Welcome to the twelfth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!
This month’s banter comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, who asks the following: First there was the MMO on the PC, and now with the recent announcement of DUST 514, EVE will soon be moving onto consoles. But what about mobile? Allow your imagination to run wild for a second and describe how you would see EVE being ported to mobile devices, whether the iPhone/iPod touch, Blackberrys or Android-based devices. Dream the impossible for us!
No.
What do I mean, ‘no’? What I mean is, I would actively dislike it if CCP decided their next project was iEVE. Why? Well, it’s quite simple, really. It’s immersion. It’s partly why CCP won’t let people write UI addons in the style of WoW. EVE is very distinctive, and extremely immersive. It’s part of why it’s such a brilliant game. You just simply can’t replicate that immersion on a mobile platform, no matter the technology involved. I guess what I’m saying is that EVE shouldn’t be played on a mobile device.
If we did get anything for mobile platforms, then obviously EVEmail and other information would be what you’d want. Some people would argue skill training should be accessible from outside the game. I’d have to disagree with that one, again on the grounds of immersion. You’re doing something very much tied to the game there, and it should remain in the game.
Of course, the optimal way to do all this is just to open up some APIs and let people get to work on it. Look at the current offering of mobile apps- there’s loads out there and some (Capsuleer) are of an exceptionally high standard. Why should CCP try and replicate all this effort in-house when they could just open the appropriate APIs to developers? If CCP wanted to really fuel development of certain tools, they could take on the popular third-party devs for given platforms as contractors and task them with developing the features full-time, thus leveraging existing apps and talent while getting exactly what they want. It’d be good for the 3rd-party developer ecosystem and better for CCP, who get what they want at vastly reduced effort, cost and so on.
So your main objection to a mobile interface is that the current UI is immersive?
A few too many pints, I think…
It’s not just the UI, I mean the client and EVE experience as a whole.