All right, I know this is long overdue and I apologize; Fallout 3 has been devouring my free time this week, I have to admit (I'll post a full review later, after I have played through the game entirely, but the short version is that it's very good -- the Zero Punctuation review sums it up pretty well). This is going to be a big article, and I'm going to put most of it behind the cut, but I think I'll start with this picture to whet your appetites. You can see the full size version in the photos panel to the right -- sorry this is a little clumsy, I'm still working out sticking stuff like this into MoveableType, so I'll try to go back and fix these later.
These are the mountains rising up over the sports complex where FanFest was held, with a gorgeous cover of clouds hovering over them. This was a pretty breathtaking view, and I took this picture at around 1000 on Friday, so you can tell how long it takes for the sun to actually rise in Iceland during the waning months of the fall.
Okay, real coverage of my trip is behind the cut, so let's get started....
These are the mountains rising up over the sports complex where FanFest was held, with a gorgeous cover of clouds hovering over them. This was a pretty breathtaking view, and I took this picture at around 1000 on Friday, so you can tell how long it takes for the sun to actually rise in Iceland during the waning months of the fall.Okay, real coverage of my trip is behind the cut, so let's get started....
Okay, Tuesday I'm afraid I didn't do much sightseeing, as I was pretty wiped out from my flight and I was spending most of my time just staying awake. My hotel room, as I think I've mentioned before, was a little smaller than what I was expecting, I have to admit -- compare the pictures on the Nordica site with this picture of my room:
However, after being up for about 24 hours by the time I had my room I was pretty happy to get anything, and I ended up not spending much time there anyway. It was a very nice room, despite the size, and the view was really good, giving me a good sightline to downtown, the harbor, and the mountains beyond:
The view from where the elevators were was even better:
You'll notice a little key there; here's a larger view of it, so you can actually read what it is pointing to:
Anyway, so obviously you're not looking for the view from my hotel room, so I'll skip to Wednesday, when a few other FanFest attendees and I decided to go out and see Reykjavik; thankfully we had a couple people who had been there before and one person who had done an admirable job learning what there actually was, so we could actually know what we were looking at, which is always nice. There was a shuttle that took us to downtown, but we ended up walking back; it's not very far at all from downtown to the Nordica, maybe a 15-20 minute walk at most. I'll start off with a set of three pictures from the Arnarholl, which is a hill near the harbor where you get a pretty good view of the city and harbor. Looking from right to left (roughly north to west):
Coming up when I can get a chance will be my entry on Boston, but I can't be sure when exactly that will happen -- I have quite a few more pictures to go through for that, so it could be a while still. I will get around to it though, I promise. :)
However, after being up for about 24 hours by the time I had my room I was pretty happy to get anything, and I ended up not spending much time there anyway. It was a very nice room, despite the size, and the view was really good, giving me a good sightline to downtown, the harbor, and the mountains beyond:The view from where the elevators were was even better:You'll notice a little key there; here's a larger view of it, so you can actually read what it is pointing to:Anyway, so obviously you're not looking for the view from my hotel room, so I'll skip to Wednesday, when a few other FanFest attendees and I decided to go out and see Reykjavik; thankfully we had a couple people who had been there before and one person who had done an admirable job learning what there actually was, so we could actually know what we were looking at, which is always nice. There was a shuttle that took us to downtown, but we ended up walking back; it's not very far at all from downtown to the Nordica, maybe a 15-20 minute walk at most. I'll start off with a set of three pictures from the Arnarholl, which is a hill near the harbor where you get a pretty good view of the city and harbor. Looking from right to left (roughly north to west):And here's the statue that crowns the top of the hill, of Ingolfur Arnarson, first Viking settler on Iceland:
That gives you some of the feel of Reykjavik; it's very much a small, older-style European town surrounded by modern buildings, which are growing up like crazy. You can see a lot of construction cranes in the skyline, though there aren't too many in the pictures above; most of the new buildings are going up a bit further away from the center of town. Anyway, we spent a good 4-5 hours walking through the center of Reykjavik and having lunch. Here's some of what we saw; sorry mom, I know there's probably not as many pictures as you'd like, but I still wasn't used to taking pictures of everything. I promise next time I go to get more. :)
One of the centerpieces of Reykjavik is the Hallgrimskirkja, a huge Lutheran church that is still the tallest building in Iceland. It is undergoing renovations right now and we didn't get to it with particularly good light, so these pictures aren't the best. Still, I think you can tell under all that scaffolding just how big it really is.
Once again, I find myself really awed by buildings like this, even though I'm not religious at all, really. The mere fact that something like this can be built by people motivated like that is astounding (in a good way). From the pictures I've seen of the building when it's not covered by tons of scaffolding, I certainly missed something pretty spectacular. I'm hoping I get to go back next year, so that I can take a look inside and see the change on the outside.
In front of the church, you can see a pretty impressive-looking statue; this is a statue of Leif Ericson, which was given to Iceland by the United States in 1930, which was the one thousandth anniversary of the Althing's founding. That was pretty mindblowing to realize. Of course, I was aware that Iceland has one of the oldest democratic governments in the world, and I probably could have guessed that it was about that old, but there's a big difference between knowing that intellectually and standing there, in a country where the people who live there have lived there for thousands of years -- most of us here in North America can't share that kind of history.
That gives you some of the feel of Reykjavik; it's very much a small, older-style European town surrounded by modern buildings, which are growing up like crazy. You can see a lot of construction cranes in the skyline, though there aren't too many in the pictures above; most of the new buildings are going up a bit further away from the center of town. Anyway, we spent a good 4-5 hours walking through the center of Reykjavik and having lunch. Here's some of what we saw; sorry mom, I know there's probably not as many pictures as you'd like, but I still wasn't used to taking pictures of everything. I promise next time I go to get more. :)One of the centerpieces of Reykjavik is the Hallgrimskirkja, a huge Lutheran church that is still the tallest building in Iceland. It is undergoing renovations right now and we didn't get to it with particularly good light, so these pictures aren't the best. Still, I think you can tell under all that scaffolding just how big it really is.
Once again, I find myself really awed by buildings like this, even though I'm not religious at all, really. The mere fact that something like this can be built by people motivated like that is astounding (in a good way). From the pictures I've seen of the building when it's not covered by tons of scaffolding, I certainly missed something pretty spectacular. I'm hoping I get to go back next year, so that I can take a look inside and see the change on the outside.In front of the church, you can see a pretty impressive-looking statue; this is a statue of Leif Ericson, which was given to Iceland by the United States in 1930, which was the one thousandth anniversary of the Althing's founding. That was pretty mindblowing to realize. Of course, I was aware that Iceland has one of the oldest democratic governments in the world, and I probably could have guessed that it was about that old, but there's a big difference between knowing that intellectually and standing there, in a country where the people who live there have lived there for thousands of years -- most of us here in North America can't share that kind of history.
Back down, closer to Arnarsholl (actually, you can see it in the last of the three pictures taken from the hill there) is the Old National Library which is now the National Cultural House. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go inside (next year, for sure!) but here's the picture I took from across the street:
On our way to lunch, we found this curiously named street, which many CRPG players may find somewhat familiar...
The street we were walking up at the time is the main street through Iceland's downtown shopping, restaurant, and club district, though most of that is further up the street (behind me when I was taking the picture). The architecture you see in this photo is pretty much what most of the buildings in downtown Iceland look like, so you can see why I said it looks very much like a small European or New England town. However, Iceland has some very ambitious graffiti:
After lunch, we took a wander down to the far end of the harbor, where we found CCP's brand-spanking new headquarters building (which if I remember right was completed shortly before last year's FanFest).
On our way to lunch, we found this curiously named street, which many CRPG players may find somewhat familiar...The street we were walking up at the time is the main street through Iceland's downtown shopping, restaurant, and club district, though most of that is further up the street (behind me when I was taking the picture). The architecture you see in this photo is pretty much what most of the buildings in downtown Iceland look like, so you can see why I said it looks very much like a small European or New England town. However, Iceland has some very ambitious graffiti:After lunch, we took a wander down to the far end of the harbor, where we found CCP's brand-spanking new headquarters building (which if I remember right was completed shortly before last year's FanFest).And, in case you can't read it, I've included a closer view of the sign on the side there off to the right, as you can see. We didn't stop by for a chat, obviously, but it was pretty neat to see the building nevertheless.
After that, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit; FanFest started the next day, and it seemed like sleep was pretty low on the list of things to do, so getting a good night's rest seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately for me, that night I didn't sleep too well and I was a bit worried I had come down with something -- nothing like being in a foreign country and being worried you need to see a doctor, and you don't speak the language. The fact that I was still recovering from surgery didn't really help matters much! However, despite the fact that I didn't get much in the way of sleep, I seemed to feel a lot better by noon after taking it easy, and I ended up going over to FanFest around noon.
FanFest is a pretty big deal every year, and it has gotten consistently larger since its inception. This was its fifth year, and like last year, it was held in the Laugardalsholl, part of a large sports complex, where among other things the Icelandic Olympic teams practice. It's also where the chess match was held that saw Bobby Fischer defeat Boris Spassky, which, while I'm not a huge chess fan or anything, is still pretty amazing to realize. Maybe I'm just easy to impress, but let's face it, there aren't a lot of historic events that have happened in my hometown, aside from the president's plane getting stuck in our airport and I suppose the first Farm Aid, but I think that's stretching things a bit. So maybe you can see why I get a little excited when I get to visit somewhere with a tad bit more history!
The walk from the Nordica to FanFest is not particularly far, but it was still kind of nippy out there -- Iceland was not especially cold (I think temperatures were in the mid 40s the whole week I was there), but during the day the wind seems to be pretty damn fierce. I was glad I had bought a new winter coat before the trip, that's for sure. Here's a picture of the Laugardalsholl from the street:
It certainly wasn't hard to find my way in:
Now, as a warning, here's the only two pictures I took actually at FanFest, because I was so busy talking to people and doing stuff it totally slipped my mind! Once again, I don't have the shutterbug instinct down yet. I did try to take a few pictures at the Saturday party, but they didn't end up coming out too well; too dark. I'll need to see if there's a better way to deal with those in the future. However, I will say that video of almost all the FanFest presentations is available at CCP's website. Definitely check it out if you have any interest in Eve whatsoever.
The first picture is of the cafe area from the upper floor, looking down; the lowest level there is the entrance.
The second picture here is one of the very cool Apocalypse-class battleship models that had been painted as a Blood Raider ship (sorry about the glare). It was being auctioned off at the silent auction for charity.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, it's time to go on to the meat of FanFest, what I saw and what I did there. Thursday was pretty quiet; the only big events planned for that day were the first roundtables and the Player vs. Dev combat; this was a day to meet and greet and get to talk to people. I did, however, make it into two roundtables (though competition was fierce!).
The first one was on factional warfare, and it had a wide variety of people who had participated (and one person who hadn't, from Anarchy Empire). There seemed to be a general consensus that factional warfare was really not living up to its potential; I told the devs a few times that right now there just wasn't really any strong impetus for anyone to take or (especially) defend systems, and that needs to be changed. While the devs seemed to think that people wanted rewards for fighting in factional warfare, but for me I think its less about rewards and more about consequences. I don't really care if I get some new geegaw for capturing a system, but there needs to be something that happens when the system changes hands -- docking rights restricted, roving factional navy patrols, or something that makes it painful to lose and/or valuable to gain. That seemed to be generally agreed as a problem. The other major topic of discussion was a way of helping players to determine who was a good pilot or fleet commander; I think the big idea that came out of this that was good was implementing some sort of karma system, like, for instance, the one on Digg.
The second roundtable I was in was for women in Eve, which was pretty good -- a wide variety of player backgrounds and playstyles were represented. It was interesting how many of them seemed to get treated a lot differently by the guys in their corps, whereas I don't think I've ever really felt like my corp treats its women members any different from their male pilots (all three or four of us). I don't think there were any giant revelations that came out of this for me, but it was just a fun social occasion to meet some other women players (which there seemed to be a good number of at FanFest this year).
That was about it for Thursday; the real meat of the con, the dev presentations, did not get started until Friday. I won't go over too much about the actual meat of these, since you can see the video of them online, but I will give my commentary on the ones I saw.
The first I saw on Friday was a presentation by the Eve economist about the differences between Tranquility and Serenity; while this was interesting to see and the differences between the two (however slight) were pretty intriguing, I have to say it didn't really stick with me as much as the rest of the presentations I saw. I don't do as much with the market as I used to and even when I did I wasn't that into it.
Next was the alliance panel, which was a bit disappointing; it seems like most of them had been asked to come up on the spur of the moment, aside from the Eve University guy and the CVA guy. Both of them had very good presentations (the CVA one especially), but the others were a tad bit disappointing, though Jade's was only disappointing because the Cosmopolite had already given a similar (and better put together one) last year, and I think Jade had been asked to do his on the spur of the moment. I was the one who asked about the Star Fraction/Stimulus split here, though.
After that, I saw the presentation on building the Empyrean Age. While not as interesting for me as the presentation on Eve IP or the storyline board that came later, I did really like this one if only for the discussion of how the various elements of game design, storyline writing, and even promotion (like the trailers that were played on TV and elsewhere) tied together. This was also the presentation were Tony went into what a mess the process of actually getting the book published was, from the bizarrely poor editing process (one guy editing the entire book literally overnight) to the sorry state it arrived back to him afterwards (out of order and covered in grime). I definitely have a little more sympathy for state of the book's technical editing (and I have more to talk about with regard to the rest in just a little bit, when I talk about the Eve IP presentation). The game design elements were interesting too, but a lot of that I had sort of figured out on my own or had been discussed elsewhere, so they were less of a surprise than the others.
Following that, we had what was supposed to be one of the big deals of the conference, the Walking in Stations presentation. For me, I have to say this was pretty underwhelming; the only thing that really blew me away was the technology demo of Geomerics' Enlighten software, which was pretty amazing. As far as the actual WIS stuff, it looked interesting, but I can't help but think that this, along with the pie-in-the-sky stuff Oveur likes to go on about in the World Domination presentations everywhere, is in danger of losing the focus of what the game is supposed to be about. If you are worried about doing this WIS stuff, and planetary combat, and all this other stuff, I worry that the core gameplay -- flying spaceships around -- which is still far from perfect, will get lost in the shuffle. There's a lot of core gameplay issues, such as sovereignty or factional warfare, which nearly everyone -- players and devs alike -- agrees needs to be overhauled, and if the company is spending time and money on this new stuff, that's game designers and programmers that aren't fixing these issues.
CCP (and, to be fair, most software companies in general) seems to be focused on new features and less fixing old problems. The biggest reason, I'm sure, is that bug fixes are not exactly big new attractors for subscribers; but for the players who you already have, I would like to think that making the core gameplay better is a good way to improve retention. WIS might be a special case, however, since this is likely just a testbed for technology already being developed for CCP's World of Darkness MMO, so leveraging that for Eve is probably not as big a distraction. Still....it is worrisome, and for me, I will probably not spend much time with this, other than to get my character something a bit more appropriate to wear than an armored bustier.
After that, we had Tony's Eve IP presentation, which I thought was one of the best presentations for me personally, as it gave me a lot of insight into how the storyline and creative elements of Eve feed into the business aspects of the game. As I'm pretty sure I've said before (though I can't remember if I've ever posted it here), I'm a bit more attuned to the pen-and-paper RPG industry, where the creative writing is a very large part of the product, whereas in Eve, the creative side is really ancillary to the game; most people do not play Eve for the storyline. However, the storyline, as Tony pointed out, is often a big factor for what draws people into the game in the first place.
This presentation (and a conversation with Tony a bit later in the con) definitely helped me understand the way the storyline was being run and how the background material had been treated in the past. Previously, it seems, it had been really disjoint, and there was no real effort to provide the kind of consistency that is necessary when you're doing that kind of worldbuilding, which I've talked about before. A lot of the problems with the book came out of this (Tony's comment about not knowing about the Caldari tube child program really made me -- and I suspect a few others -- grind their teeth), and while I still have a lot of complaints about the way that was handled, I think much of the issue was because Tony and the other storyline folks at CCP were trying to create a new baseline to build on. I don't particularly agree with how they went about it; too little value, in my opinion, was placed on trying to integrate the previous material (even contradictory material) into the current state of things, but I do agree with the basic idea of trying to establish a strong foundation to build on, I just wish it was done six or seven years ago.
That being said, I am reassured by the fact that with storyline coming to the fore, there is a renewed effort from CCP to make that sort of change. I do disagree with a lot of the details Tony talked about, however. I don't think every nation needs a powerful single face -- look at how Heavy Gear developed the various city-state leagues and confederations for instance. Or look at Shadowrun, where the megacorporations' actions are often driven by competing forces within themselves, such as the competition between Damien Knight and Leonard Aurelius. The competing personalities there are part of what drove that story and made it so strong. I don't think any race needs to be vilified in order to start a war -- in fact, in an interactive game like Eve or any RPG, I think it is better when players of any race can portray their enemies as the "bad guys" and themselves as the "good guys." Again, look at Heavy Gear, where the Interpolar War is not caused because the North or the South are evil, but because small conflicts spiraled out of control -- most historical conflicts are not nearly as black and white as people like to make them out to be. I do like that there's a new emphasis on dynamism, but frankly the speed at which some of these changes have occured is a little hard to believe. These are the sort of things that I hope will change and evolve with the storyline process in the future.
After that, I took a short break and then went to the reading of "Speakeasy," a short play about what agents do on their one hour off each day. It was amusing enough, but I have a noted preference for serious stuff and not so much this sort of thing. :)
The last presentation I saw on Friday was the CSM panel, which I went to mostly because I was curious to see how they thought the process had gone during the last six months. There no real surprises, but I was encouraged to hear about what had actually been put in the game or altered based on their feedback, and with their perceptions of CCP's response. This is really something unprecedented and it's good to see that it is going as well as it has been. Hopefully, now that the administration procedures are worked out and the process has been hammered out a little better, the next iteration of the CSM will be even more productive.
Saturday was "the big day" at the con. The lead-off for me were the finals of the PvP showdown, which was a much different format this year; teams had to mine as much ore as they could during a 15 minute period, but combat was still allowed (or encouraged, even) and the players could reship if they wanted during the battle. I really liked the idea of structuring the tournament around an objective other than "blow the other guy up." I don't know that people thought it was quite as satisfying; limits, in terms of the quality of equipment and the size of ships, were a lot more constraining than the last Alliance Tournament, so you didn't get the epic fights that you might have seen before. I'm sure with further work, though, it can be refined -- after all, it took several tournaments before the Alliance Tournaments got as polished too.
After that was the storyline panel, which was the second presentation I thought was really interesting. While a lot of the stuff that was discussed was also done at the Eve IP presentation, especially in regard to the specific storyline details, hearing how the process behind them worked, and how they had started to try and hammer out these details, was very encouraging. The fact that the storyline board has people from the pen-and-paper RPG world now will hopefully lead to a shift that is closer to what I'd like, but to be totally honest I've never been completely thrilled with what I've heard about the World of Darkness metaplot. I was never really as interested in it (or in the WoD games, period) as I was with Heavy Gear, Shadowrun, or the other games that take up huge chunks of my RPG shelves, though, so I think I need to reserve judgement and see what happens. Call my attitude on this, for now, "cautiously optimistic," especially in light of the new initiatives to document and hammer out the baseline of the Eve setting. I noticed that this presentation is not yet up on the Eve website; I hope that is fixed, because really, I think a lot of RPers in Eve would really find it enlightening.
After that, of course, were the World Domination presentations, where CCP detailed their ongoing initiatives and their plans for the next expansion or two. Of course, the big announcement here was that the next expansion is not coming out in the summer, but is on target for March, in combination with a new release of Eve to stores. Considering the amount of stuff they are trying to cram into that next expansion, though, I will be very shocked if everything they want is in there (the date, I think, is fixed because of the retail release). The tech 3 ships -- modular ships you can build by adding different pieces together, basically adding thousands of ships to each race, were a really cool idea, one which was definitely really good to see instead of just something bigger and better. The exploration ideas, the epic mission arcs, and the other elements scheduled for the next expansion definitely have potential as well; but considering the retail rollout, it seems like the one thing that must be in the next expansion is the new player experience update and UI improvement.
The COSMOS social networking/instant messenger/thin client idea that Oveur spoke about briefly before that was also a pretty cool idea, but as he joked, it is still years away from completion. The technical presentation, by the CTO and VP of Engineering was okay, but it was definitely aimed at a bit of a different level; most of the HPC stuff I had heard of because of the work I did with CSE/CSAR, but the stackless Python stuff was a bit over my head. Oveur's annual pie-in-the-sky presentation was good for a glimpse at the far future, but the planetary stuff and FPS teaser (which I've heard people say they think is a real thing being added to Eve -- my guess is that it's something that may use the IP but stands alone), I think that may be reach exceeding grasp there. I may be proven wrong later on, but I sort of hope not -- I'd rather have a really good space combat/trading game than an okay game that tries to be everything to everyone.
The CCP Panel was next; I'll touch on a few of the things I thought were interesting that came out of it in bullet points. I think (as should probably be expected) there were a lot of people looking out for their own playstyles rather than taking a larger view of the game, which was not disappointing per se but it certainly held less interest for me than things that involve many different aspects of the game, or which are at least accessible to almost everyone.
Sunday and Monday I spent most of my time socializing with some other expatriates in the hotel bar -- most of whom were members of either Mercury (the fiction news article writers) or those fine folks at the Star Fraction, including the Cosmopolite. If you told me two years ago, at the height of the Mito Conflict, that I'd be sitting down and having a pleasant chat with those guys, reminiscing about what was one of the most vicious wars I think I've ever been in, I don't think I ever would have believed you, but there I was.
And so, that wraps up most of my Icelandic experiences. It was one of the best weeks in my life, really -- spending that time with people who were excited and passionate about the same sort of things I am, many of whom think about it on the same level I do, was really great. I will definitely be looking forward to doing this again next year if at all possible.
Before I go though, I have one more picture to show you....
These things are scattered all over Iceland, and I never really realized what they were until one of the people I was hanging out with told me. These sheds are actually caps over the geothermal vents that cover the island! It's pretty cool to think about, in terms of the island's geology; evidently the street that the Nordica is on lies right over an underground river, which supposedly helps the road stay clearer of ice and snow than it normally would. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounded pretty neat to me. :)
After that, we headed back to the hotel to rest up a bit; FanFest started the next day, and it seemed like sleep was pretty low on the list of things to do, so getting a good night's rest seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately for me, that night I didn't sleep too well and I was a bit worried I had come down with something -- nothing like being in a foreign country and being worried you need to see a doctor, and you don't speak the language. The fact that I was still recovering from surgery didn't really help matters much! However, despite the fact that I didn't get much in the way of sleep, I seemed to feel a lot better by noon after taking it easy, and I ended up going over to FanFest around noon.
FanFest is a pretty big deal every year, and it has gotten consistently larger since its inception. This was its fifth year, and like last year, it was held in the Laugardalsholl, part of a large sports complex, where among other things the Icelandic Olympic teams practice. It's also where the chess match was held that saw Bobby Fischer defeat Boris Spassky, which, while I'm not a huge chess fan or anything, is still pretty amazing to realize. Maybe I'm just easy to impress, but let's face it, there aren't a lot of historic events that have happened in my hometown, aside from the president's plane getting stuck in our airport and I suppose the first Farm Aid, but I think that's stretching things a bit. So maybe you can see why I get a little excited when I get to visit somewhere with a tad bit more history!
The walk from the Nordica to FanFest is not particularly far, but it was still kind of nippy out there -- Iceland was not especially cold (I think temperatures were in the mid 40s the whole week I was there), but during the day the wind seems to be pretty damn fierce. I was glad I had bought a new winter coat before the trip, that's for sure. Here's a picture of the Laugardalsholl from the street:
It certainly wasn't hard to find my way in:Now, as a warning, here's the only two pictures I took actually at FanFest, because I was so busy talking to people and doing stuff it totally slipped my mind! Once again, I don't have the shutterbug instinct down yet. I did try to take a few pictures at the Saturday party, but they didn't end up coming out too well; too dark. I'll need to see if there's a better way to deal with those in the future. However, I will say that video of almost all the FanFest presentations is available at CCP's website. Definitely check it out if you have any interest in Eve whatsoever.The first picture is of the cafe area from the upper floor, looking down; the lowest level there is the entrance.
The second picture here is one of the very cool Apocalypse-class battleship models that had been painted as a Blood Raider ship (sorry about the glare). It was being auctioned off at the silent auction for charity.Okay, now that that's out of the way, it's time to go on to the meat of FanFest, what I saw and what I did there. Thursday was pretty quiet; the only big events planned for that day were the first roundtables and the Player vs. Dev combat; this was a day to meet and greet and get to talk to people. I did, however, make it into two roundtables (though competition was fierce!).The first one was on factional warfare, and it had a wide variety of people who had participated (and one person who hadn't, from Anarchy Empire). There seemed to be a general consensus that factional warfare was really not living up to its potential; I told the devs a few times that right now there just wasn't really any strong impetus for anyone to take or (especially) defend systems, and that needs to be changed. While the devs seemed to think that people wanted rewards for fighting in factional warfare, but for me I think its less about rewards and more about consequences. I don't really care if I get some new geegaw for capturing a system, but there needs to be something that happens when the system changes hands -- docking rights restricted, roving factional navy patrols, or something that makes it painful to lose and/or valuable to gain. That seemed to be generally agreed as a problem. The other major topic of discussion was a way of helping players to determine who was a good pilot or fleet commander; I think the big idea that came out of this that was good was implementing some sort of karma system, like, for instance, the one on Digg.
The second roundtable I was in was for women in Eve, which was pretty good -- a wide variety of player backgrounds and playstyles were represented. It was interesting how many of them seemed to get treated a lot differently by the guys in their corps, whereas I don't think I've ever really felt like my corp treats its women members any different from their male pilots (all three or four of us). I don't think there were any giant revelations that came out of this for me, but it was just a fun social occasion to meet some other women players (which there seemed to be a good number of at FanFest this year).
That was about it for Thursday; the real meat of the con, the dev presentations, did not get started until Friday. I won't go over too much about the actual meat of these, since you can see the video of them online, but I will give my commentary on the ones I saw.
The first I saw on Friday was a presentation by the Eve economist about the differences between Tranquility and Serenity; while this was interesting to see and the differences between the two (however slight) were pretty intriguing, I have to say it didn't really stick with me as much as the rest of the presentations I saw. I don't do as much with the market as I used to and even when I did I wasn't that into it.
Next was the alliance panel, which was a bit disappointing; it seems like most of them had been asked to come up on the spur of the moment, aside from the Eve University guy and the CVA guy. Both of them had very good presentations (the CVA one especially), but the others were a tad bit disappointing, though Jade's was only disappointing because the Cosmopolite had already given a similar (and better put together one) last year, and I think Jade had been asked to do his on the spur of the moment. I was the one who asked about the Star Fraction/Stimulus split here, though.
After that, I saw the presentation on building the Empyrean Age. While not as interesting for me as the presentation on Eve IP or the storyline board that came later, I did really like this one if only for the discussion of how the various elements of game design, storyline writing, and even promotion (like the trailers that were played on TV and elsewhere) tied together. This was also the presentation were Tony went into what a mess the process of actually getting the book published was, from the bizarrely poor editing process (one guy editing the entire book literally overnight) to the sorry state it arrived back to him afterwards (out of order and covered in grime). I definitely have a little more sympathy for state of the book's technical editing (and I have more to talk about with regard to the rest in just a little bit, when I talk about the Eve IP presentation). The game design elements were interesting too, but a lot of that I had sort of figured out on my own or had been discussed elsewhere, so they were less of a surprise than the others.
Following that, we had what was supposed to be one of the big deals of the conference, the Walking in Stations presentation. For me, I have to say this was pretty underwhelming; the only thing that really blew me away was the technology demo of Geomerics' Enlighten software, which was pretty amazing. As far as the actual WIS stuff, it looked interesting, but I can't help but think that this, along with the pie-in-the-sky stuff Oveur likes to go on about in the World Domination presentations everywhere, is in danger of losing the focus of what the game is supposed to be about. If you are worried about doing this WIS stuff, and planetary combat, and all this other stuff, I worry that the core gameplay -- flying spaceships around -- which is still far from perfect, will get lost in the shuffle. There's a lot of core gameplay issues, such as sovereignty or factional warfare, which nearly everyone -- players and devs alike -- agrees needs to be overhauled, and if the company is spending time and money on this new stuff, that's game designers and programmers that aren't fixing these issues.
CCP (and, to be fair, most software companies in general) seems to be focused on new features and less fixing old problems. The biggest reason, I'm sure, is that bug fixes are not exactly big new attractors for subscribers; but for the players who you already have, I would like to think that making the core gameplay better is a good way to improve retention. WIS might be a special case, however, since this is likely just a testbed for technology already being developed for CCP's World of Darkness MMO, so leveraging that for Eve is probably not as big a distraction. Still....it is worrisome, and for me, I will probably not spend much time with this, other than to get my character something a bit more appropriate to wear than an armored bustier.
After that, we had Tony's Eve IP presentation, which I thought was one of the best presentations for me personally, as it gave me a lot of insight into how the storyline and creative elements of Eve feed into the business aspects of the game. As I'm pretty sure I've said before (though I can't remember if I've ever posted it here), I'm a bit more attuned to the pen-and-paper RPG industry, where the creative writing is a very large part of the product, whereas in Eve, the creative side is really ancillary to the game; most people do not play Eve for the storyline. However, the storyline, as Tony pointed out, is often a big factor for what draws people into the game in the first place.
This presentation (and a conversation with Tony a bit later in the con) definitely helped me understand the way the storyline was being run and how the background material had been treated in the past. Previously, it seems, it had been really disjoint, and there was no real effort to provide the kind of consistency that is necessary when you're doing that kind of worldbuilding, which I've talked about before. A lot of the problems with the book came out of this (Tony's comment about not knowing about the Caldari tube child program really made me -- and I suspect a few others -- grind their teeth), and while I still have a lot of complaints about the way that was handled, I think much of the issue was because Tony and the other storyline folks at CCP were trying to create a new baseline to build on. I don't particularly agree with how they went about it; too little value, in my opinion, was placed on trying to integrate the previous material (even contradictory material) into the current state of things, but I do agree with the basic idea of trying to establish a strong foundation to build on, I just wish it was done six or seven years ago.
That being said, I am reassured by the fact that with storyline coming to the fore, there is a renewed effort from CCP to make that sort of change. I do disagree with a lot of the details Tony talked about, however. I don't think every nation needs a powerful single face -- look at how Heavy Gear developed the various city-state leagues and confederations for instance. Or look at Shadowrun, where the megacorporations' actions are often driven by competing forces within themselves, such as the competition between Damien Knight and Leonard Aurelius. The competing personalities there are part of what drove that story and made it so strong. I don't think any race needs to be vilified in order to start a war -- in fact, in an interactive game like Eve or any RPG, I think it is better when players of any race can portray their enemies as the "bad guys" and themselves as the "good guys." Again, look at Heavy Gear, where the Interpolar War is not caused because the North or the South are evil, but because small conflicts spiraled out of control -- most historical conflicts are not nearly as black and white as people like to make them out to be. I do like that there's a new emphasis on dynamism, but frankly the speed at which some of these changes have occured is a little hard to believe. These are the sort of things that I hope will change and evolve with the storyline process in the future.
After that, I took a short break and then went to the reading of "Speakeasy," a short play about what agents do on their one hour off each day. It was amusing enough, but I have a noted preference for serious stuff and not so much this sort of thing. :)
The last presentation I saw on Friday was the CSM panel, which I went to mostly because I was curious to see how they thought the process had gone during the last six months. There no real surprises, but I was encouraged to hear about what had actually been put in the game or altered based on their feedback, and with their perceptions of CCP's response. This is really something unprecedented and it's good to see that it is going as well as it has been. Hopefully, now that the administration procedures are worked out and the process has been hammered out a little better, the next iteration of the CSM will be even more productive.
Saturday was "the big day" at the con. The lead-off for me were the finals of the PvP showdown, which was a much different format this year; teams had to mine as much ore as they could during a 15 minute period, but combat was still allowed (or encouraged, even) and the players could reship if they wanted during the battle. I really liked the idea of structuring the tournament around an objective other than "blow the other guy up." I don't know that people thought it was quite as satisfying; limits, in terms of the quality of equipment and the size of ships, were a lot more constraining than the last Alliance Tournament, so you didn't get the epic fights that you might have seen before. I'm sure with further work, though, it can be refined -- after all, it took several tournaments before the Alliance Tournaments got as polished too.
After that was the storyline panel, which was the second presentation I thought was really interesting. While a lot of the stuff that was discussed was also done at the Eve IP presentation, especially in regard to the specific storyline details, hearing how the process behind them worked, and how they had started to try and hammer out these details, was very encouraging. The fact that the storyline board has people from the pen-and-paper RPG world now will hopefully lead to a shift that is closer to what I'd like, but to be totally honest I've never been completely thrilled with what I've heard about the World of Darkness metaplot. I was never really as interested in it (or in the WoD games, period) as I was with Heavy Gear, Shadowrun, or the other games that take up huge chunks of my RPG shelves, though, so I think I need to reserve judgement and see what happens. Call my attitude on this, for now, "cautiously optimistic," especially in light of the new initiatives to document and hammer out the baseline of the Eve setting. I noticed that this presentation is not yet up on the Eve website; I hope that is fixed, because really, I think a lot of RPers in Eve would really find it enlightening.
After that, of course, were the World Domination presentations, where CCP detailed their ongoing initiatives and their plans for the next expansion or two. Of course, the big announcement here was that the next expansion is not coming out in the summer, but is on target for March, in combination with a new release of Eve to stores. Considering the amount of stuff they are trying to cram into that next expansion, though, I will be very shocked if everything they want is in there (the date, I think, is fixed because of the retail release). The tech 3 ships -- modular ships you can build by adding different pieces together, basically adding thousands of ships to each race, were a really cool idea, one which was definitely really good to see instead of just something bigger and better. The exploration ideas, the epic mission arcs, and the other elements scheduled for the next expansion definitely have potential as well; but considering the retail rollout, it seems like the one thing that must be in the next expansion is the new player experience update and UI improvement.
The COSMOS social networking/instant messenger/thin client idea that Oveur spoke about briefly before that was also a pretty cool idea, but as he joked, it is still years away from completion. The technical presentation, by the CTO and VP of Engineering was okay, but it was definitely aimed at a bit of a different level; most of the HPC stuff I had heard of because of the work I did with CSE/CSAR, but the stackless Python stuff was a bit over my head. Oveur's annual pie-in-the-sky presentation was good for a glimpse at the far future, but the planetary stuff and FPS teaser (which I've heard people say they think is a real thing being added to Eve -- my guess is that it's something that may use the IP but stands alone), I think that may be reach exceeding grasp there. I may be proven wrong later on, but I sort of hope not -- I'd rather have a really good space combat/trading game than an okay game that tries to be everything to everyone.
The CCP Panel was next; I'll touch on a few of the things I thought were interesting that came out of it in bullet points. I think (as should probably be expected) there were a lot of people looking out for their own playstyles rather than taking a larger view of the game, which was not disappointing per se but it certainly held less interest for me than things that involve many different aspects of the game, or which are at least accessible to almost everyone.
- CCP is looking at changing sovereignty so that taking sovereignty does not depend purely on combat power. This was very encouraging (though it will be more encouraging when they actually change something), especially since I've talked about that sort of thing for a while, when I posted an idea here. It will all depend on what CCP can implement and run without causing more server overhead or adding unintentionally exploitable mechanics.
- The Eve RPG is still on track and is considered a publicity and marketing tool (like the storyline) rather than a moneymaking tool; that bodes well for the game in what has been a depressed pen and paper RPG market for some time now.
- The idea of allowing player corporations to act as "viceroys" in low security systems is an interesting one, but I think the notion that players can act like the police in certain systems at the level CONCORD or the faction navies can is a little dubious. People don't really enjoy camping gates for days on end and in 0.0, most people these days simply use an NBSI policy because it's easier to shoot first and ask questions later than hunt down the guy who turned out not to be a neutral trader but an enemy spy or cyno generator or pirate. Until there's some sort of change to add tools where the players can police systems better (in low sec and 0.0), I don't think you're going to see alliances or corporations running space in a way similar to the NPC empires. By that, I mean being able to maintain an NRDS policy without a huge amount of effort and a significant impediment.
- The mystery of the disappearing Alliance Tournament was answered, and I was not particularly surprised by the reason -- they simply cost too much for the return they provided in terms of publicity, retention, and other business benefits. While I can understand why CCP made that sort of decision, it was very disappointing, especially since their suggested replacement -- player-run events using tools for that sort of thing -- will probably never have the same audience that the Alliance Tournaments had. I will miss what was really a unifying event for the player base (and even for non-players that you could rope into watching), and I hope CCP tries to do something in order to provide that same sort of experience in the future.
- The Eve novel sold well enough to green-light a sequel (though I think it had a fairly limited print run). While I admit I was hardly thrilled with the first one, I suppose hope springs eternal -- and keeping that visibility for the storyline high is good for the parts of the game I like.
- Talk about tools being added to ambulation in order to facilitate machinima; I think this is a sign of how much the game industry is changing to embrace that sort of thing from the fanbase, things like Clear Skies or Concerned. While I am not hugely excited about ambulation for myself, I am excited to see what sort of stuff the player base comes up with. Adherance to the canon of the Eve universe aside, I really liked Clear Skies.
- Speaking of Clear Skies, Clear Skies 2 is under production. :)
Sunday and Monday I spent most of my time socializing with some other expatriates in the hotel bar -- most of whom were members of either Mercury (the fiction news article writers) or those fine folks at the Star Fraction, including the Cosmopolite. If you told me two years ago, at the height of the Mito Conflict, that I'd be sitting down and having a pleasant chat with those guys, reminiscing about what was one of the most vicious wars I think I've ever been in, I don't think I ever would have believed you, but there I was.
And so, that wraps up most of my Icelandic experiences. It was one of the best weeks in my life, really -- spending that time with people who were excited and passionate about the same sort of things I am, many of whom think about it on the same level I do, was really great. I will definitely be looking forward to doing this again next year if at all possible.
Before I go though, I have one more picture to show you....
These things are scattered all over Iceland, and I never really realized what they were until one of the people I was hanging out with told me. These sheds are actually caps over the geothermal vents that cover the island! It's pretty cool to think about, in terms of the island's geology; evidently the street that the Nordica is on lies right over an underground river, which supposedly helps the road stay clearer of ice and snow than it normally would. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sounded pretty neat to me. :)Coming up when I can get a chance will be my entry on Boston, but I can't be sure when exactly that will happen -- I have quite a few more pictures to go through for that, so it could be a while still. I will get around to it though, I promise. :)
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