Can you even imagine what the world is going to look like at the end of the next Trump presidency? I can’t. I don’t even know if gaming itself will be the same by then; maybe The Powers That Be will just lay everyone off and we’ll have buckets of AI-developed slop to gorge on, instead. Like Ready Player One, but even more insidious, somehow.
At least Icelandic developer CCP Games isn’t staring down the barrel of machine-created, nutrient-free gaming, though. In fact, the erstwhile indie (yes, it is still independent, over 20 years later) developer is constructing some quite impressive plans for 2028, if some recent plans I saw at its UK offices in London are anything to go by.
Alongside EVE Online, which CCP has been developing for a frankly outrageous 21 years now, the studio has another iron in the fire, this time in the guise of EVE: Vanguard – an MMOFPS that is setting out to redefine how we think about MMOs and FPS games. Bold strategy, but the studio seems confident.
What seems even more confident, though, is the release structure CCP has tentatively erected around Vanguard. Per Emily Akland (senior brand manager for EVE Vanguard) and Scott Davis (lead product manager at CCP London), Vanguard’s release and rollout schedule looks like this:
- 2024 – Founder’s access
- 2025 – Early access
- 2027 – Global launch
- 2028 – Console rollout
This is an early outline for the game, and subject to change, of course. But the fact that this information was willingly and openly shared with myself and a group of other journalists at a CCP Games media day would suggest it’s something of an established timeline for the studio. This is the plan for a game the studio has already sunk over two years of development time into. This is, as far as CCP is concerned right now, going to happen.
“I’ve been part of every shooter that we tried to make,” says Snorri Árnaso, game director of EVE Online (who also works across the portfolio of other titles within CCP) when I asked about why CCP is revealing this information at this stage.
“That includes Dust 514, and two or three different prototypes that we showed at [EVE FanFest over the years]. That includes one title we took a short way, and one which we took pretty far. That includes a couple of internal builds that we scrapped. And that includes Nova, which I went to Vegas myself to showcase.
“And in no way, shape, or form, did we have the confidence in [any of those games] that we have in Vanguard now. These games were infinitely lower, aspirationally, graphically… We had a small team then, too, but we’ve also learnt a lot from going all that way in a singular direction and not leaning into the EVE-ness of it all.”
That’s why CCP is so keen to show this off now, to get the community involved from this early stage, and start testing things out. So that, in four years time, players on whatever iteration of Xbox or PlayStation or – who knows? – even Nintendo Switch can jump in and play EVE’s ambitious shared world shooter without a juicy PC.
If you are keen to have a more ‘pad-based’ experience with Vanguard in the meantime, though, here’s a little morsel I was privy to at the media day: alpha testers within CCP’s community have been running Vanguard on the Steam Deck. Even as early on as Vanguard’s First Strike testing, it’s been adequately performing on Valve’s handheld – and it’s something the developer is keenly aware of.
EVE: Vanguard is available to Founders now, and Early Access for the game will arrive in 2025, with a global lauch planned for 2027 on PC. A special event is running November 28 – December 9 in Vangaurd; to take part and to obtain an access code, visit the EVE Vanguard Discord.