With the actual world in lockdown, virtual worlds have stepped up to provide a much-needed social outlet. We talk to CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson on how disasters and loss, be they real or virtual, help us learn. And how through that, Eve Online is teaching socially useful skills and building lifelong friendships
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ngagement is often touted as the key goal of any live service game. There are many ways to measure this somewhat woolly term, though time and money spent will figure in most such metrics. While good basic indicators, time and money are hardly aspirational outcomes for a medium that is capable of so much more – and they are not going to portray the industry in the best light to our critics. So shouldn’t all games be actively looking for something more, a higher-purpose of engagement? For instance, games can teach skills, both soft and hard, that players can apply to other aspects of their lives. And games can form social bonds and friendships, every bit as relevant as those you have in your immediate, physical, community. Such games would actually benefit their players – and who doesn’t want a more skilled, more socially capable and (potentially) wealthier community – plus they would also aid the cause of gaming as a whole, helping to prove our naysayers wrong. Sounds like a dream? Maybe not, Eve Online has achieved it, and CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson now has the research to prove it. It’s time to talk about the Eve Effect
18 | MCV/DEVELOP May 2020
A BRAVE NEW WORLD As you likely know, Eve Online is one of the most immersive and demanding virtual worlds to have ever been created. With creator CCP’s company mission being nothing less than to “create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life.” Quite the aspiration. During the present pandemic, such a statement comes under even greater scrutiny, can a game, any game, really be more meaningful than real life during such a crisis? But Pétursson is adamant that the virtual nature of the experience doesn’t discount its validity. And that the present situation actually plays to its strengths. “Eve, for over 17 years now, has proven that you can be socially connected without being physically close, that in a way proves, once and for all, to everyone that it can be done.” And while we cannot directly compare society’s life-and-death struggles with corona to the competitive struggle in Eve, there are parallels. In a myriad of ways, the last few weeks have been tough for many, but that added difficulty has motivated many to pull together in ways we have never seen before. Similarly in Eve, the sheer difficulty of the game, “an extremely ruthless, darwinian social sandbox,”
