I sat down with David Reid, Chief Marketing Officer of CCP Games, and discussed "the most dangerous, complicated and rewarding journey in video games."

What is some of the more popular stuff on the store right now?

Of course there's the Collector's Edition, which is doing real well. I think the gear that we have right now, the apparel and the Zero.Zero line that we've got...it speaks to the core EVEplayer really well, right? It's something that's aimed at that the people who come to EVE Vegas and other EVE-nts. *laughs* One of the things I think we could be doing better with is just...a broader range of apparel both for that audience and others. There's inside baseball stuff there, Guristas logos from the pirate faction, and "turret parlor" sweatshirts...very cool stuff. The problem is that the average person, a noob in EVEor even just someone hearing EVEstories is never gonna understand what that's about. What I'm hoping to do is get a broad range of merchandise that is simply EVE logos, DUSTlogos, things like that, right? Ya know, just the basics of what we want to have. When things got started with the partnership with Musterbrand, we wanted to start with that Zero.Zero idea and really reward the fans...but there's a much bigger opportunity and we're gonna do more than that.

Any interesting merchandise that never saw the light of day?

Ooh, let me think about that. Certainly there was stuff going on before I got here, I mean, I've been here for about two years now...so I couldn't speak to that. I know right now...again, there's a bunch of stuff we're experimenting with, so I think it's too early to say whether or not they will see the light of day. We just don't know yet. We're pushing on these things, and we're like "Hey, this is cool!", "Eh, it's not quite good enough. Can we make it better?" That kind of thing. So there's nothing that I'm aware of that's been "mothballed" so to speak. I think we're still looking at a wide range of stuff.

I mean, people who came to FanFest...we did have one of those first prototype busts of a DUST mercenary dropsuit head. I have seen other things that we've tried to do with 3D printing of weapons and things like that. Those can be pretty cool...but pretty expensive! I know in Shanghai, they've got a prototype of an Amarr Scrambler Pistol, and it's like "That thing's beautiful! But that must be $500." I don't know that there's a big market for that! But who knows. Those are things that we're looking at.
 

Any plans on what might come to the store next, then?

Look for more of that apparel to come, ahh...ultimately, we will have an ability to sell the comics and the source book that we're doing with Dark Horse there. Ahh, I'm trying to think of what else I know of on the horizon. We are doing a lot of interesting experiments with 3D printing, and I got to tell ya: as a marketer, 3D printing is a terrible name! It makes me think of, like, little cardboard castles and things. I mean, this is like the replicator from Star Trek! Ya know, it's like "Holy crap! You poured some resin in here, and here comes a bust of something awesome!" We really like what we're seeing there, and so we're experimenting with different things...busts and figurines, kill coins, just all kinds of stuff. It's a tricky process to make something that feels like it has the right visual aesthetics, feels right and is not ridiculously expensive to make. So those are things that we're working through right now. Torfi Frans, who was the Creative Director of EVE,is now the Creative Director of the IP development group that we've got. He's working with folks at a number of different partners about what kind of things we could source into the store. And ya know, if people have ideas, they should send them our way, because there's a lot of stuff and a lot of possibilities out there!
 

Finally, on the topic of marketing occasions such as EVE Vegas: have you capitalized on the pun "EVE-nt"?

*laughs* I can't say I have! That's not a terrible idea! I'm just thinking, you'd have to capitalize EVEand a lowercase nt. Do I owe you a licensing fee if we use that? *laughs again*

Heh, definitely not! Although ISK or PLEX is always welcome.

I'd like to extend a huge thank you to David Reid for such a great interview – and it doesn't even end here!
If you liked this article, make sure to keep an eye out for more in part 2!

Colt "ShdwFlm" Casey
Deputy Editor