With a comeback success that is rarely seen in the MMO
marketplace, EVE
Online and the developers at
href="http://www.ccpgames.com/">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
href="http://www.white-wolf.com/">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.
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album281/DSC_0002.thumb.jpg"
name="photo_j" border="0" height="100" width="150">
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,
style="font-style: italic;">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
style="font-style: italic;">World of Darkness
MMO as
well. “We plan on keeping our EVE team and our
style="font-style: italic;">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?”
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our EVE Online Game Page.
