An Eve Online first-person shooter is CCP’s greatest folly
-Jeremy Peel, VG24/7
The money quote was actually the headline, but it will do.
Last month CCP announced changes to their first person shoot plans. The work around what had been called Project Nova was going to move to a new team and be given a new name.
A number of news sites jumped on the news and declared that Project Nova had been cancelled. Massively OP doubled down on that line and even brought up in their podcast.
In the end the problem is not that some web sites don’t understand what the word “cancelled” means or cannot resist a good headline. The problem is that CCP did not simply cancel Project Nova, but kept the whole FPS idea alive with another team and under another (secret now) name.
The problem is that the only lesson learned after more than a decade (the initial DUST 514 announcement is coming up on eleven years) of thrashing and failure on the FPS front is apparently that they shouldn’t announce projects prematurely. And they did this in the midst of telling us that the FPS project would keep going. If you take the view that Project Nova was cancelled, then they effectively announced the new project right then and there. They just were not going to tell us what it was called. So we’ll make up something to call it I guess. I’m going to keep tagging it as Project Nova just to maintain a thread of continuity.
And maybe things have changed. Maybe being owned by Pearl Abyss and having its resources at the disposal of the project will lead to a different outcome. Maybe better talent or a different vision will make it happen. Maybe they will be less focused on tying whatever it is they end up developing into EVE Online and more focused on making a good game with its own virtues, a game that people would play even despite its connection to EVE Online.
But we won’t know until we see it, and the track record so far does not lend one hope.
Hat Tip to Wolf Brothers Inc for spotting this.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 