EVE Online has a massive following of players that come together and engage in enormous and galaxy-spanning battles against rival factions. The title is a behemoth, but there's also a large selection of people out there that are curious but are disinterested by the spaceship gameplay. Enter CCP Games and EVE Vanguard, an FPS set in New Eden and the EVE universe.
With this title still early in development, I recently sat down with game director Snorri Árnason and lead product manager Scott Davis, to learn more about Vanguard and how the CCP Games team is looking to tap into the 'EVE curious' community.
"So we definitely see it as a way to bring an audience into EVE Online that just wasn't aware or daring to do so," said Árnason. "Maybe they heard about EVE Online and this is an easier way to get into the spirit of the game or the universe. Myself, for example, the universe is super compelling and everything about it is compelling, but I'm just an FPS player. I'm never going to play League of Legends. I'm never going to play City Builders. I'm just never going to spend my time on it. So this allows me to be a part of the saga and the drama as well to just be there. But it's not specifically as kind of like we want you to become an EVE Online player at all. It's more just like we want New Eden, the big universe, to be just filled with people, whatever they do."
Davis continued, "We talked a lot about there's a tap called the EVE Curious that we want to lean into, right, which is all of these players that they like the idea of New Eden, a very player-driven narratives that are created from that. Who can't see a report about a war that's just gone on in EVE Online and how much hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of equipment and infrastructure that's been blown up because of that, right? And it was just because two warring factions wanted, they didn't like each other or they wanted each other's territory and you can't get excited by that. But some people just don't want to play the spaceship game.
"They don't like the gameplay and they don't want to lean into that, but they really like the universe and they want to be part of those narratives that are told. And I think Vanguard really has a place to connect to those EVE Curious players that want to join the universe and get involved in those stories, but want to do so without being behind the helm of a spaceship."
Check out the full interview below to learn more about how CCP Games intends to continue changing EVE Vanguard ahead of its eventual launch into Early Access on PC in the future.