Economy

EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest promised to be its biggest yet, with over 1,400 players packed into Iceland's Harpa convention centre to find out the latest on EVE Online, DUST 514, and World of Darkness. The first day focused mainly on DUST and its link with the EVE universe, but today the focus largely switched back to internet spaceships. There were plenty of roundtable discussions, and the CSM and Alliance panels were as awesome as ever, but it was the EVE Keynote that really blew the crowd away.

The day got off to a good start with the highly anticipated World of Darkness talk. Most fans were probably expecting to see more airy game design ideas and another shiny trailer, but this year CCP just came out and put all its cards on the table. We saw that the game is still firmly in pre-production, with much of the previous work going into developing the engine and cool content creation tools and shaders. While I was initially disappointed at the lack of gameplay progress or shiny cinematics, I found this approach of being open and direct with fans very refreshing. As I told WoD art director Thomas Holt, honest beats shiny every time.

Read on for a full run-down of the EVE reveals from the second day of EVE's tenth anniversary Fanfest, including in-depth details of the Odyssey expansion's features.

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Details of EVE Online's exploration-focused Odyssey expansion have been floating around since PAX East, but it seems the company saved some pretty huge changes to reveal at this year's tenth anniversary Fanfest. In two massive devblogs accompanying today's EVE Online Keynote speech, CCP Fozzie discussed plans to overhaul EVE's entire resource distribution system. Everything from asteroid and ice mining to moon harvesting and nullsec industry will be affected by the revamp.

Miners will find their ice belts have been moved from static locations to hidden exploration sites that have to be scanned down, but to compensate it will now mine at double the normal rate. Normal asteroid mining in lowsec and nullsec is also due for a buff with the addition of large quantities of low-end minerals. Hidden asteroid belts will no longer need to be probed down but can be quickly located with the new Discovery scanner, and to top it off there'll even be new high quality ore sites that can only be found in prime areas of nullsec.

Outpost industrial infrastructure is due for an update with new purchaseable upgrade paths expanding factory, office and research lab capabilities to the same level as fully-fledged empire stations. Lastly, moon minerals are finally being addressed with a redistribution of rare materials and several new reaction paths to bypass current bottlenecks. A lot of value will be moved from Technetium back to rarer materials like Thulium, Neodymium, Promethium and Dysprosium, and new supplies of all four will be distributed randomly into moons across the universe. Re-scan all of your nearby moons when Odyssey lands because it could suddenly be worth a fortune!

Whether you're a die-hard fan of internet spaceships or just a gawker on the sidelines, EVE Fanfest is the EVE Online event of the year (and the key source of new DUST 514 and World of Darkness scoops!). Follow Massively's Brendan Drain as he reports back on this year's Fanfest starpower, scheming, and spoilers from exotic Reykjavik, Iceland.

Although it's been a while since the post-apocalyptic sandbox Xsyon has seen a patch, today's update looks to make up for that. With a focus on developing the in-game economy, this update introduces a number of new features, including new resources and materials, new Artisan and Master armor sets, a tribal upkeep system that offers bonuses, special trade totems, alliance and family group formation, and more.

Trade will be bolstered through the new totems; the new trade and quest versions allow tribes to place additional totems that will serve as a marketplace and quest hub. Even better, besides the ones placed in the tribe's own land, additional quest and trade totems can be placed on allied land. For more details on this and the other new systems, check out the full patch notes.

[Source: Notorious Games press release]

If the post-apocalyptic wastelands of Grimlands caught your eye but you didn't think you could play on Linux or Mac systems, think again; DRAGO Entertainment has just announced that the shooter will be developed on both platforms. And players needn't worry about which version they are playing from, as everyone will be on the same servers together. The studio doesn't intend to stop there either: DRAGO's Lucjan Mikociak added, "And there are even more versions planned down the road."

Along with this announcement, DRAGO has released the second installment of the three-part Making Of series. In the video, Wiktoryn Zerebecki details the importance of crafting and the player-driven economy and Krystian Kofin expounds on vehicles. Watch the full video after the break.

[Source: DRAGO press release]

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A new blog post at Gamasutra gives an interesting perspective on EVE Online's economic trends and how they translate to real life. Virtual World Economist Ramin Shokrizade writes about his time helping CCP build the game's economy in the early days and how land tax and real estate bubbles can (and can't) work both in and out of a virtual environment.

Most notably, Shokrizade elaborates on a prediction he made in 2006 regarding the failed global banking system and how EVE Online taught him the warning signs. Now Shokrizade is an economic consultant to three international gaming companies, and he owes it all to EVE Online.

Shortly after this column series started, Massively's Shawn "Epic Beard" Schuster planted his feet on the wooden crate to tell us that game developers are not rockstars. And as much as it frightens me to disagree with him, I believe I have a moral obligation to let him know that he was wrong. Sure, his article pointed out that it takes a team to create a spectacular game and that the personalities of the gaming industry cannot do it by themselves. As he put it, even though Sid Meier didn't code all of Civilization and Richard Garriott didn't construct all of Tabula Rasa, their names sat proudly on the box. But just like rockstars, those two names and many more developers' names belong on the covers of their respective games.

Rockstars from Aerosmith to Beyonce are more than the faces on the covers of their albums. In college, I used to create CD covers for local recording artists, so I can tell you first-hand that even though there was only one name on the front, there were many names on the inside jacket, just as there are many names in game credits. So how exactly are game developers like superstar musicians? The analogy fits in nearly every single way.

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This week we have a special GDC edition of Some Assembly Required. I had the opportunity to sit down with Chris Roberts and talk about his highly anticipated space sim sandbox, Star Citizen. We talked lore, the game's PvP/PvE sliders and living universe concepts, guilds, and when players can expect to get in some dogfighting. Roberts also delved deeply into the crafting and economic aspects of the game.

If you miss the days of carving out a name for yourself and your wares and/or cornering the market and building an economic empire, you'll definitely want to keep an eye on Star Citizen.

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The PC Gaming Alliance says that software sales reached a record $20 billion in 2012. GamesIndustry.biz reports that this represents eight percent year-on-year growth and a 90 percent uptick since PC Gaming Alliance's first report in 2008.

The report, commissioned from entertainment research firm DFC Intelligence cites Guild Wars 2, Mists of Pandaria, Diablo III, and Minecraft as positive influences on a market that also saw "the decline of large subscription MMOs." DFC indicates that there are approximately one billion PC gamers worldwide, 250,000 of whom identify as "core" gamers with interests including strategy, action, and RPG titles.

Ever since its successful Kickstarter campaign, The Repopulation has been progressing along at an impressive pace. And if PAX East was any indication, the game shows no signs of slowing down as it approaches beta and zeroes in on a launch date.

This weekend, I had a chance to speak with lead developer Joshua Halls, who took the time to walk me through the sandbox MMO and give me an update on what's new and what's still in the works.

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This has been a hard year on mice. Diablo III, Torchlight 2, Path of Exile, and now another click-fest is in the works: Marvel Heroes. This new free-to-play addition to the isometric family will put you in the shoes of classic heroes such as Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Storm, Wolverine, and many more from the Marvel roster. Just when my index finger was starting to forgive me!

To better understand how much danger my mouse and finger were in, I traveled down to Gazillion Entertainment for some hands-on time with a few of my favorite comic wonders. Is Marvel Heroes is bringing more than just tights to the table?

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Last time on the Art of Wushu, I promised I would write on how to sell production crafts. Crafting is a big deal in Age of Wushu, so it seemed like a reasonable topic to cover. However, I realized doing so would probably be a mistake. Why?

If you followed my advice from two weeks ago, congratulations. You probably noticed a huge nosedive in a few markets: hemp, ramie, iron, and mint all took a huge hit. It's a bit flattering to see how I can write a post on what to sell and readers like you guys take it to heart, flooding the market with supply and crashing the value of these commodities. If I gave advice on production crafting, the same thing would happen.

Instead, this week I'm going to talk about real market strategy. Pointing out things that sell doesn't help you if the market takes a nose-dive. Understanding supply and demand curves, market equilibrium, and the importance of market diversity are all long-term tools that will help you regardless of what you're selling.

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