Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of EVE Online developer CCP Games, recently sat down with Country Reports to discuss EVE Echoes, and Iceland’s gaming scene.
The interview touched on many different topics, but the recently released EVE Echoes was touched on almost immediately. Hilmar discussed how their partnership with Chinese company NetEase allowed them to bring the mobile game to life. He also revealed that there are almost 4 million registered EVE Echoes players.
The interview also touched on how Iceland’s gaming community has continued to evolve, with Hilmar saying that for the first 10 years of CCP’s existence, they were effectively alone,
“From 1997 until 2007, we were essentially the only game developer in town. When the 2008 financial crisis emerged, we helped create the Gaming Industry Association of Iceland. There were a lot of startups that began developing games during that crisis. Very few of those have managed to survive to this point, but they were the first wave.”
But this second wave has seen more interesting things crop up,
“[F]or instance, we have 1939 Games making a game called Kards and we have a game called Starborne made by Solid Clouds, which is in open beta and doing very well. There is a good base of gaming companies here and Iceland now has the most gaming companies per head of population.”
The entire interview is worth a read.
