CCP president points to the EVE community as their reason for success

by Seraphina Brennan Mar 5th 2009 at 6:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry

These are tough economic times for everyone, but not all companies are experiencing a downturn. CCP, the developers of EVE Online, are finding success while many other companies are striving for larger subscriber numbers.

Gamasutra had the chance to catch up with CCP North American president Mike Tinney and interview him on CCP's success. Of note in the interivew is how much empasis Tinney places on supporting the community of players and working within a game's revenue stream, rather than overloading a game with big budget features to keep a dwindling population.

"There's a lot of strategies out there, and there's so many ingredients in the recipe of a successful MMO any one of them can throw the whole thing off," Tinney said to Gamasutra. "But I think the community is one of the most important ingredients."

If you wish to read the full interview, check it out over at Gamasutra.

Tags: ccp, community, eve, eve-online, gamasutra, interview, mike-tinney, revenue

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dethgar said on 6:21PM 3-05-2009

They may be the only MMO company that actually sees their consumers as gamers rather than cash cows to endlessly milk.

Sean said on 7:49PM 3-05-2009

I disagree that most MMO developers see their players as means. The dialogue that occurs between the developers of many high profile games - WoW, WAR, LOTRO, not to mention Cryptic Studios or SOE - demonstrates their respect for their customers over and above means to profits. CCP has developed a game that succeeds largely because of the emergent gameplay that the environment engenders and which is ultimately furnished by the players. Yet CCP also has game mechanics like their real time skill training on one character per account that motivate people to have multiple subscriptions. The relationship between player and developer/publisher is not that clear cut.

Dethgar said on 8:35AM 3-06-2009

The developer end of those games may care, but the publisher end does not. CCP intentionally developed a niche player driven game and intentionally self-publish it as such.

SoE for example, always has the left hand doing something the right hand didn't know about(NGE, EQ exchange servers, rmt shop, etc). Blizzard continually dumbs down its content for the casual core(WoTLk raid content). Cryptic no longer has an active title, and picked up dev work on STO without consulting the fan base. Mythic shoved a half-finished crock out the door and constantly tries to appeal itself to the carebear crowd. LoTRO guts its lore and does what it can to attract players regardless of canon limitations(lorekeeper, runekeeper).

CCP is even giving in to player requests for a training queue. Their current niche fanbase is happy. They aren't trying or wanting to lure wow players.

ArrA said on 8:03PM 3-05-2009

"SOE - demonstrates their respect for their customers over and above means to profits."

LOL that's the funniest comment I've read this year.

Jimmy Ranger said on 10:16PM 3-05-2009

Or maybe this has to do with the fact that the real life ISK has crashed so hard that all their Dollar Income is worth a whole lot.

crsh said on 9:56AM 3-06-2009

Or ActiBlizzard for that matter, WoW developers are increasingly getting worse at what they do, putting the revenue models before actual entertainment - or should I say, the entertainment value is directly measured by how much money it brings in, nothing else.

Yeah, I know, a business is a business and it always comes down to revenues. WoW however is seriously turning into a junk food joint.