Speaking to Massively, CCP’s Producer Jon Lander projected the plants for EVE, going forward. Using Dust 514 as an example, he stated the “We want this game to be around in 10, 20, 30 years. We want a DUST 10-year anniversary, and this universe is constantly growing.” A statement that might, had it come from anyone else, sounded like arrogance. But EVE is going to be ten next year, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down. In fact, it might be speeding up.
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“We are on the cusp of breaking our all-time subscriber record right now”, Creative Director Torfi Frans Olafsson divulged, which is doubly impressive when you think about the fact that last year contained the controversial Incarna expansion, anthropomorphising player avatars from spaceships into actual people, but also bringing with it a bad taste in people’s mouths when they saw what CCP was doing with micro-transactions. They’ve since backtracked, and admitted that the players have as much right to make decisions as the developers.
That’s what makes it feel like EVE might still be around in a quarter of a century. That willingness to hand over at least some of the reigns to the audience that they’re catering for, rather than just assuming that they know best. With the expansion of DUST 514 later this year, there’s going to be a hell of a lot more going on in EVE’s sometimes lonely, sometimes overwhelming universe, and such a huge influx of new blood, even if they’re not sailing through the cosmos, can only do wonders for EVE’s survivability.
“EVE’s content is its people. When there’s more people, there’s more content going on, and if it becomes too saturated, we’ll throw in another server. But it’s still the same universe.” That’s Olafsson again, and he’s right; so long as the people keep coming, EVE will carry on. And as long as EVE carries on, people will keep coming.