After reading the article on the new Carbon technology that my buddy Tim ( golen.net ) turned me on to I was browsing around and saw the Dust 514 stuff on the CCP site. Dust 514 is a persistent world first person shooter being developed for consoles by CCP Games.

Dust 514 is set in the EVE Online Universe. A very cool tie-in! The battles played out in Dust 514 will take place on the planets that exist in EVE Online. If it were only staged in the EVE universe that would be one thing but according to what I read on IGN, CPP’s official site, and fansites, it appears the game will actually interact with EVE Online! Battles in Dust 514 will determine who controls regions of space and EVE Online players will have to contract Dust 514 players to stabilize or destabilize regions of the universe!

This has to be one of the coolest ideas I have heard in gaming and I am on the edge of my seat for this one….. although the reason might be something other than what you might expect. I have been playing games for a long time (pathetically enough). I started writing and playing MUD’s back in the day, I remember the first graphical PC games, I had all the first consoles and still buy the new generations as they come out, I had a gameboy, DS, DS Lite, PSP, etc. I’ve been around the block.

In all the years I have been wasting my time shooting things, grinding XP, or finding the right knob to turn, one thing has always been true. There are two very distinct types of gamers, shooters & MMORPG/RPGers. Thats a fact Jack. I have always leaned to the shooter side playing competitive BF2 and Halo back in the day while maintaining a healthy PVP MMORPG appetite.At-any-rate these two genres of gamers have always been about as far from each other as can be.

For those of you that may not get what I am saying here, these are two very different kinds of people. You have guys in Call of Duty or Battlefield 2 two screaming, “F*&^( Y*& DIE!” over voice comms half drunk with the football game on in the background and then on the other side of the spectrum you have a guy typing. “How art thou good fellow?” into a chat bar while running an errand quest with Lord of the Rings on the TV. VERY DIFFERENT PEOPLE….

If Dust 514 works this will be the first mainstream example of First Person Shooter type gamers and MMORPGers working together towards any kind of end within the same game world. To me it kind of looks like the guy who went to MIT and became an aerospace engineer working with the marine grunt on the ground. From a sociological standpoint it’s intriguing. I can’t wait to see how it plays out and Kudos once again CCP. Links to trailer and sources below:

Source IGN: http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/027/027065.html

Youtube Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzVjggarRns

Official Page: http://www.ccpgames.com/en/products/dust-514.aspx