Back at the end of February CCP t0rfifrans announced Team Avatar and that one of our priorities was prototyping, specifically to:

"...create playable gameplay prototypes of gameplay features and try them out within the team, and within the company... The purpose of all this prototyping is to make sure we provide a strong vision for avatar gameplay, have a good demonstrable idea of why it is engaging and better understand the technology we will need to create in order to make it a reality."

The prototype itself has been finished and has been presented internally to the company stakeholders, the CSM and finally to the company as a whole. The feedback from that was overwhelmingly positive. So on to the information!

Extra-Vehicular Activity, Wrecks and Exploration

There has been an idea kicking around CCP for a long time now about an ideal starting point for avatar gameplay. That is exploring hazardous environments in order to get awesome stuff. Think scanning down a site before entering it in order to find and salvage artifacts, technology and other goodies. Sounds straightforward and it would be but for the dangerous nature of delving into long lost places where time has taken its toll on the structure and the previous owners may not have left things in a benign state. In true EVE style throw in the added dangers of lurking competition and things have a chance to go south fast. The inspiration for this comes from a lot of different places, back to the original Aliens films, Event Horizon, the cleanup of Chernobyl, high-altitude mountaineering, games such as Space Hulk, Minecraft and Moonbase Alpha, to name just a few.

Over three months we concentrated on the minute by minute gameplay of actually being inside a long abandoned structure, the hazards that it would contain and how the players might deal with them and any uninvited guests. We used the Unity engine which is a great game engine for prototyping in as it lets us create environments and gameplay very, very fast and iterate on it equally quickly. A lot of our art is much more abstract (a "grey box") than youGÇÖd see in a final game. This is due to us concentrating on the gameplay first and foremost whilst also recognizing that ambience plays an important role in how a game feels. We do throw in the occasional EVE asset here and there for flavor but those are not descriptive of any final theming or style.

The gameplay premise is simple, players move through our abandoned structures with their fitted Extra-Vehicular Activity suit, using their wits, tools and teammates to deal with the hazardous environment. Some of us are enthusiastically and maliciously killing teammates for personal gain. WeGÇÖve even allowed two teams into the environment to really let all hell break loose.

ItGÇÖs a part of the EVE Universe

There have been a lot of questions on the forums about how this integrates with EVE. Whilst this isnGÇÖt the core focus for us at the moment it is something we are thinking about long and hard. Like DUST514, this part of EVE should contribute to the overall economy as well as supporting its own ecosystem. Right now weGÇÖre thinking that these abandoned structures are so dangerous, radioactive and toxic, that they can only be entered with special suits. Obviously with access to clones you arenGÇÖt worried about radiation and long term health effects of hazardous lifestyles. You probably all smoke and eat lots of bacon as well and besides robots wonGÇÖt survive the violent EM fields. Robot electronics would toast, thus only teams using gear that involves crude electronics, like found in EM resistant military hardware can go in and recover the technology that lies within.
One example of a link with EVE gameplay weGÇÖre thinking of would be to put implant manufacture into the hands of players and making avatar gameplay part of the resource gathering chain it has. We want to make Avatar gameplay a viable and vibrant part of the Universe without forcing anyone that doesnGÇÖt want to use it from having to use it.

A benefit from the EVA game is that a lot of the technology that would need to be developed to properly deliver the EVA experience would be directly useful in providing social areas and tools in stations.

That just sounds like one idea...

We decided to concentrate in depth on the one idea that has kept resurfacing from lots of different places within the company. WeGÇÖve had several others and collected a lot both internally and from the forums. One example would be a Station based espionage system. The beauty of the EVE Universe is that these ideas arenGÇÖt mutually exclusive for the most part. So whilst I think we are fairly sure of the initial gameplay direction there is lots of scope for expansion.