'Most of the innovation in gaming has happened on PC' says EVE Online studio boss: 'When I love a game, it's so deeply PC'

The PC is still the center of innovation in gaming, according to Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP Games, which is known for long-running, esoteric space MMO EVE Online.

"I think most of the innovation in gaming has happened on PC, to some extent on mobile, just because of sheer volume," Pétursson told me at EVE Fanfest earlier this year. "But I don't think we're observing a lot of innovation in mobile right now. I think we're observing a lot of refinement and execution and formula, kind of hardening. On PC, we still see a lot of experimentation."

While Pétursson allowed that discoverability is a major issue facing PC developers in particular, he appreciates how the general lack of gatekeeping on the platform⁠—a $100 fee on Steam, or just uploading a project to itch.io or elsewhere⁠—means that "success comes out of very random places," and the platform "remains strong against all odds." We at PC Gamer endeavor to forgive, but never forget all the times people declared "the death of PC gaming," and Pétursson concurs: "The death certificate has been signed several times."

"PC seems to be an environment where a lot of these kinds of things just come alive. When I love a game, it's so deeply PC," said Pétursson. "Like Cuphead, who would think of making Cuphead? Of course it could happen somewhere else, but it just feels so 'PC games.' And of course, you could play that game on a console, but there's just something about the sort of open ended innovation, the no gatekeepers: You can just make a game."

He further singled out modding as a unique strength of PC gaming, one that the platform has maintained a monopoly over even as consoles have become "basically PCs by now," according to Pétursson. It's an aspect of the hobby CCP is leaning into hard with the in-development EVE Frontier.

The CEO also noted the inherent continuity of PC gaming. "We have several times booted up ancient EVE codes, and it largely works, even the VRML processor we did in the '90s," he said, referring to an attempt at a 3D, VR web browser many of CCP's first employees had worked on prior to the company's founding.

EVE Online itself is still going strong, with the long-running MMO having just rung in a new expansion, Catalyst, on November 18. Meanwhile, the survival-focused sister project EVE Frontier will receive its next major update on November 27, and FPS companion game EVE Vanguard remains in active development.

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