Project Nova Is Dead.

The Pearl Abyss Q4 investors call brought out a little tidbit of information I wasn't expecting. I received a tweet informing me of news about Project Nova.

.@noizygamer may want to keep an ear on that Pearl Abyss earnings call today. We have some Project Nova developments. https://t.co/CjNwaMn6VT pic.twitter.com/ZrjUZlU2oz

— Neckbeard Nixon💬 (@JadekMenaheim) February 13, 2020

Yes, the screen grab shows CCP Rattati of Project Nova fame letting everyone know about the future of Project Nova. Basically, that the concept of an FPS game set in a sci-fi universe had morphed into a third person shooter/MMO. I've transcribed the words from the image, which I believe are snippets from a Discord conversation, below.

Greetings Dear Friends,

I want to tell you some news before they break, later today probably. We are evolving the scope of Nova beyond our previous plans for early access, and the development will continue in our London studio. I am personally optimistic about this, but also wistful. That also means that the Project Nova codename is retired and the London team will find a new one.

Since this was decided, I have been appointed a major stakeholder in the process so I retain the opportunity to shape the development.

I will be here and try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. This is the update that will be given at the Pearl Abyss earnings call today, and will probably make the rounds soon enough.

Third person perspective can be attributed many design choices. PUBG supports both but MMOs traditionally use 3rd. It gives a better visual of your character, which is more satisfying in a progression based game, hence 3rd person in the Mercenary Quarters. But these are all design options, so good to have experience on the team.

This is not a fiscal decision, the London team had been working on very interesting ideas and concepts, and adding them to a shooter sounds very promising (to me).

We want to show rather than tell and we are not ready to show anything yet.

Yes, I use a mod to get the old Twitter look

According to CCP Rattati's Twitter profile, he is now the lead producer in charge of the EVE Ecosystem. According to what I read in the DUST 514 Veterans Discord server, that means he is responsible for "all balance, resources and industry, and economy."

I didn't include the tweet in last week's post about the investor's call because the subject never came up. Since the subject never came up, the possibility existed that the tweet contained some sort of hoax. But I did some thinking about the subject over the weekend and decided to look back on the project.

The effort to create a first person shooter set in the EVE universe for the PC was announced at Fanfest 2014. I decided to skip that presentation, which announced the creation of Project Legion and became known as the infamous Rouge Wedding. While I wasn't in the room, I remember that the presentation covering DUST 514 was much shorter than advertised. At night I ran into a couple of DUST players. Imagine flying all the way to Iceland only to find out the developer planned to shut down your favorite game.

At Fanfest 2016, Hilmar announced Project Nova, the successor of Project Legion. Looking back, the announcement didn't make enough of an impression on me to note in my coverage of the event. Not surprising as I do not play first person shooters.

The next event of note was EVE Vegas 2018. I wrote back then:

Perhaps the biggest news from CCP Presents was the news that the invite-only alpha for Project Nova will launch in November, with an alpha build available for EVE Vegas attendees to play on Saturday and Sunday. The game has two modes. The first, Onslaught, mimics New Eden as players battle the forces of Sansha's Nation during incursions in an attempt to save the population from a fate worse than death. The other mode, Hijack, involved an attacker trying to install their own pilot in the cockpit of a ship and defenders trying to eliminate the breach. While no launch date was given, I expect a finished product sometime in 2020.

I don't play first-person shooters, but I did watch on the monitors over the stations. The majority opinion I heard from those who played the Project Nova was that the game wasn't very good. At the end of November 2018, CCP announced the cancellation of the closed alpha.

At EVE Vegas, we showed you the most recent iteration of our vision to provide an engaging and unique FPS experience to enrich the EVE Universe. Our goal for this was always to reinforce the ‘One Universe // One War’ gameplay and create a worthy spiritual successor to DUST 514 that has the potential to captivate not only existing Mercenaries and Capsuleers, but also to attract new adventurers into the ever-evolving world of New Eden.

Over the course of Project Nova’s development, we conducted a number of player research sessions with external partners, tirelessly playtested the game internally and brought community stalwarts in to help us evaluate the project. Now, after taking all this research and feedback into account, we see that the gameplay experience in its current form does not live up to our original vision and would not achieve our ambitious goals for this project. As a result, we will not be moving forward with the upcoming invite-only Alpha until further notice.

At the time, CCP still gave out hope a first person shooter would emerge out of Reykjavik.

Project Nova continues to evolve and we remain committed to delivering a high-quality team-based shooter experience to EVE Online fans, while exploring new and exciting opportunities to integrate the two games. CCP is in no rush to release Project Nova until we’re satisfied it provides a rock-solid gameplay experience and visuals to match.

As late as Evesterdam in March 2019, CCP made the progress on Project Nova sound like the game was close to a closed alpha launch. Rob Keyes, writing for Screen Rant, spoke to CCP Falcon who said, “Nova’s in the incubator. We’ve learned some exciting things with it. It’s super cool. We’re just seeing where to go from there, basically.” And when asked if Project Nova would change much from what was shown at EVE Vegas the previous October, the former head of the EVE community team replied, “I don’t think so. The core gunplay is there, but it's about figuring out what is the wider purpose?”

Which brings us to the current time. Yesterday, CCP's head of public relations George Kelion (aka CCP Grendel) posted a response to the spreading news on a Reddit thread responding to an article published on MassivelyOP.

We're continuing to develop our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, actively evolving it beyond the original scope for what was formerly codenamed Project Nova. Development efforts on this concept are now the full focus of CCP’s London studio. Project Nova team members based in Iceland have been moved onto other projects at our Reykjavík studio.

This decision was taken because Project Nova’s gameplay experience as presented at EVE Vegas '18 would not have achieved our ambitious goals for this concept. Moreover, it is very common for games in active development to evolve over time, often substantially. We remain committed to offering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stellar visuals, but due to significant changes in the scope and direction of our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, it also made sense to update how we refer to this project internally. So, we are no longer using the codename Project Nova for this ame concept.

Furthermore, we are moving away from publicly announcing our internal project codenames and will wait until we’re ready for a full reveal. We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we’re looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game. [emphasis mine]

I understand why CCP would want to keep development of new games under wraps as much as possible. Pearl Abyss is a publicly owned company and I'm sure all the C-suite executives on the call don't want to answer analysts' questions on every earnings call. I get that impression now on the games they announced at GStar. Plus, any setbacks could affect the company's stock price.

CCP Grendel's statement did raise some questions, however. I managed to get a reply on Twitter.

We’ll have more details to share once we come to properly announce the London studio’s game. My message was to provide context as to why we’re no longer using the ‘Project Nova’ codename internally and give a status update on the Reykjavík team.

— George_K/CCP_Grendel (@Monkeythumbz) February 18, 2020

I'm not sure how a first person shooter merges into CCP's new unnamed action MMORPG under development, also in CCP's London studio, according to the current job listings.

As seen on 19 February 2020

But after six years of development and a game that didn't make it to a planned closed alpha, I'm calling the concept of a first-person shooter in the EVE universe dead. Even if the game eventually launches, I expect the game to emerge as a third person shooter, perhaps similar to Defiance. I also expect the current iteration will not make it to market before 2023 at the earliest. Then again, Blizzard did scrap Titan and used the pieces to create Overwatch, so maybe I'm wrong. But I don't expect to find out anytime soon.

EVE Vegas Day 1 - CCP Presents

I can happily say the first day of EVE Vegas surprised me, and in a good way. I wasn't sure how much the purchase of CCP Games by Pearl Abyss would affect the Icelandic company. Seven days after the purchase became official, the answer is, not much. At least so far.

In the opening session, "Opening Ceremonies and CCP Presents", CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson laid out the near future of CCP and its line of upcoming games. Hilmar stated that the "partnership" put CCP in "a super strong position" going forward. The punctuation in the previous sentence are not meant as scare quotes, just words we may want to review six months from now. Hilmar also stated that CCP is scrutinizing its development process and won't publish games until they are ready.

As for new games, the next 12 to 18 months should see CCP make the gaming news frequently. The beta for EVE China continues, which CCP expanded on in the EVE keynote. NetEase also is far enough along in the development of its New Eden-based mobile game that it dropped the code name Project Galaxy and announced the final name of EVE: Echoes. As expected, Echoes will not interact with either Tranquility or Serenity but will launch with an Android version. Up until now, we had only heard of an Apple product release. Also, from the presentation, I am not sure if NetEase has dropped the ARG component from the game. All the reporting prior to EVE Vegas suggests the answer is no.

In a bit of news that will probably fly under the radar, CCP has taken control of further development of EVE: War of Ascension from PlayRaven and will finish development of the title in CCP's London studio. Hilmar announced that Phase 1 of the beta is complete and that the game is expected to launch sometime in 2019.

Perhaps the biggest news from CCP Presents was the news that the invite-only alpha for Project Nova will launch in November, with an alpha build available for EVE Vegas attendees to play on Saturday and Sunday. The game has two modes. The first, Onslaught, mimics New Eden as players battle the forces of Sansha's Nation during incursions in an attempt to save the population from a fate worse than death. The other mode, Hijack, involved an attacker trying to install their own pilot in the cockpit of a ship and defenders trying to eliminate the breach. While no launch date was given, I expect a finished product sometime in 2020.

I originally planned to combine both presentations into one blog post, but the EVE Keynote presented by CCP Falcon, CCP Burger, and CCP Rise really needs a dedicated post. But I'll give you a hint of how I felt about the keynote.

It's officially Eve Vegas. #tweetfleet pic.twitter.com/AiM0PZRnwF

— Noizy (@noizygamer) October 20, 2018

EVE Vegas: Winning The Race Against Time

One of the long-running themes around EVE Online is, "EVE is Dying!!!" While the game has declined since its peak in 2013, the game is pretty active for a 14-year-old title. Of all the EVE killers to emerge, though, the biggest recent threat is Star Citizen. If the game had come out in the 2014-2016 timeframe as originally advertised, CCP as a company probably would have felt a lot of financial pain.

But beginning in 2015, CCP implemented financial moves to become a major player in the virtual reality market. In April 2015, CCP bought back $20 million in bonds two years early. That news was followed in November 2015 with the announcement that venture capitalists had invested $30 million USD into CCP for the purposes of developing virtual reality games. A week later, CCP's first VR game, EVE: Gunjack, released on the Gear VR, with releases on the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Playstation VR occurring throughout 2016. EVE: Valkyrie also debuted on the three VR platforms in 2016, with a non-VR version releasing just last month. And at the end of August, Sparc released on the Playstation VR.

With the recent emphasis on the development of VR content, Hilmar's presentation on the first day of EVE Vegas, titled "CCP Presents", provided the surprise of focusing on non-VR games. The two games discussed were Project Nova, the followup to DUST 514, and Project Aurora, which promises to bring the EVE Online universe to mobile devices. Interestingly, CCP is not trying to develop the games alone. To develop the new first-person shooter, CCP is working with UK developer Sumo Digital. Doing some research after the presentation made me a lot less impressed with the developer than Hilmar made them sound from the stage, but I guess that's expected at this point. The developer working on Project Aurora is the Finnish studio Play Raven, who seems a good choice to work with as a mobile game studio. Play Raven co-founder and CEO Lasse Seppänen appeared on-stage, where he was roundly booed when he described Project Aurora as EVE Online with less spreadsheets. Yes, EVE players love their spreadsheets!

Now, despite Chris Roberts and Cloud Imperium Games doing their best Blizzard impersonation and announcing the release of Alpha 3.0 to the Evocati test group Friday morning, I think CCP is in good shape. By the time Star Citizen launches, probably in late 2019 or early 2020, CCP's product line should have diversified enough to withstand a hit caused by the release of a new game. Depending what I hear over the next two days, the promise exists that CCP's product line will prove superior to what CIG eventually produces. Two years ago, I thought Star Citizen could cause CCP problems. Now? Unless CIG has something they haven't shown the world, CCP is in good shape.