作者：Matthew Jarvis

如果说CCP是居住于《星战前夜》虚拟宇宙中庞大的泰坦之一，那么在2013年到2015年期间我们会发现它正逐渐驶向一个黑洞。

尽管其科幻MMO游戏的用户数仍然继续增加着，但是在2013财政年CCP却损失了2100万美元，并且不得不裁掉超过50名雇员。在2014年，他们甚至不得不关闭在旧金山的办公室。

hilmar petursson ccp(from develop-online)

其首席执行官Hilmar Petursson说道：“对于我们来说2013年是非常艰难的一年。我们做出了许多艰难的改变决定。我们取消了投入7年心血的项目《World of Darkness》。因为我们在这个项目中看不到尽头。而放弃这个项目便意味着我们不得不放弃整个开发团队，并且因为公司现状以及完全不同的运营方式，我们不得不对整个公司进行流线型化调整。”

现在，3年时间过去了，该工作室所做出的艰难决定都获得了成效。《星战前夜》继续发展着，并在4月份发行了全新的扩展版本《堡垒》。同时，CCP也进一步转向了快速发展的VR领域，即在去年面向Gear VR发行了《Gunjack》并在3月末面向Oculus Rift发行了《Eve Valkyrie》。同时他们也在准备着《Gunjack》的续集以及作为2013年发行的第一人称射击游戏《Dust 514》的后续作品《新星计划》。

这对于该公司来说是一次巨大的改变。为了支持其快速的扩展，该公司在英国开设了一间全新的办公室，这也将成为CCP星群中最耀眼的一颗新星。

Petursson会想道：“在2013年的时候，我们对开发过程的运营以及工作室间的相互影响方面做出了许多改变。我们希望每间开发办公室能够更多地专注于自身的项目并拥有更强大的经济立场。”

“而在《Gunjack》中我们看到了第一个结果—-这是我们的上海团队在去年所创造并在11月份发行后大获成功的游戏。当然了，我们也有来自纽卡斯尔的团队所创造的《Valkyrie》，该团队现在正全身心专注于这款游戏。而在雷克雅未克我们仍专注于《星战前夜》以及一些较小且说来尚早的初创项目。同时我们还有一个团队在亚特兰大致力于研究面向VR的内容。“

“现在我们公司的重心放在伦敦。我们将会遵循这样一种模式，即人们聚集在伦敦进行回顾并做些产品反馈之类的事。通过正视种种现实，我们设立伦敦办公室便是致力于现实的运营。“

尽管CCP是因为《星战前夜》而被大家所了解，但是该工作室最近在VR领域的努力却是源自一个你猜不到的灵感：即很容易被忽视的PS3射击游戏《Dust 514》。

Petursson说道：“我们从《Dust》中吸取许多经验教训并将其应用到《Valkyrie》中，这对于这款游戏来说是非常有帮助的。《Dust》对于我们来说是一个非常长远的任务，它也提供给了我们许多技术成就。关于两款基于同样IP的游戏，如何在服务器后端组织各种内容存在许多相关元素，而这也将更好地呈现出我们是如何管理《Valkyrie》。“

虽然《Dust 514》在发行3年后便被关闭了，但是它的存在为《Valkyrie》以及全新的免费PC第一人称射击游戏《新星计划》铺平了道路。

Petursson说道：“《Dust》提供的一大经验教训便是，在你明确连通性以前，你必须确保每一款游戏都是独立运行的。对于《Dust》，我们便同时在做这两件事。而对于《Valkyrie》，我们则专注于面向VR创造一款出色的太空射击游戏。所以我们知道自己可以轻松地实现各种连接。即现在的我们是一层一层地去创造游戏而不再像《Dust》那样同时从所有不同的层面进行创造。

“《Dust》教会了我们许多经验教训，所以现在的我们更有信心去做这件事。我认为我们现在所做的事是非常新颖的，现在应该没人能像我们做到这份上。当然有很多人在这个领域进行探索，这是游戏玩家非常好奇的内容，所以当《Valkyrie》站稳脚跟后我们仍会在这一领域继续探索。”

从PC转向主机再转向VR的过程中，CCP漏掉了一个巨大的未探索区域，那就是手机。

Petursson在被问及何时面向该平台开发游戏时回应道：“关于手机，我们对手机伴侣应用更感兴趣。面向手机创造具有创新性的游戏并不是我们的目标。虽然这已然成为一个专业领域，但这却并不适合我们公司和文化。”

“我们更倾向于VR，因为它更能发挥我们的优势。而VR本身就是一个平台，所以这便是一个巨大的关注点。我们的特长在于PC游戏和在线游戏—-而现在我们也有点成为VR的内容领导者了，所以这些内容将会是今后我们继续关注的对象。”

Petursson所说的便是CCP当前的状态；创建了新工作室，重新拾起对于开发项目的信心，获取拥抱新兴平台的信息，是的，我们知道这是一个将未来抓在手心的开发商。这也与三年前的CCP拥有显著的区别。

Petursson重申道：“对于我们来说2013年是非常艰难的一年。但也正因为如此我们开始改变做项目的方式。我们开始专注于更多项目，并且才能转向VR领域。”

“正是这两个元素的结合使我们公司在去年创造利润新高。即我们的利润突破了2千万美元，在年末的时候我们还进行了一次融资并筹集到了3千万美元。所以现在从整体财政实力看来，我们已经处于一个非常有利的位置上了。”

“像我们那样在2013年作出改变是一件非常困难的事，但这却是一次非常明智的决定，也正是那些困难将我们推到了现在的位置上。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Eve of a new CCP: CEO Hilmar Pétursson on how the studio turned itself around

By Matthew Jarvis

If CCP was one of the monolithic Titan spaceships that populate its virtual universe of Eve Online, 2013 through to 2015 would have found it slowly circling a black hole, engines cut and smoke pouring from within.

While the audience numbers of its iconic sci-fi MMO continued to grow, CCP itself posted losses of $21m for its 2013 fiscal year, and was forced to let go more than 50 employees. The following year, its San Francisco office was closed.

“2013 was a very tough year for us,” admits CEO Hilmar Pétursson. “We did a lot of difficult change. We cancelled a project – the World of Darkness MMO – we had been working on for seven years. We just weren’t seeing a path to the end. We took a difficult call on closing that down, which involved laying off the team and streamlining the rest of the company for a different reality and a different way to operate.”

Nearly three years later, the studio’s hard decisions appeared to have paid off. Eve continues to thrive, with a new expansion, Citadel, released in April. Meanwhile, the developer has expanded its efforts to the burgeoning VR space, launching Gunjack for Gear VR last year and dogfighting spin-off Eve Valkyrie alongside the Oculus Rift headset in late March. On the horizon lurks a Gunjack sequel and Project Nova, a spiritual successor to 2013 first-person shooter Dust 514.

It’s a big change for a studio that until last year had only released two titles. The company is supporting its rapidly expanding line-up with the opening of a new office in the UK, the brightest new star in CCP’s constellation.

“Back in 2013, we made a lot of changes to how we operate our development process and how our studios interact and all that,” Pétursson recalls. “We’ve gone for each development office being much more focused on its project and having much more economy in the positions.

“We’ve seen the first results of that in Gunjack, which the Shanghai team put together last year and released in November to raving success. Then, of course, we have Valkyrie coming out of Newcastle, and that team is extremely focused on that. We have Eve in Reykjavik, as well as some smaller start-up projects that are too early to talk about. Then we have a team in Atlanta doing advanced research into what comes next for VR.

“The centre of the company is kind of in London right now. We will probably move more into a model where we have people just coming together in London when we’re doing reviews and product feedback and things like that. We have, with this establishment of the London office, been making an operating reality by facing the facts.”

While Eve may be the game that made CCP’s name, the studio’s latest efforts in VR actually take inspiration from somewhere you might not expect: oft-overlooked PS3 shooter Dust 514.

“We took a lot of the lessons from the Dust production into Valkyrie, which has benefited the game tremendously,” Pétursson reveals. “What we tried with Dust was an extremely long-ranging mission, and Dust provided a lot of technical achievements. There were a lot of elements relating to how to organise things on the backend of the servers with the demand of having two games in the same IP as gamer services and all that, which definitely harkened and informed a lot in how we’ve managed the development of Valkyrie.”

Almost exactly three years after it was launched, Dust 514 was taken offline, paving the way for Valkyrie and newly unveiled free-to-play PC FPS Project Nova.

“One of the lessons from Dust is that each and every game has to stand on its own and work in isolation before you layer in the connectivity,” Pétursson says. “With Dust, we attempted to do both at the same time. With Valkyrie, we are very much focused on it being an awesome space shooter built from the group-up for VR. Then we know it is fairly easy for us to layer in various sorts of connectivity. We’re very much building the onion from layer to layer, instead of – as we attempted with Dust – from all the different layers.

“Dust taught us many lessons and we have a lot of experience in doing this now. At the time it was very innovative and I don’t think anyone has still taken it to the level that we did. There’s a lot of people exploring this, it’s something that gamers are curious about and we will definitely continue to explore more after we’ve got this game to stand on its own two feet.”

Having ventured from its home planet on PC into the galaxies of consoles and VR, there remains a largely unexplored sector for CCP: mobile.

“We are more interested in mobile companion apps when it comes to mobile,” Pétursson responds when asked about developing for the platform. “Making original games for mobile is not so much in our wheelhouse. It’s such an expertise field by now, and it’s not really a format we are well suited for as a company and as a culture.

“We are much more gravitated to VR – that plays a lot more to our strengths. VR is a platform unto itself, so that has been a huge focus. Our forte is PC gaming and online – we have become a bit of a content leader for VR, so these are the things we will be focused on going forward.”

His words highlight the current mood of CCP; equipped with a new studio, newfound confidence in its projects and the knowledge needed to capture emerging platforms, it’s a developer with the future in its sights. It’s a huge transformation from three years ago.

“2013 was a very tough year for us,” Pétursson reiterates. “But, out of that, we started to change a lot about how we do the projects. We started to do many more projects, also focusing more on VR.

“These two factors combined have led to a record profit year in the history of the company last year. Our profit was over $20 million, and we also did a financing round at the end of the year where we raised $30 million. We are now in an extremely good position when it comes to balancing strength and overall financial strength.

“It was a very difficult thing to do, to make the changes we did in 2013, but it is definitely working – those difficult calls put us in the place we are today.“（source：develop-online)