I highly recommend this interview with Hilmar to any Eve player who cares about the game, the history, and the future of Eve Online. He also touches on the concepts that are driving the potential use of blockchain in Project Awakening, which I think should go a long way toward easing our minds over that hot-button topic. At least for now.
I want to avoid discussing those topics in this post and pull something else out of the interview to discuss today. You may have missed it, but during his talk he briefly touched upon some important under-pinnings in the Eve universe that are worth pointing out. These essentially are foundational core attributes surrounding resource distribution and scarcity, that are distributed based on a "deterministic" and often predictable model. Instead of a more robust and modern "procedural" based model that would be significantly more difficult to predict. And while I'll happily leave the debate about resource management and scarcity to others more knowledgeable than me - it did bring some things to my mind.
How deeply does deterministic modeling go into the foundational code of Eve Online? And are we too far down the rabbit hole to evolve into a more procedurally based system? And what does this portend when it comes to Eve's immortality and longevity? That is a lot of questions I don't have answers for, but I think it is worth pondering over. Especially in light of my train of thought when it comes to the current state of AI and what it could mean for Eve Online now and in the future.
I've written in the past about how increasingly powerful AI could drive content and engagement within Eve. From increased PVE content, immersion, lore based engagements, and background activity and much more, integrating powerful AI into the universe seems more and more relevant these days. In only the past year the tools available for doing so have only gotten more powerful and encompassing. Even if we limit ourselves to thinking about AI simply from the basis of a powerful chat bot - the impact such a system could have on Eve Online is incredible.
Imagine the NPCs engaging with you in local chat? Enough so that it would be nearly impossible to distinguish them from a real player (especially some real players). That alone is a significant improvement to immersion and game play, and that is only one very simple example. This is certainly possible right now. For those of us who have been using ChatGPT for months now, the idea is nothing ground-breaking. You can easily imagine a world in which the entire NPC universe of Eve Online suddenly comes alive in ways it could never have before. That idea alone is entirely transformative if done right.
The biggest worry any long-time player of Eve has as we rapidly approach the 20th anniversary is this - a sea change so large that it renders the universe of Eve Online as suddenly quaint and old. It has, so far, been able to avoid that issue simply because the industry itself hasn't changed all that much in twenty years. Hilmar says as much in the interview and he's right, hardware has gotten faster, cheaper, and more complex - but the fundamentals that drive the gaming industry have remained relatively stable for a long time.
I wonder if "blockchain" and "NFT" crypto buzzwords are distracting us from the real transformative technology that is rapidly (some say too rapidly) fundamentally changing our world. AI is impacting art, tech, and hundreds of other businesses right now. What happens when it is tied into a procedurally generated gaming system? We have yet to see the impact such a change might have on the gaming world, or on a universe we all play in - but I suspect it won't be long before we do.
I'm not a developer, I'm someone who has been trained to spot trends in culture, tech, and the world for the past forty years. That is essentially what I do professionally. And then figure out the best way companies can embrace those trends through marketing, creative, and brand executions. It seems apparent to me that the world is potentially poised on the brink of a huge transformative cliff here. And what, if anything, that cliff will mean to the long-term viability of Eve Online is anyone's guess. But I have a feeling it could be huge.
Lots of questions.