10 Years of CCP

When I interviewed Hilmar at Nordic Game in May, I put it to him that EVE Online wasn't a game at all. It's a life-metaphor, I said, and the driving factors within its confines are the same that compel people to progress in everyday life. He agreed. People want popularity, money, power, friendship and, obviously, a bigger car/spaceship. And they don't know why. The reason so many people get put off EVE is because they expect it to be World of Warcraft in space. When it isn't, they leave. They don't see the point of it. There are no queues to join. There are no rollercoasters to ride.

They don't see a point, because the point is that EVE's universe exists and you enjoy existing within it. EVE's "point" is the same as life's "point". Everything matters, so nothing matters. It just is. If you think about it too hard you either won't get up tomorrow morning or you'll bounce out of bed grinning like a monkey, so go easy. The fact is that CCP has created something unique in its field, and has every chance, as Hilmar said at CCP's birthday party, of changing the face of modern entertainment. Pétursson's quiet hypotheses will become bolder and more obvious as time goes on and subscriptions grow, and in the end it won't be befuddled games journos taking notice: it'll be everyone. Don't believe me? "They" didn't believe Che Guevara, either. Until they shot him.

EVE Online is gaming's Free Territory of the Americas. It's Hilmar's Cuba. CCP hasn't hit its peak yet. It's far from it. There are no foreign investments on its territory, and there are no proconsuls directing its policy. EVE is free from the rest of an industry drowning under rampant me-tooism and the tyranny of convention, and the message is spreading. The players of EVE Online aren't manacled by content, or shepherded into "experiences". EVE's users are creators of their own destinies.

Winding up his speech in 1964, Guevara blasted the UN with the following: "This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. A struggle of masses and of ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers."

We don't have to be dictated to. This is about you. This is not about "game" or "MMO" or "level" or "raiding" or anything in between. This is about how you choose to exist, in both virtual and actual reality. It's about real life, about a finally connected science-fact. In the last 10 years, CCP has created something that gives you the option. You decide. Do you want to be led blindly by the hand, staring into the bowels of your computer, or do you want to join a revolt against "content," against "limits," against pressing "w" for eight hours a day for months on end for a suit of armour anyone can get if they do the same? Do you want to tell or be told? Do you want to obey and serve or are you ready to be free to make your own mark? "They" had to kill Che Guevara to stop his dream. Please believe me when I say there are certain companies within the online games industry that are certainly disingenuous, pathetic and ruthless enough to survive comparison to Guevara's "imperialism", but thankfully they stop short of murder. The only thing that's going to halt Hilmar's vision is if you - we - don't have the balls to share it. Together, we are unstoppable.

It's up to all of us. It's up to the Free Territory of the Americas. Here's to another decade, CCP. Happy birthday.