Mastering Virtual Worlds & Economies (CCP Games | Creators of EVE Online)

Name: Mastering Virtual Worlds & Economies (CCP Games | Creators of EVE Online)
Uploaded: 2023-04-07T15:20:26.000Z
Duration: 2 h 24 min 26 s

Introduction to Money and GDC

The speaker talks about the concept of money in Iceland and how it is only valid within the country. They also introduce Hilmar Peterson, CEO founder of CCP games, who will be interviewed.

Introduction to Money in Iceland

In Iceland, there is a type of money that is only accepted by 300,000 people within the country.

This money has no legal center anywhere else except on this volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic.

Foreign trade and exchanges between Iceland and other countries can be problematic due to economic collapses in the past.

Introduction to GDC

The speakers are excited to be at GDC and have Hilmar Peterson as a guest on their podcast.

Hilmar Peterson has been attending GDC since 2000.

Early Beginnings in Games

Hilmar Peterson shares his early beginnings with computers and video games.

Childhood Entrepreneurship

At nine years old, Hilmar saw an ad for a Sinclair Spectrum computer in an Icelandic newspaper.

He saved up enough money from doing a paper route to buy one for himself.

First Video Game Experience

The first video game he played was a ball bouncing game that came with his Sinclair Spectrum computer.

He started modding games by making them easier or more interesting.

Early Days of Game Development in Iceland

In this section, the speaker talks about the early days of game development in Iceland and how he got into modding games.

Modding Games

The speaker talks about his first experience with modding a game.

He mentions that his background in computers and entrepreneurship eventually led him to join the technology industry.

Game Development Community in Iceland

The speaker discusses the state of game development community in Iceland during that time.

He mentions that there was a small community of people who shared games on English Spectrum and later on Amiga.

People would duplicate cassettes as it was hard to get any content from outside Iceland.

Oars Interactive

The speaker talks about joining Oars Interactive, a company founded in 1992.

The company made a social VRML browser where users could load VRML files, fly around, make avatars, meet other people, dress them up and more.

They even had an Icelandic singer perform live using mocap suit at Internet World '98.

Mission Statement for CCP

In this section, the speaker talks about CCP's mission statement and how they wanted to make virtual worlds more meaningful than real life.

Early Phrases That Inspired CCP's Mission Statement

The speaker mentions some phrases that inspired CCP's mission statement before it was formalized in 2008.

One key phrase was "This is a serious matter. If it looks good, it is good."

Making Virtual Worlds More Meaningful Than Real Life

The speaker talks about codifying CCP's core purpose and values.

They came up with the idea of making virtual worlds more meaningful than real life.

There was a debate within the company about whether it should be "more" or "as" meaningful.

The speaker believes that real life is often about buying an expensive house and being on a hamster wheel of the western economy, and CCP wanted to do better than that.

Early Vision for Virtual Worlds

In this section, the speaker talks about how they had a vision for virtual worlds before it became popular.

Predicting the Future of Virtual Worlds

The speaker talks about how they had a vision for virtual worlds before it became popular.

They believed that many people in the future would be interested in virtual worlds even though it wasn't obvious at the time.

This was before VR was popular and before many things we associate with virtual worlds today existed.

The Early Days of Gaming

In this section, the speaker talks about the early days of gaming and how it was just text-only. He also mentions how players could create their own worlds and other people would want to come and live in them.

Creating Worlds

Gaming started as text-only.

Players could create their own worlds.

Other players would want to come and live in those worlds.

The Scale and Scope of Eve Online

In this section, the speaker talks about Eve Online, an epic sci-fi MMO with an open economy where millions of players play. He describes the size of the economy, how many people play, what they do, and how it all works.

About Eve Online

There are roughly 7,000 solar systems laid out on a map with a deliberate topology.

Stargate connections between different solar systems provide a tapestry on which the world enacts itself.

Resources are asymmetrically distributed throughout the map leading to cooperation and conflict among players.

Titans and citadels are some of the biggest things that can be built in-game using multiple minerals and moon materials.

Once infrastructure is built, it gives economic leverage to players who can then buy for world domination for decades to come.

Scale of Eve Online

It has been running since May 6th, 2003.

Around 20 million people have played the game throughout this period.

Monthly active user base across all versions is between one and two million users.

The biggest vanity metric is that 60 million emails have touched the whole thing.

Evolution of Eve Online

In this section, the speaker talks about how Eve Online evolved over time. He describes how it started small and grew to become the massive game it is today.

Evolution of Eve Online

The game was released in 2003.

It started small but grew over time.

The main server which runs out of London can handle hundreds of thousands of players at once.

It is by far the biggest gaming server in terms of magnitude.

The Global Art Game of Finding the EVE Boxes

This section discusses how the game EVE Online was initially released with limited access to only 30,000 players due to publishing rights issues. Players had to find boxes containing codes to access the game.

Limited Access and Finding Boxes

Only 30,000 people were allowed to play EVE Online for the first six months due to publishing rights issues.

Players had to find boxes containing codes in order to access the game.

The initial cohort of 30,000 players had six months to build social infrastructure before new players could join.

This helped create a pipeline of different cohorts that worked together to create the universe.

The Economy and Social Infrastructure of EVE Online

This section discusses how player-created content and social infrastructure are key components of EVE Online's gameplay experience.

Player-Created Content and Corporations

The economy and other player interactions are key components of EVE Online's gameplay experience.

Players create corporations, recruit members, occupy territory, compete and cooperate with each other.

Player-created content is what drives the game forward.

Emergence in Game Design

In this section, the speaker talks about how players found a debug feature in their game that allowed them to vastly leverage mineral production. The developers had meticulously calculated the sizes of cargo holds, distance to asteroid belts and space stations, and potential yield of a spaceship over time. However, they did not find out about this debug feature until three months after the release.

Debug Feature Discovery

Players found a debug feature in the game that allowed them to eject something from their cargo hold and spawn a cargo container around it.

This container stayed in space for an hour and players could mine into it to acquire minerals.

Due to this usage of the debug feature, players were able to yield more mineral production than what was ever calculated by the developers.

The developers were faced with a decision on whether or not to take out this feature but decided to leave it in because it was a better way to play the game than what they had designed initially.

There was trust involved between people mining and hauling minerals as everyone had to rely on each other.

Decentralized Game Development

In this section, the speaker talks about how their approach towards game development is decentralized. They talk about how many things happened which they did not anticipate but trusted the community and tried to make sure things didn't fall too far off track.

Emergence in Game Design

Many things happened which the original developers did not anticipate but they trusted the community and tried to make sure things didn't fall too far off track.

The emergence of new tools and ways to play the game was always the intent of the developers.

The debug feature found by players was composed into a new way to do mining, which used to be a solo endeavor but became a social endeavor.

Players found extremely innovative ways to play the game in a way that nobody ever foresaw.

Resource-Based Game Design

In this section, the speaker talks about how resource-based games create social structures of dependence and co-dependence between different classes of players. They also talk about how it is more meaningful than real-world financial incentives.

Social Structures in Games

Resource-based games create social structures of dependence and co-dependence between different classes of players.

There is no actual financial incentive for those players, but they harvest resources in a digital world to help one another build digital battleships.

The Value of Currency in EVE Online

This section discusses the value of currency in EVE Online and how it compares to real-world currencies.

Icelandic Currency

Iceland has its own currency called the ISK, which is only legal tender within Iceland.

The Interstellar Kredits (ISK) in EVE Online is similar to the Icelandic currency, as it is only valid within the game.

Foreign trade and exchanges between Iceland and other countries can be problematic due to the limited use of their currency outside of Iceland.

Specialization of Labor

Currencies are a human invention that only have value because people believe they do.

Currency was created to arbitrate specialization of labor and compose specialized labor into economic units that could build amazing things.

Plex System

In 2009, EVE Online introduced a unique element called Plex, inspired by the African cell phone minute economy.

Plex can be redeemed for subscription status in EVE Online and has established an exchange rate between ISK and even line to Plex.

Before Plex, there were gray market real money trades which were hard to keep track of.

The Economy of EVE Online

This section discusses the economy of EVE Online and how it was designed to run for 20 years. It also talks about the biggest destruction of virtual value in 2014, where players destroyed $300,000 worth of spaceship equipment.

Designing the Economy

CCP quantified the economy and talked about it in concrete terms.

The game's inputs and outputs were procedurally generated but the world does not have its own ability to procedurally regenerate itself.

Mineral distribution is very rigid, mechanical, and deterministic.

Player-led Decisions

Large battles were an invention by players that grew over time.

Battles with thousands of people fighting at the same time took up to 10 years to achieve.

Organizing thousands of people from across the globe is a significant human logistics feat.

Territory Conquest

The ultimate goal is space territory conquest.

Human emotions get mixed in with eco-driven reasons for engaging in fights.

Sometimes fights are orchestrated just because they're fun or people want to exercise their power.

Managing EVE Online's Economy

This section discusses how developers manage EVE Online's economy as well as their role in managing political theater and intervening if things get out of hand.

Developer Role

Developers' biggest role is managing the economy.

The game wasn't designed to run for 20 years, so there are some unfortunate aspects to managing it.

Mineral distribution is very rigid, mechanical, and deterministic.

Political Theater Management

Developers don't actively manage political theater but intervene if things get out of hand.

Economic Opportunities

There are opportunities where developers could have been the central bank.

Developers manage the economy by optimizing servers and simulating large-scale battles.

The Economy and Resource Scarcity in EVE Online

In this section, the speaker discusses how the economy in EVE Online is overly reliant on deterministic resource depletion, which players quickly understand. They also talk about how they have had to manually intervene to deflate the economy and create scarcity periods. The speaker then compares this to controlling the money supply in real life.

Deterministic Resource Depletion

The game's economy is overly reliant on deterministic resource depletion.

Players quickly amass a lot of assets and understand how the system works.

The war of attrition over these assets is not enough to compete with players' ability to understand patterns.

Manual Intervention

Developers have had to do a lot of manual intervention into mineral distribution and acquisition.

They have run scarcity periods to deflate the economy to a reasonable level.

This has been necessary because resources don't procedurally regenerate themselves like in nature.

Controlling Resources

Controlling resources in EVE Online is equivalent to controlling uranium or crude oil distribution on Earth.

Natural resources don't procedurally regenerate themselves like in nature.

If the speaker could change anything about EVE, they would make it behave more like nature by procedurally regenerating itself.

Technology Innovation Leaps and Techniques for EVE Online

In this section, the speaker talks about technology innovation leaps that have allowed for new gameplay mechanics in EVE Online. They also discuss design techniques that could address some of the issues observed in the game, such as its deterministic behavior.

Technology Innovation Leaps

Faster CPUs and different programming languages haven't materially changed EVE Online.

AI technology may be materially different but it's still early days.

Technology innovation leaps have allowed for new gameplay mechanics in EVE Online.

Design Techniques

Design techniques are more important than technology in addressing issues with EVE Online.

The game's deterministic behavior is a problem that could be addressed with probability patterns and distributions.

A shifting resource landscape would make the game fundamentally more interesting to play.

Creating a Virtual World with Interesting Properties

In this section, the speaker discusses two key elements of creating a virtual world that is impuned with interesting properties. The first element is controlling the probability distribution of where wormholes appear and how they are rolled out. The second element is adding energy to the material economy to create scarcity and prevent agency stacking.

Controlling Probability Distribution

Bob controls the probability distribution of where wormholes appear and how they are rolled out.

Players exist in an interesting time dynamic with their own God creation.

Building a world that is impuned with properties which are deeply interesting creates a high bar for virtual world creation.

Adding Energy to Material Economy

The EVE material economy is pretty interesting.

Acquired resources are composed into modules, which are used to build spaceships and space stations.

Adding energy on top of probabilistic outcomes gives a focused human mind a chance to always win against camp sport interesting.

This prevents agency stacking, where players can multiply themselves by playing many clients at the same time or having parts of the clients played by robots.

Leveraging Blockchain Technology for Better Game Development

In this section, the speaker discusses how leveraging blockchain technology can make for better game development. He explains that smart contract blockchains allow people to create third-party code that runs coexisting with other third-party codes under a gas economy.

Benefits of Smart Contract Blockchains

Third-party development around EVE Online largely takes place through an API Gateway controlled by keys.

Currently, only writes are allowed through this system; reads are limited due to execution limitations.

Smart contract blockchains allow people to create third-party code that runs coexisting with other third-party codes under a gas economy.

Paying for your own execution helps with people writing messy code that costs too many codes.

Sharding and Composable Smart Contracts

In this section, the speaker discusses how sharding and composable smart contracts can help address scalability issues in online games.

Sharding as a Solution to Scalability Issues

The speaker suggests that sharding can be used to address scalability issues in online games.

Players can compose elements of the world through writing smart contracts, uploading them, and creating infrastructure for others to use.

The speaker notes that there is already an amazing amount of infrastructure created by thousands of people over the past 20 years.

Economic Value Creation in Online Games

The speaker notes that economic value is created inside online games like EVE Online and has value outside of the game as well.

MMO developers have to contend with players selling in-game items for real money on specialized websites.

Rather than constantly fighting against this behavior, the speaker suggests living in a design space where it's not a problem.

When you imagine a world where real economic value is not an afterthought but a fundamental thing, blockchains start to make sense.

Bottled Up Liquidity

The speaker notes that there is bottled up liquidity that exists in the ecosystem when you have something that is a digital asset generator of sorts.

Enabling apps built by developers to be composable with one another accelerates third-party development happening within the EVE ecosystem.

Introduction

The speaker discusses the potential of NFTs and how they are not for everyone. They also talk about the future of online gaming and the importance of preserving certain aspects of gameplay.

Potential of NFTs

NFTs are not for everyone and can be seen as a "wild west" type of market.

Online gaming has a bright future with an ambitious development team.

Offering different ways to play will help inform what the final form of online gaming will look like.

Preserving Gameplay Aspects

The ability to flexibly organize at scale is important, especially in large alliances or coalitions.

Social composability is key to forging lifelong friendships through intense experiences.

Programmability can lead to chaos and unpredictability, so game developers must balance offering greater tools with creating a dangerous world.

Preserving Key Aspects

The speaker continues discussing the importance of preserving key aspects of gameplay in online gaming.

Importance of Relationships

Eve Online has been shown to create deep relationships among players that last a lifetime.

Trust is formed through reliance on others, both to do as they say and catch mistakes.

Forging relationships into friendships is crucial for maintaining player engagement.

Higher Stakes Gameplay

Assets being exchanged between virtual and real worlds raises stakes in gameplay.

Creating higher stakes gameplay could be seen as "hardcore mode."

Awakening Higher Stakes Gameplay

The speaker discusses how creating higher stakes gameplay could be seen as "awakening" hardcore mode.

Hardcore Mode vs Soft Application

If done correctly, creating higher stakes gameplay would result in hardcore mode rather than a soft application.

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Project Awakening

In this section, the speaker talks about their excitement for Project Awakening and provides information on where listeners can learn more about it.

Excitement for Project Awakening

The speaker expresses their excitement for Project Awakening.

They mention that the virtual world can still surprise them despite having seen a lot of things.

The speaker finds it encouraging to stay optimistic about the project.

Learning More About Project Awakening

Listeners can go to the website projectawaken.io to learn more about the project.

There is an email list sign-up available on the website.

Although there may not be many updates initially, progress will be shared monthly.

Conclusion

In this section, the speakers thank each other and plan to check in on GDC number 23 next year.

Thanking Each Other

The speakers thank each other for sharing insights and having a great conversation.

Checking in Next Year

They plan to check in on GDC number 23 next year and see where things are at with Project Awakening.