After EVE Vegas 2018 presentations and recently published changes to the gaming industry projects, I’m worried about the future of EVE. EVE requires a lot of subscription time and resource investments to evolve your personal game play style towards the meta level as: marketing, hauling, corporations, PVE, PVP, industry, whatever. Personally, I’m not a fan of any mobile game and I’m not going to play EVE on mobile. Therefore, if it is a chance that future expansions will be mobile only, then I’d like to know it now to change my current game style since it will happen. I’d like to put together some ‘dots’, I have collected about it, to share with you.
At EVE Vegas 2018 Opening Ceremony (10:00) was presented a mobile version of EVE – EVE Echoes (iOS/Android).
PC, Console or Mobile games should exist, may it be, but only PC, only Console or only Mobile games is a wrong concept. There are different game concepts which are good for PC only, for Console only or for Mobile only and trying to put them on a wrong platform will be a fiasco, no matter how many investments will be spent for it. Almost all racing, sport and pure RPG games are good for Video game console. Almost all MMORPG, MMOs, Simulators, RPG games are good, or just designed, for PC platforms. Almost all arcade, racing games are good for mobile platforms. It is designed by the client device requirements, game play, social interaction, UI (including the peripheral controllers).
I’m in ‘modern’ EVE for 2 years and I tried almost all possible game play styles from exploration, invention and industry to marketing, FW fleet PVP, gate camping, solo PVP, Meta politics (aka gathering information about 0.0 groups, low-sec groups, their mercenaries, their deals, their alts, why they are stacked at special position and etc). So, I can say for sure that EVE can’t be recreated as a mobile game not currently, not further. It can be something new, something differently, like Sid Meier’s Civilization or Stellaris. The console and mobile devices can’t recreate the “interaction experience” of EVE. Posting into countless chats in game and third-party applications will be horrible on console even with a linked keyboard. But this turns console into emulated PC. To display and navigate through a lot of tables on mobile will be horribly and I’m not eve mention how it will support fleet battle of over 100 players. How to implement the core and unique TRUE EVE mechanic on mobile devices – Local, Overview and D-Scan? Who will undock a Titan on mobile devices with a Wi-Fi internet connection?
Even with previous and many more other arguments, it is still possible the EVE on Mobile ONLY in the future. Similarly, to EVE politics, lets talk about IRL IT politics. The EVE big battles usually aren’t the war itself, it’s a final and formal stage of a war, where it’s required to blow up the abandoned and broken ■■■■. The real war is happening daily in small fleets, systems, stations, corporations. The same is in real life. The presentations at EVE Vegas, Fanfest, Blizzcon, whatever, is a final stage of what was decided and done during the last couple of years. The IT trend determines the future of a game, but not the player’s demand.
I’m not considering myself a video game fan. I play regularly only a few games, which I like, and I don’t care that they are overhyped or underhyped. Among them are Skyrim and Diablo II/III. Few years ago, Bethesda announced a mobile minigame version of Skyrim. OK, why not? Now they announced that the next expansion of The Elder Scrolls VI will be a mobile game only! Years ago, as an April 1 joke, Blizzard announced a mobile version of Diablo. At BlizzConn 2018, Blizzard announced that Diablo IV will be a mobile game only! I’m so disappointed and I imagine how disappointed are those fans, compared to me. For streamers, how they should stream those games on mobile devices?
Therefore, here are the new IT trend phrases “flying around”:
- “We need to respect mobile games”;
- “Do you guys not have phones?”;
- “Mobile time!”;
- “April 1 fool jokes aren’t jokes anymore”.
Interesting! Isn’t it? Well, I promise to play a bad mobile game for one year, if the game company owners, which want me to do that, will replace the steering wheels in their luxury cars with mobile devices to drive them with two fingers like:
From:
To (at least it has a steering wheel):
I mentioned the Elder Scrolls and Diablo franchises, because they are old and good as EVE franchise is. Those games, with their franchise, made those companies. Blizzard become a quality video game company not due to mobile games, Hearthstone, not even World of Warcraft – but because they made the Diablo II, which was the best RPG ever made and is still in the top 5 of the best RPG games ever. Elder Scrolls franchise made Bethesda, with Morrowind expansion and all its political in game relations. The Skyrim is a gorgeous game, with a gorgeous graphic, which runs well on cheap machines. In Skyrim you can pass the game with long range or short-range brutal force, unnoticed by using rogue specialization or without performing a single strike completely by using illusion specialization – a lot of skillful ways to play the same game.
Why this happens? Why there is not will anymore to create applications and games for both platforms: PC and mobile? Firstly, because it’s linked to the current mobile hardware market with their hundred of millions sells and easily to develop annual mobile games will motivate users to by new phones. How many Full HD monitors do you bought during the last 5 years? Secondly, mobile game projects are easier to develop for a gaming company – it requires less time and man-hours, with the potency to get near the same revenue through micro and macro-transactions.
Finally, I’d like to share the video blogs of two dedicated gamers, which played those games over 15 years.
A Qun69’s high quality blog
The most experienced Diablo II/III player’s video blog
