Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff to star in EVE: Valkyrie virtual reality game

By Rick Marshall May 2, 2014

katee sackhoff star eve valkyrie virtual reality game battlestar galactica

It looks like Battlestar Galactica fans hoping to see actress Katee Sackhoff suit up for space combat one more time will finally get their wish — though her return to the pilot seat will be in the virtual reality video game EVE: Valkyrie this time around.

Developer CCP Games announced Sackhoff’s involvement with the upcoming VR game this week, and revealed that the Battlestar Galactica and Riddick actress will play the role of Rán, the leader of a team of fighter pilots. EVE: Valkyrie is set within the “New Eden” universe of EVE Online, the long-running MMORPG that launched in 2003 and hit the 500,000-member mark in February 2013.

“The first time I played EVE: Valkyrie I immediately knew I had to be a part of it,” said Sackhoff in a press release announcing her involvement with the game. “Even with the roles I have played, it is the closest I have ever felt to being a real spaceship pilot. It is a truly transformative video game experience.”

Currently in development for both PlayStation 4’s Project Morpheus and the Oculus Rift VR headsets, EVE: Valkyrie puts players in the cockpit for team-based dogfights within the EVE Online universe. Players will compete in one of three roles — fighter, heavy, or support — while rising through the ranks and unlocking additional ships, weapons, and other elements.

The use of the VR headset will also allow for 360-degree immersion in the action, possibly with Starbuck herself — or in this case, Rán — offering the occasional advice or assist.

“Katee is the perfect actor to bring Rán to life,” added Owen O’Brien, executive producer for EVE: Valkyrie at CCP. “Not only does she have a track record in bringing strong female characters to life, but also once she had played Valkyrie I was delighted to see that she was as excited and enthused about the project as we are.”

EVE: Valkyrie was originally announced for release later this year, but there’s been no additional mention of launch timing since then.

eve valkyrie ran katee sackhoff

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Gaming

EVE Online dev CCP Games stops work on vampire MMO, World of Darkness

eve online dev ccp games stops work vampire mmo world darkness of

Bad news for fans of vampires and single-server massively multiplayer games: EVE Online developer CCP Games has halted work on World of Darkness. The planned MMORPG, first revealed in 2006, was meant to build on the universe established in White Wolf Publishing's pen-and-paper RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade. It's surfaced a handful of times since then in early looks, but CCP's remained mostly quiet in the years since the initial reveal.
There's no word on exactly why the project was canceled, but it sounds like it just wasn't coming together. Here's what CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson had to say in a prepared statement:
The decision to end the World of Darkness MMO project is one of the hardest I’ve ever had to make. I have always loved and valued the idea of a sandbox experience set in that universe, and over the years I’ve watched the team passionately strive to make that possible.
I would like to give special thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make the World of Darkness MMO a reality, especially the team members affected by this decision. Their considerable contribution to CCP will not be forgotten, and we wish them well.
To our current and former employees and fans of World of Darkness, I am truly sorry that we could not deliver the experience that we aspired to make. We dreamed of a game that would transport you completely into the sweeping fantasy of World of Darkness, but had to admit that our efforts were falling regretfully short. One day I hope we will make it up to you.
Although this was a tough decision that affects our friends and family, uniting the company behind the EVE Universe will put us in a stronger position moving forward, and we are more committed than ever to solidify EVE as the biggest gaming universe in the world.
The project's cancellation means that 56 employees at CCP's Atlanta studio are out of work. Some team members were simply shifted to different projects within the company - work continues on EVE Online, Dust 514, and EVE: Valkyrie - and the rest received severance packages and job placement assistance, according to the press release. Without World of Darkness in the mix, this marks the first time since 2006 that CCP is working entirely on content set within the EVE universe.

Gaming

EVE: Valkyrie will be an Oculus Rift exclusive

Oculus Rift Crystal Cove hands on

Oculus VR has struck a co-publishing deal with EVE Online and Dust 514 developer CCP Games that means lots of different things, but most notable for gamers is the fact that space dogfighting sim EVE: Valkyrie is now confirmed as an Oculus Rift exclusive. It's not a tremendous surprise, given the groundswell of excitement that's built around the game once known as EVE-VR. There's still no release date, for either the consumer headset or the game, but CCP's Newcastle studio is working full-time on turning Valkyrie into more than the tech demo it was born as.
The news was announced as part of CCP's joint presence with Oculus VR at the 2014 D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas. The show's theme - "the new golden age of gaming" - fits right in alongside the in-development VR headset, which promises to shake up the way many of us think about games in the coming years. Confirmation from Oculus of the publishing deal is also joined by more developer-centric news, specifically the release of a Latency Tester and a Best Practices Guide for VR development.
Latency is a big stumbling block that must be overcome before products like the Oculus Rift can come to market. In simple terms, if the latency of the Rift's head-tracking is too high, you get a distinct blurring effect as the in-game image attempts to catch up with itself when you move your head. This is a huge contributor to the dizziness/nausea that many feel when spending time in VR. The Latency Tester, in turn, enables developers to take a quantitative measure of this blurring effect.
The Best Practices Guide is simpler to explain. In short, it's a standardized set of suggested rules that are aimed at helping developers as they take their first steps toward creating virtual reality content. Much like the Latency Tester, these guidelines are meant to ensure that gamers can enjoy a consistently polished experience once VR content becomes accessible to a wider audience.
There's still no word on when the Oculus Rift will be released for consumers, but EVE: Valkyrie seems to have established itself as the gold-standard for showing off what the hardware can do. We've seen the game in action a number of times now: at EVE FanFest in 2013, at E3 2013, at CES 2014, and just this week at the D.I.C.E. Summit. Those last two demos played out on Oculus VR's most recent Crystal Cove prototype, which is the most polished version of the tech we've seen yet. More is promised in the coming months.
We'll be talking to CCP and Oculus execs here at D.I.C.E., and we'll be sure to share what we learn. You can keep up with what's happening at the developer-focused conference as it streams throughout the day on its Twitch page.

Gaming

EVE Online’s biggest, most costly battle ever starts with one missed payment

EVE Online may be the space-based MMORPG infamously referred to as "spreadsheets in space," but the real human angle is what makes its player-fueled stories so compelling. True to form, the latest in-game event blurs the line between reality and fantasy, with the 10-year-old MMO's biggest and most costly battle ever having been triggered by a simple mistake: an unpaid bill. A protected system used as a staging area by the game's N3 and Pandemic Legion coalition - a pair of allied, player-run organizations - became fair game for attacks, in this case by rival CFC, when a protection payment wasn't made.
"Supposedly, it was set up for auto-pay, just like any other bill in real life, but either that didn't happen or the money wasn't in the wallet, and then everything just escalated out of control from there," N3/Pandemic coalition member James Carl told the San Jose Mercury News. "The dust is still settling on that issue. Everyone is just focused right now on fighting to try to regain control of the system."
The massive battle has been raging throughout this week, with more than 4,000 players converging on the B-R5RB system. More than 100 massive Titan warships, which take months to build and cost a real world equivalent of multiple thousands of dollars, were destroyed. Remember Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi? Imagine a couple hundred of those waging battle - alongside thousands of other, smaller ships - and you get a sense of the scale we're talking about here.
On the technical side, the crush of concurrent players arming weapons and destroying ships in a single system puts considerable strain on the EVE Online servers. "I'd be lying if I said our servers weren't sweating a bit," EVE Online spokesman Ned Coker told the California paper. "Allowing players free movement wherever they want in a game with over half a million players means for some pretty tricky technological requirements." Lag issues are worked around thanks to time dilation; when a crush of players starts to strain the game's servers, time is slowed down to allow for orders to be received and processed.
Unlike other popular MMOs, such as World of Warcraft or Star Wars: The Old Republic, every one of EVE Online's 500,000+ players explores a single version of the game's universe. This "single shard" approach is unique in the MMO space, both in terms of its scale and it execution. The in-game economy is bound by the rules that developer CCP Games established for the game, but it's run - for better and for worse - entirely by the players. The developer's hands-off approach has resulted in a living, breathing community, one that is completely capable of, say, sending hundreds of thousands of real dollars worth of in-game resources to a single system, to commit to one battle.
We've embedded a look at the insane battle below; head to the video's YouTube page and check the description for a link that gives you a better sense of how EVE Online battles work. If you want to keep up with how things are going in real-time, head over to the game's Twitch page and browse through the individual player streams.