribed to the game. All this growth made expanding a necessity for CCP, so on November 2006 CCP announced that they were merging with White Wolf Publishing.

As a leading publisher in roleplaying games – second only to the monstrous Wizards of the Coast – White Wolf was an opportune choice because they provided CCP with a North American studio AND could flesh out the EVE Online universe into products other than other video games. With a trading card game and pen-and-paper roleplaying game in various states of production, the merger between White Wolf and CCP seems like a match made in heaven…if you can look past the vampires.

EVE and Beyond

Peter Gollan, the director of marketing for the North American branch of CCP Games, was one of the members recruited into the CCP|White Wolf fold after the merger took place. Working almost exclusively with the EVE Online product, Peter is responsible for boosting subscription rates to the game in the North American marketplace.

Peter Gollan, director of marketing for CCP North America, and TTH's Cody Bye.

At OGDC ’07, we found time to sit down with Peter and try to hash out the progress CCP|White Wolf games is making with its released title, EVE Online, and its upcoming modern horror MMO, The World of Darkness. Peter and I went to the OGDC press room where we exchanged some banter, answered some questions, and just generally

Although Peter was brought onto the team when CCP and White Wolf merged, he didn’t know whether the guys in Atlanta that are working on EVE will also be working on the World of Darkness MMO as well. “We plan on keeping our EVE team and our World of Darkness team relatively separate,” Peter said. “We are 100% going to support EVE, and we’re not going to drop the game just because we have a new property to work with.”

And Peter knew where we were coming from, having seen such things happen in the past. “I understand why people might think we would scale up one game while scaling down another,” he continued. “But we’re scaling up both.” This comment echoes what Magnus Bergsson stated in a similar comment at GDC, but it never hurts to hear this sort of thing more than once.

EVE Online is trying to reach 300,000 subscribers by next year.

A Milestone Marker

As far as EVE is concerned, there’s currently no reason to scale down the game either. “We’re just over 170,000 subscribers and we have some 30,000 players consistently in our 14-day trial program,” Peter continued. “On top of that, Magnus wants us to get above 300,000 subscribers by next year.”

For a more humorous aside, Peter added that the CCP team wants to have “more players subscribed to EVE than live in Iceland.” Currently there are around 310,000 people living in Iceland…that’s a few more players than 170,000, but not impossible.

Despite that aggressive number of “over 300,000”, Peter believes that that subscription number can be accomplished. “We have amazing customers, and our subscription retention rate has been absolutely amazing. Over thirty percent of the individuals that played EVE Online during the first few months the game was released are still playing EVE to this day. Our players stay around.”

From his point-of-view, Peter thinks there’s no reason why players shouldn’t be excited to play EVE. “Our player base continues to grow, our universe continues to grow, we have a new expansion every six months, and we’re working on new stories and ideas on a constant basis,” Peter said. “How could you not be excited to see where this game is going?”