Before we get to the interview, I should probably mention the "EIB scam" which happened recently in EVE Online and which got quite a bit of mainstream press attention (particularly in Scandinavian countries). A player had set up what he called the EIB, or EVE Investment Bank, which claimed to function as an unofficial bank for player's virtual money. Of course, the bank got closed soon after many "deposits" were made, and the guy behind it ran off laughing maniacally. The scam is one of the topics I discussed with Magnus Bergsson, as well as how CCP is changing EVE's virtual economy in future updates, the effects of World of Warcraft on the MMO marketplace, and why anyone should be interested in playing EVE in the first place.

Shack: First of all, I have a confession to make: I have not yet properly played EVE. I guess it is because some of my friends have gotten completely addicted to it. But I have played it briefly and I get all the stories from them.

Magnus Bergsson: Okay.

Shack: I understand you are a hardcore player of EVE as well?

Magnus Bergsson: I play more than probably most people at CCP.

Shack: So when you go home after work, you also play the game?

Magnus Bergsson: (laughs) Yes.

Shack:The most recent news regarding EVE has been the new record of concurrent users. It was something like 30000, wasn't it?

Magnus Bergsson: Thirty thousand... five hundred and ... something.

Shack: What, you don't know the exact number?

Magnus Bergsson: (laughs) I am the marketing guy. The developers would have to know the exact number, but it's over 30000.

Shack: How do you explain the recent popularity of the game?

Magnus Bergsson: What happened was, when World of Warcraft came out, our growth kind of went flat for three or four months. It only increased a little bit. But then very shortly after that, about four or five months after the launch of World of Warcraft, the increase just started growing and growing. One of the reasons of course is that World of Warcraft brings so many new people into this genre in general.

However, [Blizzard] are getting them into the game and people are leveling out. It's a type of game you don't play for that long, because it is a leveling game. When you actually reach a certain level you are happy with, you might leave. So we have seen a lot of World of Warcraft users come into EVE Online.

Shack: So you see World of Warcraft as purely a good influence and not as a competitor?

Magnus Bergsson: We had a party the day World of Warcraft came out. We were so damn happy. We knew that World of Warcraft and EVE are so completely different that they would only help us and they have absolutely done so. They have taken a lot of users from other fantasy-based MMOGs, but they have also actually created users for us.

Shack: Right. And what are your thoughts on the many MMO startups that are emerging at the moment? There are tons of MMOs in development and many of them are also sci-fi themed. Do you see those as a threat to EVE Online?

Magnus Bergsson: The more games we have in the sci-fi part of the industry the better it is for us. It brings more focus on sci-fi and away from fantasy. Because fantasy has been a dominant theme. It can only help us, especially when people start comparing games. It's going to be very difficult for other developers to catch up with EVE because it's been in development since, well, for almost 10 years now.

Shack: 10 years? It was launched a couple of years ago, but you're saying it was already in development long before that?

Magnus Bergsson: Yes. It was launched three years ago. They started development -- well, not 10 years ago. We actually started development in 2000, but the company was created in 1996. That's when the idea was born and this one guy started writing down all the script and everything else, so that's ten years ago.

Shack: Let's talk about what's happening in EVE in the near future, like the Kali expansion pack that's still in the works. What's going to change in those updates?

Magnus Bergsson: There are a few things. The biggest thing inside the game itself is the contract system. It is going to play a huge role, as we have seen by the recent EIB scandal and the other scams that go on. Many of them are created because of people entering quite advanced business transactions within EVE. The virtual economy has grown so big and become so mature that it requires much more complex tools.

We created the most complex and extensive contract system in any MMOG. It is absolutely quite amazing. It will facilitate any type of business you want to do, with complete control over the conditions of the contract. Say you are an alliance leader and I want to command ten people to go out and mine one million trit [tritanium]. I can actually create a contract and say 'okay, I want you to go and you have one week to comply to this contract'. When you accept the contract you might get a ship and the modules to fit on the ship, then you go out to mine a million trit, then to complete the contract you have to return the ship and the modules and one million trit.

So you can actually run the corporations [guilds in EVE] on these contract systems as well. It's not just for the business transactions. The flexibility is really tremendous.

Shack: It might create all sorts of player behavior that you can't even anticipate now, right?

Magnus Bergsson: Yeah, absolutely.

Shack: How can you create the terms and conditions of the contract? What is the interface like?

Magnus Bergsson: It is going to replace the escrow windows. The way you construct a contract is so flexible in so many different ways. You can even make an auction contract, so if you want to auction something off you put it in an auction contract and everybody can just bid on it. You really have to see it, because when I saw it the first time, I said 'wow, how am I supposed to use that' because there are so many things you can do with it. It is going to have a major impact on the player base, because it deals with the core of EVE. Well, one of the cores, which is the economic part of EVE, and operating the corporations and the alliances. So this is going to have a huge impact.

Shack: Regarding the game economy, I had the impression that a lot of it is happening outside of the game right now. At least, things like the bank scam are player created and aren't part of the game rules. What is currently your policy on things like that?

Magnus Bergsson: If you don't break the user license agreement we are completely hands-off. People have to deal with people they trust. Of course, trust in EVE Online is a very scarce commodity (laughs).

If someone gets scammed, it really is their own fault. Of course we completely disagree with that type of behavior, because they are taking away someone's money that he worked hard to create and there's real hours behind it -- so that's bad. But at the same time these people have to anticipate that if you give somebody your money, that there is no structure in the game to get that money back. It's just as in real life: if you give someone cash, he can run off with it.

Shack: Do you warn players, through your community?

Magnus Bergsson: People have been playing this game for some time, so they hear about this. The good thing about the EIB scam though is that it has received so much publicity. Because the guy that actually did it, he really wanted publicity. He had created his own video of it and everything.

Shack: Ah really? I hadn't seen that.

Magnus Bergsson: Yeah. And this type of publicity will actually help the player base be aware that these types of things actually happen. So this would probably lessen the possibility of future scams. And that's a good thing.

Shack: Have you verified that it was a real scam? I looked at some EVE news sites and saw some people speculating it might not have been real.

Magnus Bergsson: It was a real scam. But we question the amount that he is claiming to have taken. We are pretty sure it was not that amount.

Shack: You have logs where you can look these things up?

Magnus Bergsson: Yes. Even though we didn't do a very formal investigation, because it is not really our place to look into it that much. He didn't break any laws of the game, so should we be tracking his action? No we shouldn't. But what we wanted to make sure is that the money is not going to leave the game, meaning that he is not going to sell it. So we wanted to track that part of it, but not exactly what else he does with it. We know it's not the amount that he claimed, but we don't know the exact amount. But it was a considerable amount. How much exactly we don't know because the economy is so large with everyone being on a single shard that for us to track this type of money... it's just a drop in the ocean.

Shack: But you do log everything in the game?

Magnus Bergsson: Everything is logged. If we really want to get into it, we can find anything.

Shack: Even things from a few years back?

Magnus Bergsson: Yeah.

Shack: That is pretty impressive. So since the game is obviously in continuous development, you bring out a lot of patches. I guess everyone has their own interests in the game because of the choices they've made or certain skills they've developed, so some people might be unhappy with changes. How do you deal with player feedback?

Magnus Bergsson: We practically live on the forums. We keep a very close eye on what people are talking about. Their concerns, their ideas. Of course many of us in the company are big players as well. We play daily, so we get a very good sense of what is actually going on in-game. If you have been on our forums you will see the type of connection we have with our players. We might actually not come out publically and say 'hey we are working on this right now, relax', but we do follow our users extremely well.

Shack: Just to play devil's advocate: are the players sometimes wrong, let's say about balancing issues?

Magnus Bergsson: Of course they are.

Shack: What do you do then? ...To make them happy?

Magnus Bergsson: See, we don't go out to make people happy just to make them happy. We want to do things right. If they are unhappy about this, it is something they have to deal with, because we can't just be pleasing everybody. We are always going to have some people that are not happy with some change; hopefully we will have more people happy than unhappy. We created this game because we thought it would be the right way to create and play a game. If other people like it, then that's good.

Shack: You said earlier that EVE is very different than World of Warcraft. Can you explain for those who haven't tried the game how EVE is different from other MMOs?

Magnus Bergsson: The best comparison to make is to compare a game like World of Warcraft with a theme park, like Disneyworld. You go there, you can choose which rides you want to go on, then you go on the ride, you sit down, and stuff happens to you. You are somewhat a participant but it is a very constructed environment.

EVE Online is more like a playground. We have created the tools for you to play with, but you are actually doing everything. There is no structure that controls your game experience. It is a very freeform type of game, it is a very open world, and people really have to bring something with them to the game. They cannot mindlessly sit down and start playing, because it's not that type of game.

Some people are saying -- well, even we are saying -- is EVE really a game? It has become so big -- you know, one world. And it's not really created by the normal designer rules of games. It's more like a virtual world than an actual game. So people have to realize they actually have to bring something to the table when they start playing. They have to make choices and we are not going to help them a lot.

It's often very difficult, when you just get in, to realize what the game is about. You just don't really see it in the beginning. This is why it is so critical for new players to join a corporation right away. The other players will actually help them.

Shack: But are there still quests in the game?

Magnus Bergsson: There are missions, yeah. All of that stuff, if you want to.

Shack: So these missions teach you the basics, or... ?

Magnus Bergsson: Yes, but they are just things to do. It is like in real life, like going to a movie. You still have to live your life after the movie is over. So after a mission is over, you have a life in EVE; you are building a reputation, you are going to be working for a corporation, and this is what it's all about. You want to gain power. It is all about power anyway.

Shack: I saw some of the skill trees and character options and they are indeed very open ended. Is balancing a goal for you guys? Or do you not balance the specific skills against each other so much as just giving lots of options and let players figure it out?

Magnus Bergsson: We have some people ... I don't know exactly how many dedicated people we have in balancing, but it's quite a few. We try to balance everything and we want to make sure that everything is flowing properly in the grand scheme of things.

Shack: With the game's enormous complexity it is still possible to put everything in spreadsheets and actually calculate the balancing, or is it something you are doing more intuitively?

Magnus Bergsson: You can pretty much put everything in spreadsheets and work it out.

Shack: You have people just mining the data?

Magnus Bergsson: Oh they are crazy mathematicians, and they are big players as well so they realize ... they do have a good sense for the game as well. Balancing is still more of an art than anything else. How do you actually balance a new ship that comes into the game? It's more of an art than a science.

Shack: Right. It must be very hard since the game is constantly changing. Not just the updates but the player's behaviors as well.

Magnus Bergsson: Yes, so they have to think of countless possiblities for any item coming into the game. When we put in new things like the POSes, the Player Owned Structures, we make them very expensive and very limited. That's because it's much easier for us to make them better than to make them worse. Also, because everybody is playing on one server, the effect when we do something wrong can be dramatic. You will have so many people jumping onto that. If we would bring a ship out that would be much better than any other ship, can you imagine potentially hundreds of thousands of people buying that ship?

Shack: So with each update, you create new layers on top of the existing game. Have you had to go back and reverse things that were already in there but you were unhappy with?

Magnus Bergsson: You mean like nerfing? We had to nerf a lot of things and we are not shy of doing that. If we think something needs to be changed, we will do it.

Shack: I was at a lecture here at Nordic Game by Jorgen Theraldsen of Funcom and he said the average time people stay in an MMO is ten months. I don't know if that referred to Anarchy Online or the industry in general, but how do you experience this in EVE?

Magnus Bergsson: 25% of the people who bought the game when it first came out are still subscribers. The average age of an EVE player is always increasing and it is a lot more than ten months.

Shack: Do you know how many months?

Magnus Bergsson: I think we are now at 14 months and that number just keeps increasing as the game gets older.

Shack: Alright, here is the big question: if someone starts playing today, will it be very different from someone who started two years ago? Will they interact at all with those veteran players?

Magnus Bergsson: It is a very common question. People often think they are "too late" to enter the game. EVE is not like that. Anybody can have a purpose in EVE, just like in real life.

It all revolves around how your corporation is doing. And if you are in PvP, even if you have very limited skillsets, you can be a critical part of a gang. You can go from being a tackler [holding a ship in place so that others can destroy it] on a tech 1 frigate that costs like 200.000, to working with people in you know battleships worth 500 million.

A big part of the experience is the growth and everybody else has gone through it. You won't have the same ships as they do, but then again, if you could get everything they have, why would you continue playing? You want to grow into these things. That's the game. You want to experience everything they experienced. So it makes absolutely no sense when people say [they're too late]. You can be a huge and very important part of the corporation because a corporation needs to get a lot of things done. It's just like in real life.

Shack: So even those higher level guys can use the lower level guys for certain jobs?

Magnus Bergsson: Absolutely, cause they don't want to be in tech 1 frigates and tackling. They've done that. Someone has to fulfill that role now. This is why corporations and players in EVE are so welcoming of new players, because they need them.

Shack: Where do you think EVE will end up in, say, five years? Will you keep making new expansions forever, or will there be a point where CCP has to decide on a new game because the code gets too big or the graphics engine becomes outdated? Basically, what's the long term future?

Magnus Bergsson: We will continue developing EVE. We will continue until people stop playing it. That's basically our commitment to EVE. At the same time I can tell you that CCP is not going to be a single game company. We will have a seperate team working on any other titles that we will be... uh, maybe we are actually working on one right now. Who knows.

Shack: Hmmmm...

Magnus Bergsson: (laughs)

Again, we are extremely committed to the continued development of EVE. We have so many things planned that many people will be surprised to hear about and we will announce some of these things at our fanfest in November, which will be in Iceland. It's the third time we're doing it. Last time we had 350 people and we are going to have a lot more this year. We love meeting the players. Everybody knows everybody because they are all on the same server. So you actually have some celebrities.

Shack: You are talking about players?

Magnus Bergsson: Yes, there are players with a lot of power. They might have an alliance with 4000 people.

Shack: When they meet members of the team do they try to sort of lobby with you?

Magnus Bergsson: They are actually very friendly when we meet them. (laughs) They might scream and shout on the forums, but when we actually meet them, it's totally different. Because these are not kids. People under 18 don't really play this game. You have to have a certain attitude and maturity to understand the principles behind EVE, which is why the average age of all players is 27. That's quite high.

Shack: You are known for not having any seperate shards, though for a while now you have had a seperate one for China. Are you planning to start more shards for certain specific territories?

Magnus Bergsson: We had to do it in China. The laws there require we do it. In China it's forbidden for Chinese players to subscribe to online games that are operated in other countries. You actually have to operate the servers in China.

Our main server will hopefully make the top 500 super computer list soon. It's already the largest server cluster in the game industry. We will keep expanding our main server which is located in the UK, which has a good connection to Europe and a good connection to the US via Ireland.

Shack: Ah yes I was thinking Iceland itself might not have the capacity...

Magnus Bergsson: No, no, no. (laughs) We would drown the Icelandic link. People in Iceland would have to wait three days to get their e-mail.