EVE Onlineis one of the longest-running MMOs, and its fan-base is one of the most loyal in gaming. Over the last two decades,developer CCP Gameshas continued to work with the community to create a sprawling sci-fi universe they want to keep coming back to. Though this developer-player relationship hasn’t always been on steady ground, it’s arguably in the best spot it’s been for a while, thanks in no small part to people like Peter Farrell, CCP Games' Community Manager.
Game Rant recently attended EVE Fanfest in Reykjavík, Iceland, where we had the opportunity to sit down with Peter Farrell, better known in theEVE Onlinecommunity as “CCP Swift.” During the conversation, Farrell gave us an in-depth explanation of how CCP approachesEVE Online’s onboarding process, how CCP is trying to be more transparent with its community, and how he rose fromEVEplayer to CCP Community Manager.This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Peter Farrell’s Journey from EVE Player to CCP Community Manager
Q: How long have you been playingEVE Online?
A:I’m a true die-hardEVE Onlineplayer, even before I worked at CCP. I’ve been playingEVEsince April 2004. I took a few breaks here and there, but basically, from 2006 onwards, I haven’t stopped.
Q: How did you first find out aboutEVE Online?
A:A person at my university was playingEVE Online. I thought it looked really cool, it was so visually stunning. I downloaded it, I played it, and I sucked at it. I was horrifically bad, so I gave up. Then a couple weeks later, everyone was on Spring Break. No one was doing anything, so I thought I’d try the game again. I tried it, I still sucked at it, and I got so mad that I quit again.
A couple months laterEVEappeared on my radar once again. I wasplayingEarth & Beyond, and we migrated over toEVE Online. That’s when it stuck. I found someone who was willing to help me out. They showed me the ropes and told me everything I was doing wrong before. It’s been smooth sailing ever since.
They were the nicest human being I had ever met in gaming. I wasn’t an MMO player at the time. They took a ship, they watched what I was doing, and they said “You’re doing this all wrong kid. Here’s the ship you need. Here’s the modules you need. Here’s the first 10 hours of what you should do. Good luck and have fun!”
I was like, “What do you want in return?” And they said, “Nothing. When you’re done with the ship just give it to the next guy who’s in your spot.” I asked if anyone else was struggling, and he said “Everyone is struggling dude.” Back then there was no guide, no new player experience. It was just like, “Welcome,” and that’s it.
Q: Could you take me through the journey from those first fewEVE Onlinesessions to eventually becoming CCP Games' Community Manager?
A:That’s been quite the journey. I ended up finding a group of players and decided I wanted to become a pirate, because that sounded cool. So I went to Low-Sec (Low-Security space). I tried to pirate someone and failed. But I knew from my previous experience that I should find someone else to teach me. There was a group called ‘Slacker Industries’. They took the game casually, but tryhard at the same time. They didn’t take themselves too seriously, but they still wanted to be good.
They taught me the ropes of PvP. Eventually, that group folded down. We all wound up together flying in a different group called ‘Pandemic Legion.’ That was in 2008. I’ve been with that group since then. I took part inthe Alliance Tournamentand got hooked on that competitiveness. I started leading Fleets and eventually ended up leading the Alliance for a few years.
That was completely wild, having a few thousand people following you even though they have no need to. It’s not mandatory, they just want to fly with you. That was completely eye-opening. That’s when I started coming toplaces like EVE Fanfestand meeting other players in real life. I thought it was really cool.
I had worked with CCP Games before for the Alliance Tournament and for things like the Council of Stellar Management (CSM), so I met some great people. Over the years, we’d catch up whenever they were in town, or I was here in Iceland. They’d say, “Man, every time we see you talking aboutEVEyou’re happy, you’re smiling. Every time we don’t see you talking aboutEVEyou look miserable!”
I was like, maybe that’s a sign. Before this, I was a corporate lawyer. I hated it. Eventually, I got the opportunity here because I continued to be active in the game and the community, and it was pretty clear that I loved it. Four years ago, I joined, and I’ve never looked back.
The CCP Community Manager’s Advice for EVE Online Newcomers
Q: What’s the first thing you recommend new players do when they boot upEVE Onlinefor the first time?
A:Generally, when gamers start a game they’ll skip the tutorial. InEVE Onlineyou absolutely need the tutorial. There are a ton of player organizations and groups that will give you things and guidance without asking for anything in return.EVEis notorious for being very hardcore. All the stories are about a huge war or some backstabbing or corporate espionage.
But in reality everyone is just really happy that a new player is joining. They have a vested interest in keeping more players in the game. Utilize that. People like EVE University have absolutely wonderful resources. The entire streaming community is welcoming to new players as well.
Q: Is there a specific career or activity new players should do first to ease them intoEVE Online’s mechanics?
A:I thinkexploration is probably the best thing to do early on. It’s something you can do by yourself. You can take it at your own speed, there’s nothing timed. You just fly around space looking for signatures. There’s a hacking minigame that’s fairly easy to grasp. It’s just a good way to familiarize yourself with the areas of space you’re going to be flying in, the type of content you’ll be engaging with, piloting a ship, and interacting with the universe. It’s very low-risk.
Q: It’s been said by CCP thatEVE Online’s tutorial has been renovated multiple times over the years and that now CCP is relying more heavily on veteran players to teach newcomers. Could you talk me through the thought process behind that?
A:When we’re looking at the data, new players who join Corporations are significantly more likely to stay with the game. All the player-research and the anecdotal stories we hear from them revolve around finding someone who’s willing to show them the way and explain this huge universe and break it down into bite-sized pieces.
Getting new players into the hands of these existing player groups, we know for sure, is the best way to get them to stick around. No matter how good of a new player experience we create, nothing can replace another human who has similar interests to you telling you to not worry and showing you the way.
Q: Is that the purpose ofEVE Online’s new Freelance Jobs system?
A:Exactly. We could spend every new expansion redoing the new player experience – and the teams are incredibly talented, and they’d do a great job – but the players would still do it better. We’re giving players the tools to go out and recruit these new players. If you’re not familiar withEVE,it kind of sounds like we’re passing the buck off and asking players to fix the stuff we can’t do.
But the players that run theseCorporations and Alliancesalso want new blood to come in. They want them to help mine, gather resources, and build. Whether it’s a small group or a huge mega group, they all need new people to come in. Finding the right person to join your group is so difficult because there are so many things you’re able to do.
If I’m great at exploring and love it and I attempt to join a Corporation that only does mining, I’m not going to last. Even if I find a group that loves exploration, they might only be active in a certain timezone and I might never see them. So, we’re kind of playing matchmaker in a way more than telling players to fix stuff.
Q: CCP Okami has started to release a Dev Blog. Is that an active attempt by CCP to be more transparent with players?
A:We’ve got a few initiatives to keep communication open. They might seem quite small individually, but when they add up they become something significant. Last time we were at EVE Fanfest we were talking about our plans for the next couple of expansions, and saying that we were building foundations so that we could deliver new and better features. Players were like, “Okay, cool. I’ll wait until you actually deliver on it.”
We’ve done that over the last 15 months or so. They’ve got quite a bit more confidence in us now. When we say we’re going to do something, we do it. If they don’t like the implementation, we’ll refine it with them and get it to a good spot. They’ve got more confidence because they’ve seen it in action. It’s the little things as well, like developer notes and patch notes. Instead of just saying we increased something by 3%, we say we increased this by 3% because this is what we thought the problem was.
We also havethe Council of Stellar Management, which is our player-elected body of representatives that are voted on every year. Players go and campaign for votes, and around 50,000 players vote every year to pick the 10 that represent them the best. We talk to them every week. Different development teams talk with them and share what they’re working on. We make them sign a super NDA! But we bring them behind the scenes and show them how the game is made.
For people who haven’t been on the CSM before, it usually takes them a couple weeks for them to fully grasp how the game gets made. It’s not nearly as straightforward as some players think. But they’re an amazing resource. Gamers are sometimes a little bit hesitant to trust a developer at their word. But if we can show something to their peers, they’ll be way more likely to listen.
Then we have stuff like CCP Okami’s blog, our game design director. The tone there doesn’t read like something from a marketing team. I love George (Kelion, CCP Communications Director) but no one from PR checked that out. Okami is just like, “Here’s what we screwed up. Here’s what we’re going to improve. Here’s where we want to go.” He’ll go into the Discord and talk to players for hours. All those together really help with transparency.
How The Past is Informing EVE’s Future
Q: What’s your favorite update or feature that’s been added toEVE Onlineover the years? Both before and after you joined CCP?
A:This one’s tricky because I’ve been around for so, so many. One of the most transformative ones was an expansion called ‘Phoebe’. Phoebe is when CCPchanged how capital ships could move around the universe. It really shook up the meta drastically. As a player, I hated it, because I was really abusing the other system. I would go from the top of the map to the bottom in like 45 seconds, something that should take hours to do. Any time a fight broke out, we would be there, and we would ruin it. It was a lot of fun for us, but it sucked for everyone else.
The Phoebe expansion added new mechanics that would make it so you can’t just daisy-chain jumps together. It completely shook up the map. New parties emerged and the people that used to hold a lot of areas couldn’t control it anymore. It was a fun couple of years while players were trying to figure out the new meta.
Since I’ve worked here, my favorite has been ‘Havoc’. Havoc is when we pumped so much life back into Low-Sec. That was the area of space I originally fell in love with, and it was amazing to see it come to life. They have the biggest fights now. I was talking to a guy who runs an Alliance called ‘Minmatar Fleet’ and he started his group when we put that expansion out. They have so much fun. Their mantra is like, “If we have no idea what we’re doing, then the enemy will have no idea what we’re doing.” They’ve kicked off some of the biggest fights that have been happening.
Q: How are you hoping the community reacts toEVE FrontierandEVE Vanguardwhen they eventually release?
A:There’s always a fear – especially from the community and the players who have invested a lot – that when a new game comes out, the game that they love is going to lose some sort of luster. The London studio is working onEVE Vanguard.EVE Frontierhas its own developers. They’re not taking resources from anything. They’re in the Reykjavík office, but apart from that, they’re not stealing development time.
As these games get into their more advanced playtest stages, players are seeing thatEVE Onlineis still fine, it’s still thriving. I think those concerns have been dropping off quite a bit. Now they’re just waiting for the moment where these games will bring more value. A couple years ago, we had a game calledDust 514. WhenDustcame out, players were concerned that CCP would forget aboutEVE Onlineand that they’d pay more attention to console players.
The exact opposite happened. People were introduced to theEVEuniverse throughDust, and they becameEVE Onlineplayers. Not all of them, of course. But some came over toEVEand they’re still playing today. So I thinkVanguardandFrontierare just going to grow everything aboutEVEand bring it all to the next level.
EVEFrontieris especially exciting because it’s using the same engine thatEVE Onlineuses. They’re able to experiment on some tech stuff that we’ve wanted to do for years, but is impossible to do withEVE Online. Things like a faster tick rate andupgrading to Python 3. All of these things to improve the technical debt from a 22-year-old game they can experiment with inFrontierand pump that back intoEVE Onlineas well.
Q: AreEVE VanguardandEVE Frontierbeing developed with new players in mind?
A:Yes, absolutely. That’s something theEVE Vanguarddesigners were talking about: creating an experience for new players at this stage in development. We’re taking a lot of the lessons we’ve learned the hard way throughEVE Onlineabout what you need to get a new player onboarded.
TheVanguardteam is also incredibly stacked with talent. All the CCP teams are. But they’re not like, “Hey guys, what do we have to do? I know this worked forEVE,but what are we going to do?” They just know how to make a good onboarding experience for a new player and how to incorporate some ofEVE’s more social elementsin there to build on that too.
ForEVE Frontier, the same is kind of true. It’s a little bit more similar toEVE Onlinein the sense that the players are going to end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting. But, of course, they’ll be able to jump in from day one.
Q: How has theEVE Onlinecommunity impacted you?
A:I’ve moved to Reykjavík, Iceland because ofEVE. I met my partner because she was anEVEstreamer. My life has been incredibly impacted. Even before I moved here. Istarted playingEVEwhen I was 20. This might be a bit of a downer, but I’ve learned how to socialize with people a lot better. I’ve learned skills like people management that I didn’t even know I was picking up.
And things like loss, how to deal with loss. There are a lot of players, sometimes they pass away. Learning how to deal with that emotionally. Losing a friend and celebrating what they’ve done. It was rough at 20 to have to go through that. A lot of heavy stuff, but also a lot of really fun stuff. Being able to come to an event like EVE Fanfest.
The first time I went to a player meet I had to hype myself up a bit because I had never been to a gaming convention. I didn’t really see myself as that type of person. But two of my friends were coming from the UK and Italy to Washington D.C. I lived in New York at the time and really wanted to see them. They had no idea what I looked like.
I decided I’d show up to the bar, and if I got a weird vibe I’d just go home. As soon as I heard them talk, I recognized them. They looked like they were having a blast. I went over to them, they gave me a big hug, and we talked for hours. Next thing I knew, it was like two in the morning, and we had not left the bar. I knew I needed more of this. I immediately went to EVE Vegas, and then EVE Fanfest in 2012, and I just got addicted. I’ve been to every one since.
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