CCP says it is ‘moving away from publicly announcing internal project codenames’

EVE Online developer CCP says it’s rethinking how, and when, it announces new games following recent changes to one of its latest games, Project Nova.

In a Reddit thread (thanks, Gamasutra), a CCP representative said that looking ahead the studio will hold back on early announcements of projects, and will instead focus on “full reveals” of “fully-fledged game[s]”.

“We are moving away from publicly announcing our internal project codenames and will wait until we’re ready for a full reveal,” explains the CCP dev. “We want to show you rather than tell you how we have evolved this concept and we’re looking forward to doing so when the time comes to present this concept as a fully-fledged game.”

The announcement comes as CCP grapples with fan expectations, especially when games change and evolve beyond early prototypes and conceptions, such as Project Nova. While some perceived the game to have been cancelled, the studio has confirmed it is “continuing to develop [its] sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, actively evolving it beyond the original scope of what was formerly codenamed Project Nova”.

“This decision was taken because Project Nova’s gameplay experience as presented at EVE Vegas ’18 would not have achieved our ambitious goals for this concept,” the post added.

“Moreover, it is very common for games in active development to evolve over time, often substantially. We remain committed to offering a rock-solid, action-oriented gameplay experience with stellar visuals, but due to significant changes in the scope and direction of our sci-fi multiplayer shooter game concept, it also made sense to update how we refer to this project internally. So, we are no longer using the codename Project Nova for this game concept.”

Though the project remains in development at CCP, the game has now been reallocated to CCP’s London studio. Devs working on the game in Reykjavík have been moved internally to other projects.