CCP: EVE Online's Incarna "didn't really do any gameplay"

EVE Online's disastrously unpopular expansion Incarna failed because it didn't address the needs of current players, the company believes.

“We didn’t really do any gameplay around it, it was just 'here are some characters, you can walk around' and that’s it. That’s all you can do, you can walk around inside a small room," senior producer Arnar Hrafn Gylfason told PC Gamer.

“Sure it’s a good step to being able to be a person and being able to see your person, but it’s a more important step for that person to be able to do something rather than just walk around. And I think that’s where we ultimately failed.”

Part of Incarna's problem, Gylafson admitted, is that it was motivated by the game's notoriously unfriendly beginner experience.

"Being a spaceship isn’t appealing to a lot of people. People want to be a person, someone they can identify with and get into character with," he said.

Incarna was to change that, by introducing features "that the core community weren’t really excited for but had potential new markets".

This proved to be a mistake.

"In the months leading up to Incarna, we failed to properly acknowledge the sentiment of the community and I think that’s a lesson we’ve learned extremely hard. Hopefully a mistake we’re never going to make again," the producer added.

CCP launched a new expansion for the game last week. Crucible offers a number of new ships and other much-requested core features.

Thanks, GameSpy.