EVE Valkyrie – the future of space combat in games and virtual reality

Where it all started – EVE Online is a huge online universe where the world and game is now virtually shaped by the players.

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."