CCP CEO attributes EVE's success to playerbase

Traveling to scenic Reykjavik, Iceland to report on EVE Fanfest 2007, Gamasutra's Tom Kim sat down with CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson to pick his brain and find out what magic pixie dust his team has used to sustain EVE Online, a game that is not an immediately obvious model for success in the MMO sphere. For his part, Pétursson attributes the game's appeal to its emergent gameplay; the world of EVE is largely a construction of its playerbase. While they don't actually create content in the same sense that you would in something like Second Life, the systems within the game itself like the thriving economy, inter-corps warfare, and the ever-evolving lore are all made possible by player decisions and interactions.

Pétursson also discusses the future of EVE, including the new Council of Stellar Management, which will be a seven-man body elected by the playerbase to represent player concerns in the implementation of updates to the game's systems. He also expounds on the ways in which CCP is adapting to meet the new technologies of the day, including the accommodating GPU-melting events like a 500-ship fleet battle. From the way he describes their development focus, it seems like the CCP crew are more than capable of sustaining the growth that has made them something of an industry curiosity.