EVE Valkyrie

I saw a prototype of what was to be EVE Valkyrie at E3 this year. Along with Respawn's Titanfall, it was the talk of the show. CCP knew they had something special, so they created a full game from this demo.

Here at gamescom, CCP are showing a build so new that they just wrapped it up five days ago. Work started on what was to be Valkyrie in Reykjavik, but now they've moved to Newcastle, where a studio of 20 are working on it full time.

While exciting, what I saw at E3 was still rough around the edges, and running on standard definition Oculus Rift headsets. They've been working on it ever since, talking the experience and turning it up as far as they could. It's now running on Rift HD prototype sets, packed full of improvements.

CCP says that EVE Valkyrie was built to put the experience first. This means that intense space dogfighting is the focus. They've simplified the controls to get out of the way of the experience. The left analog stick controls your ship's pitch -- nose direction -- as well as roll. They didn't want players to have to switch between multiple controls. Yaw is set to shoulder buttons, lasers are on the right trigger, and a boost thruster is set to the A button.

Best of all your ship's functions, the missile control really shows off the Oculus Rift. Holding down the left trigger brings up a reticle; turning your head moves this reticle around to find a target. Simply look and hold, and then let go when the target is locked to send your missiles flying. It's as cool as it sounds.

Our demo was a three-on-three match against other international games media. We all started out by launching out of tubes into space, fired directly at each other. CCP recommended coming out with lasers blasting, and I did just that, but my left index finger was already on the trigger, looking for targets to pop up in space.

Look, lock, fire. Look, lock, fire, kill. The feeling of being able to aim and fire two different weapon types independently is challenging at first, but when you get the hang of it it feels fantastic.

You're but a little dot in space, open to fire from any direction, but you're also a powerhouse that can dish it out as well as any other. If you're like me, you'll work your thrusters empty trying to run away from missiles. Better players stood their ground. All had fun.

When someone locks a missile on your ship, a red warning light goes off in your cockpit. This is to prompt you to look down at a gauge on your ship's dash that shows you a graphical representation of your ship and the incoming missiles. Turn, boost, and do anything you can to out-steer and outrun them. It's not easy, but it feels great to get away and set up to return fire. It feels even better to take the attacker down.

For as fun as the dogfighting is, the immersive feeling the Oculus Rift gives really won me over. Looking around in your cockpit -- down to see your controls, left and right to see your ship's innards -- feels cozy at first, but looking off into space out of your ship's front window makes you feel small. Letting off the thrusters and kind of coasting gives you a real sense of weightlessness -- something you won't feel with even the most powerful game console on the best television.

What also won me over was how great EVE Valkyrie looked on one of the rare Oculus Rift HD prototype headsets. There's only about 50 of these in the world, and all were handmade, but CCP wanted to have the best to show off their work and improvements. The resolution is up to 1080p, from the 800p shown at E3. This gives the new build about double the pixel density of its predecessor.

The end result is greatly improved visuals. Seeing the space between pixels is no longer an issue. Space looks lovely, as does your ship's interior. Text now is easily readable. The E3 prototype was already great. This HD build is just that much more impressive. Imagine how great Valkyrie will look in about a year.

All of the the things happening in gaming right now are exciting -- indie games flourishing, new consoles launching, technology speeding ahead. But the Oculus Rift and the games being built for it really feel like the next generation of gaming.

Again, imagine where we'll be in a year for now. I can't wait.

EVE Valkyrie – the future of space combat in games and virtual reality
CCP Games' Hilmar Petursson on creating gaming universes such as wildly popular EVE Online – then letting fans grow them
A decade on from its launch, EVE Online remains one of the most engrossing persistent game worlds ever produced. A space-faring epic set in the deep future, players can traverse thousands of star systems, build (and work for) interstellar corporations, and eke out an existence by mining and managing resources. The game is unusual for allowing users increasing freedom to govern the fictional reality themselves.

"The core element is that EVE, in so many ways, is made by the players of the game," says Hilmar Petursson, CEO of Icelandic developer CCP Games. "So much of the experience is what the players are doing, how they're interacting with each other, the trust and relationships that are built and broken, and all those stories coming up all over the world as they occur."

The broken trust Petursson speaks of is part of what makes EVE fascinating to observe, even for non-players. A 2005 assassination of a high-level in-game CEO lead to a theft of 30bn ISK – EVE's currency – and considerable assets, such as rare starships. The plan required months to set up, with real players infiltrating the target corporation to launch the devastating co-ordinated assault. A year later, a single player set up the EVE Investment Bank, eventually defrauding his investors to the tune of 700bn ISK.

CCP's backdrop is one that gives rise to true human ingenuity, greed, collaboration and callousness in ways the team never imagined.

"Initially, we were more hands on, and more of the game was controlled by us or non-player characters, with an NPC economy. Then we systematically unwound those controls, gave them over to players in some way," says Petursson. "Players elect a Council of Stellar Management that comes to Reykjavik twice a year and discusses with our development team and designers on where to focus our efforts and what needs to improve. That helps a lot, that there is this collaboration between the dev team, the community, and the core design of the game."

Now, EVE is only a few steps removed from complete player autonomy, with Petursson's team taking on a janitorial role – "maintaining the operating system of the universe," he says. Internally, focus has shifted to expanding that universe. The free-to-play first-person shooter Dust 514 launched for PlayStation 3 in May this year, offering a more action-oriented experience set on planets throughout EVE's universe, where events in one game will affect the other. It feels relatively safe though – a sci-fi shooter in a medium awash with them. CCP's next release will be anything but safe.

Stars in your eyes

EVE Valkyrie seems alluringly dangerous on two fronts. One, it's a 3D space shooter, a genre all but abandoned by developers in recent years. Two, and more importantly, it will be released for Oculus Rift, the upcoming virtual reality headset offering players complete audio-visual immersion into their games. Valkyrie places gamers into some of EVE's signature space fighters, with a 360-degree view of the cockpit and the great void surrounding them. It looks thrilling, serving as a showcase for the flexibility of EVE's universe and the potential of the Oculus Rift hardware. Turning to a long-ignored genre on an unreleased piece of hardware may seem risky at best, but Petursson is excited by the potential.

"It started when the Kickstarter for Oculus Rift came about. CCP became one of the first backers, along with a lot of people at the company who backed it on their own time," he says. "People were trying out games and there was a group who wanted to do something using EVE assets to do a demo of something related.

"I tried it for the first time when we had a demonstration in the kitchen at CCP. I sort of imagined what it would be, [but then] I put it on and was like 'Wow! This is pretty damn cool!' You look at your own avatar in the cockpit and it was such a 'whoa' moment. It's more compelling than I thought, to feel this connected to it. That's obviously what we want to do, we want to immerse people even more in the universe we're creating, to have people expand what they can do in a truly open world."

Although little has been shown of the in-progress Valkyrie as yet, the creative team forming around it is promising. Most prominently, Owen O'Brien has taken on a producer role, who should know a thing or two about first-person immersion from his work on cult hit Mirror's Edge. Valkyrie has also shifted development from Reykjavik to CCP's Newcastle studios, where Petursson is pushing for bold ideas.

"We try to cultivate an environment for innovation. I think we can improve a lot on that. We've experimented with 20% time for staff's own projects and in-company game jams. How we can further foster creativity, whether it's its own project, inside EVE Online, or inside our current games, is absolutely something we're thinking about."

It's unknown whether Valkyrie will integrate with EVE Online and Dust 514, or similarly reflect player democracy in the shared universe, though such connections are likely to feature eventually. Petursson adds: "We very much have the opportunity, we have the technology and infrastructure for it. It's just not the focus right now."

Comparing Valkyrie's potential to the game that started it all, Petursson reflects "We were much more interested in creating a playground, which would be self-reinforcing. But it became much bigger and has lived on for much longer than we ever thought, or even dared think. Now when we look at it, and think of the fundamentals of it, EVE in all its forms is going to outlive us all."

Eve: Valkyrie -- The Future Of Immersive Virtual Reality Gaming Experience

I recently spoke via international phone conference with Owen O’Brien, Eve: Valkyrie‘s Executive Producer, and Sigurður Gunnarsson, one of the founders and the game’s senior programmer, about CCP Games’ upcoming virtual reality space dogfight game. O’Brien and Gunnarsson shared their thoughts with me on breaking new territory by developing one of the first, dedicated virtual reality games for the Oculus Rift to come from a major studio. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Eve Universe, Eve Online is a unique, science fiction MMORPG, set in a player-driven universe, where the players control every aspect of the game. The game has its own rich story arc, historical lore and very involved player community.

It’s a game world to whose rich story lore many players themselves have contributed, and have provided CCP Games with vocal “persistent feedback” through a player representative council. Eve Online has it’s own real-time economy that is driven by the commerce of tens of thousands of players who engage in wars, test out market schemes, contest lone stretches of disputed territory and form strategic alliances in the race to take possession of and dominate the cold, dystopic expanse of deep space. And also for the joy of flying around and blowing people up. It also has the highest learning curve of any MMO game on the market, for good reason. For a solid introduction to the game, check out the MMOGames Eve Online game guide.
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