Out of Pod Experience

- [EVR] is the game [Oculus Rift] was made for - IGN

EVR, for those of you living under some kind of awesomenes-supressing rock, is an incredible concept dogfighting game using Eve's assets in which you get to fly as a Templar, an amarr fighter used by carriers (or its minmatar scrapheap-based equiv) in crazy 3v3 rumbles amoung asteroid fields. The twist? It uses Oculus Rift, the immersive VR headset recently kick-started and to which CCP was a significant doner.

Youtube trailer - http://www.youtube.com/embed/rjhyRkAlK5I


Several games journalists and many players got the opportunity to try it out at Fanfest, to universal (and in many cases unexpected and wild) acclaim.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/28/evr-oculus-rifts-space-dogfighting-game
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/eve-online-evr-oculus-rift-trailer-released-video-29-04-2013/
http://themittani.com/news/fanfest-dogfighting-eve-oculus-rift
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/04/who-said-there-was-no-future-in-starfighter-video-games/

This thread is a petition to CCP to run a kickstarter campaign to fund fulltime development of the already playable game with a view to integrating it somehow into Eve, even if it is just a sideshow, or failing that as an initially standalone game. Obvious challenges (it runs on a different engine for example) are many, but the rewards are worth it as I will explain.

Why Kickstarter?

CCP almost certainly has the revenues and cashflow to fund development on balance sheet already, so why crowd-source funding for this?

1. Player investment. What campaigns like the epicly successful Star Citizen or Planetary Annihilation have shown is that a properly run kickstarter campaign can create a legion of drooling, dedicated, hardcore fans. Its not about the money its about making players feel personally invested in development of the game.

2. Advertising. Many games media outlets have covered EVR as a result of fanfest. MANY more will do so if a kickstarter campaign went live.

3. Dedicated funding means no tough management decisions / fights over internal funding - the devs who want to work on this prototype will no longer have to beg steal and borrow development resources earmarked for CCP's other products if they have a budget that is legitimately just theirs.


Why bother professionally developing it at all? It was made in spare time can't it continue that way

A. It will bring new players to Eve and Dust. The market for a VR dogfighting game is hardly limited to existing Eve and Dust players. Players will come for the dogfights and one day get curious about what its like to pilot the megolithic Archon their fighter launches from. This can be massively enhanced with the kickstart donor freebies - donations of $80 and over get a plex? donations of $200 and over get a skinned ship or dropsuit? The possibilities are endless and cross promotion opportunities fantastic.

B. Big Headstart on the Oculus Rift platform - CCP has a huge huge headstart with its pre-existing art assets, fanbase and IP together with its early investment/donation to Oculus Rift developers. There is a real opportunity here to be one of the first to launch a fully functional game, and with less development risk than other studios due to the existing Dust and Eve audiences who will doubtless buy the game regardless of early flaws or limited feature set in the confidence that CCP will iterate as it has on those games.

i. Engine. Currently it runs on Unity 3D engine, not EVE's or Dust's. This need not be a problem if the engines can still communicate - its not necessary, for example, for EVR pilots to be involved in the actual same battles as players. Their combat could even be (gulp) partially instanced as it is in Dust. Eventual integration could be a later problem to solve.

ii. Physics and Lore. Part of what makes EVR fun is its slightly closer-to-reality newtonian physics, "turn and burn" as one reviewer describes it. This COULD be explained in lore terms (as the "flying through treacle" physics of eve are explained as being due to the 'drag' caused by warp drives even when not in use, and fighters do not have warp drives) but would be a further barrier to merging the games.





So there you have it CCP. It might not seem necessary to kickstart this project. You may prefer to leave it a "spare time" project for the small team working on it right now. But in reality you have an incredible opportunity to dedicate a mere couple of months time for a team of, say, 10, and create a really kick ass game you can then sell at the ~$15-20 price point and will really add to the Eve "many games one universe" mantra.

Is it cool? Yes.

Could it change games? Yes.

Does it belong in Eve? Ehhhhhhh.......I don't know.

The thought is nice, but I think it might detract from other roles to be played in the battle, or worse, people just outright refuse to participate because they can't be in a fighter. Think of all the people in the old battlefield games that stood next to the air field, waiting for a plane to pop, just to take off and crash it into the nearest tank. Then repeating that over, and over, and over.

Then what happens if there is a shortage of pilots, do AI control the rest? What happens when a player piloted carrier comes across one that is using AI fighters, or a mix. We can definitely say that the AI in Eve isn't much beyond target, lock, shoot, with a few mixed in module activations thrown in here and there.

Like I said, concept is cool, the thought is nice, but I don't see it being practical without a lot of consideration of all aspects.

While it would be wonderful to fully include into Eve, I'd be more than happy playing it as a totally stand alone game, in the same universe.

NPC Faction vs Faction fights.

Join a faction, improve your rank within that faction, get better stuff. etc. Throw in some AI for coop play. ]

Sure, you not likely to have a large impact on New Eden, but there's only so much you can do from the cockpit of a fighter plane.

You could, I suspect, tie it into FW, just not directly.

Similar way to how Dust affects it. The carrier based clones can nibble at the other side. Assuming open war breaks out.

When you're piloting something this fragile, it really doesn't matter ;)


This isn't how capsuleers fly their ships.

Definitely like the liminal space idea; allows it to have an impact without necessarily trying to shoehorn player-controlled ships into the EVE server.

My suspicion is that as time moves on, EVE will become increasingly multi-dimensional in how players interact with the universe -- and this sort of integration is going to be exactly how it's handled.

Still, sooner or later, it'd be -amazing- if this could be fully integrated with EVE. Imagine, for instance, that EVR pilots are able to pinpoint systems aboard EVE ships once the shields are down.

So-- vision of EVE Universe a decade from now: alliances are battling in nullsec. A heavy interdictor pins down a titan. Its shields fall to fire, and then fighters from a nearby carrier begin attacking its exposed weapons, enabling a boarding ship to clamp on. At this point, the dreadnought is locked down and a DUST boarding match is played, with an invader's victory condition being destruction of the pilot's pod. Onboard clones are activated to repel boarders, even as the titan's alliance tries to save the ship by rallying a new fleet before the DUST mercs can capture the titan.

As said, a decade from now.

But frig is it cool.

Who said they were actual windows? Perhaps they're just conveniently-placed displays. A transparent, low-viscosity goo would be possible too.
(Yeah, I know - But I just want to see this happen, and am willing to hand-wave like Boy Scout learning sempahore)

Fair pint - A telling one.

Still want to see this go forward. The bones are there, they just need fleshing-out.

Great Discussion

The direction of this post is on track, just going to move it to the appropriate forum. Continue with the great work.

On On

Well, yes. I think that was the idea.