Eve Online maker CCP aims to avoid 'very dumb' big company problems

For ten years, Eve Online has been the entire reason for CCP's existence, an enormous focal point for the whole organization.

Now that the Icelandic company is moving outwards from its epic MMO, senior executives are guarding themselves against common mistakes made by fast-growing games companies.

"A big company can become very dumb, very quickly," said CEO Hilmar Petursson, in an interview with GamesIndustry. "The larger the group of people becomes, the more you lose efficiency, fluidity, creativity and innovation, unless you structure it very well."

As well as a new Eve Online expansion and bringing the game to new platforms, CCP released free-to-play shooter Dust 514 for PlayStation 3 earlier this year. The company is also developing the World of Darkness MMO as well as EVR, a space dogfighting title for Oculus Rift. Like Dust 514, it is set in the Eve Online universe.

Satellite offices have been opened in Shanghai and in Atlanta, though the latter suffered significant job cuts in 2011. "There's a lot of focus on learning when you have a bigger company, to make sure the entire system is learning," said Petursson. "The biggest shift was realizing that."

He said that Eve Online would remain at the center of the company's activities. "We're off to the races with an audience of core gamers," he said. "We're now entering our fast iteration cycle, doing monthly updates. A very tight collaboration with the community, as we've done with Eve throughout the years. That really is our focus."