Incredible scenes this morning as every single human being on the planet blacked out, struck by simultaneous visions of future lives in what Reddit has already dubbed a ‘flashforward’. One Wisconsin man claims to have foreseen himself reading a newspaper dated October 11th, 2032. Me? Having already dedicated myself to lifelong video game learning I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find myself playing an FPS – Dust 514, to be exact.
CCP are going to be so chuffed. Why, only this morning Eve exec producer Jonathan Lander said that “we want in another ten years to be having ‘EVE is 20’ and ‘Dust is 10’ events”. What’s that? You didn’t see anything at all? Oh. Well, I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.
“The whole way that we’re doing our development process is so that we can push out expansions on a regular basis,” Lander told GamesIndustry International. “We’re not going to ship a unit and then in six months it’s off the shelves and people have stopped playing it.”
The result is that, if all goes to plan, Dust will far outlive the PS3.
“We’ve got a five-year road map with a whole load of things we’d love to put into Dust. We’ve got crazy ideas that will take us through another 20 years of development,” said Lander.
“We’re working really, really hard with Sony right now on PlayStation 3 and just shipping the game on PlayStation 3, that’s where 100 per cent of our focus is. But our intention is this game will continue to run and operate for many, many years.”
It’s fascinating to see CCP’s slowburn business model – still an anomaly, even on PC – transplanted to the publicity splash-driven world of console blockbusters. But the Icelandic developer is nothing if not an expert in the unprecedented. And if they don’t pull it off? All of their efforts in cross-pollination will be for naught, and two years down the line Eve will be riddled with holes where Dust used to be. They have to pull it off.
Will you be picking up Dust 514 on release?