EVE Online Creators CCP Join Forces With Whit...

EVE Online Creators CCP Join Forces With White Wolf

In a move reminiscent of BioWare's merger with Pandemic one year ago, another high-profile fusion was announced over the weekend, between CCP Games and White Wolf. CCP has become synoymous with EVE Online, its science-fiction MMORPG that continues to shatter record after record in terms of concurrent users, while White Wolf should mostly be familiar to old-school role-players. It's an interesting union, between an "online sci-fi" and an "offline fantasy" studio (so to speak), and it's sure to generate some equally interesting projects - as suggested in their joint announcement:

"CCP, the largest European virtual world company, announced the completion of its merger with White Wolf, the world's second largest role-playing publisher. The combination of the two privately held companies creates the unique pool of talent required to prevail in the rapidly expanding virtual world entertainment market. The combined company will introduce new online and offline gaming products across the science-fiction, horror and fantasy genres."

The first such project to be developed by CCP will be a multiplayer game based on White Wolf's popular World of Darkness setting (first used in their Vampire: The Masquerade RPG from 1991). The Reykjavik, Iceland based studio CCP Games also has several other projects in the pipeline, although we don't really expect them to go into detail about them anytime soon. We hope to, but... it might take a while.

As for Atlanta based publisher White Wolf, their immediate projects include the creation of EVE Online strategy guides, collectible card games, role-playing games, novels, and miniatures.

Finally, here are some more "technicalities" about the nature of the resulting company, after the merger:

"The combined company will continue to operate under their respective names. White Wolf will be operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of CCP. Hilmar Petursson, Chief Executive Officer of CCP, will be CEO of the combined company. Mike Tinney, President of White Wolf, will continue as President of the independent subsidiary. Further, White Wolf will continue development and enhancement of their entire portfolio of gaming products."

A few more mergers like this, and they'll turn into CCCP Games...

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)