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Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Fanfest 2018: Is The Schedule A Lie?

I got back to my hotel after a nice lunch and started browsing the internet. Within a few minutes, I found something that had me growling, "Grr CCP!" Jason Wilson of Venture Beat published a story about Project Aurora:
"Eve Online launched back in for PC in 2003, and it’s found a dedicated audience who wants to fly spaceships and deal with the intergalactic politics of megacorps. It even branched into VR with Eve: Valkyrie. But it’s never been small enough to hold in your hand. That’s changing thanks to a new partnership with Kongregate and PlayRaven: Project Aurora is now Eve: War of Ascension, a new MMO for iOS and Android devices coming later this year." [emphasis mine]
Now, according to the Fanfest 2018 schedule, CCP was renaming Project Aurora to Project Foundation, a name CCP submitted for a U.S trademark on 21 December, 2017. The event team even scheduled a round table for Friday from 1500-1600.

Screenshot captured 11 April 2018
So what is the truth? Did Wilson get the story wrong, or was CCP attempting to hide a big reveal during the keynote on Thursday?

I went with CCP's public story, even modifying last Friday's post with the information from the schedule. But renaming Project Aurora to Project Foundation never felt right, somehow. This is what I wrote back in January:
"The possibility exists that the trademark is for a service that would replace the late Eve Gate portal. Or perhaps CCP is developing a portal that will link all of CCP's games together, similar to Activision/Blizzard's Battle.net. Still, with the gaming press speculating about whether CCP has a new MMORPG under development, an informed bet is that Project Foundation is the name of the new game. The name does follow CCP's naming convention for games under development."
An alternate theory does exist. The original company CCP contracted with couldn't develop the game, so Kongregate stepped in and took it's place. Would that necessitate acquiring a new trademark? Possibly.

So now I really do want to hear more about this Project Foundation. Were my first instincts correct? Or is there a bit of turmoil going on behind the scenes making the first mobile game based on the EVE Online IP?

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