Q&A: CCP's Nathan Richardsson

At the end of 2006, CCP Games applied the first patch in its new Revelations expansion for its space-based MMOG EVE Online. We caught up with senior producer Nathan Richardsson to find out how that deployment has been going and what the future holds for the game.

GameSpot UK: Firstly, how do you feel the first part of the Revelations expansion went?

Nathan Richardsson: We were pleased before we launched it, not afterwards. There were problems, which we've been addressing, none of which were as major as we've had before, but we're always trying to be perfectionists. I'm still happy that it's out, though.

GSUK: Run through the key additions in the expansion.

NR: Contracts is one of the biggest additions. They allow people that have a limited trust relationship to work together more smoothly. Combat organisation allows groups of people to be better connected when fighting, and we've put in some new customisations for people to add rigs to their ships.

GSUK: This is the first of a couple of patches in Revelations, right?

NR: Yes, the feature list for Revelations is so huge--it was insane to try and put it all out together. The second patch will have graphical improvements and some more warfare additions, and the third one will be used to address any issues arising out of the first two parts, to make sure it's all balanced and working well.

GSUK: Your highest number of concurrent users hit 33,000 recently, which is about 50 percent of your capacity, is that right?

NR: Yes, it's actually about 47 percent, but that's the general capacity overall. The issue is that we have population dynamics, which means there are more people in certain places--certain systems are overcrowded--which affects performance. Also, when there are battles with 200 ships on each side, there are problems. So we're looking at improving the infrastructure to handle warfare more effectively and also encourage smaller groups to fight without needing to resort to huge fleets. Of course, warfare does escalate, but the big battles should be the climax rather than the starting point.

GSUK: EVE's population has doubled year on year since launch, which means that in 12 months you'll hit the maximum population possible. What will you do then?

NR: Yeah, though we do have a couple of solutions. Firstly, we're always optimising the code itself. A lot of it is three years old, it's not the best scalable code, so we'll rewrite a lot of that. Number two, we have more hardware that we can cluster, so we can increase the general capacity. Another problem lies with the content and it being consumed too quickly, so we'll come to that in the future, as well.

GSUK: Will you ever get to the point where you'll have to turn people away?

NR: Possibly, but it's not an issue that we'll come to any time soon. We need to manage the population so that people are spread out more evenly across the galaxy--but it could happen, yes.

GSUK: Most companies look at the MMOG concept and try to attract as many players as possible in order to make the most money. EVE is more self-selecting, but does it matter to CCP if you hit a limit?

NR: No, CCP became a profitable company two years ago--we're just looking at increasing the development team, which we've done as we've had the funds. Also, we're not trying to achieve 7.5 million people in EVE--I'd be happy with 300,000 maximum. I like to see new people around, but not at the cost of the game's overall offering. For us, it's not necessary to have a lot of people, because we just want to have fun with EVE. The single-shard universe will probably not scale up to 7.5 million people, after all...

GSUK: You've said that EVE with 150,000 people is much better than EVE with 75,000--will that trend always be true?

NR: To a point. After a time you will hit a ceiling, because there would be too many people chasing the same content. The space in the game is infinite, we can continue to expand the galaxy in any direction, but there will come a point where somebody will be getting in your way. There are diminishing returns.

GSUK: You changed character creation recently, and much has been said about the importance of user interfaces in MMOGs. Do you think that UIs should ever be difficult to use?

NR: No, never. We've got people working on that all the time. It's not about dumbing down the game, but making it easier to learn and making people more aware of what they can do earlier on. But MMOGs tend to be complex games by their nature, and there's a huge amount of difference between them. World of Warcraft, for example, is much simpler than EVE--the two are at opposite ends of the spectrum really--but I think that part of EVE's charm when you get into it is the complexity. But we do want to make each aspect of the game easier to understand--not to take away from the depth of those aspects, but just to make them more accessible to begin with. We're not doing a good enough job right now at easing people into all the information.

GSUK: You channel people into player organisations (corporations) as soon as possible in the game. Why?

NR: Absolutely. It's about getting you to a point where you build strong bonds with the other people in the corporation, but it's also the best possible way to learn the game. The other people there will teach you about the game, and you'll have common goals as a result.

GSUK: Is there much you can genuinely achieve playing EVE solo?

NR: There is, but it's much, much harder then playing with others. It takes a lot more effort doing it alone and not utilising the universe around you.

GSUK: When will there be a place in-game where you can find out exactly what all the thousands of different items really do?

NR: We'll be adding that at some point, a kind of encyclopedia. You'll be able to look up an item and it'll be cross linked with other items like it. Also, there'll be a lot of the game's history in there, both player-created politics and the lore of the game itself. It'll have the whole lot in there, like Wikipedia on steroids...

GSUK: Some of the stories about player politics in EVE have become pretty legendary; tell us about the year-long corporation infiltration.

NR: Yeah, the really short version was that the Guiding Hand Social Club (a corporation) was contracted to take down another corporation, and it took them 10 months to infiltrate it. At the appointed time, they assassinated the corporation's CEO, destroyed their most expensive ship, and they also got away with all of their assets. What they came away with was a huge amount of in-game effort, from a whole number of players, and they took out the whole corporation effectively. It was a pretty infamous act, and one that's gone down in game history now.

GSUK: Thanks for your time.