They really did it: EVE On-line turns into the primary videogame with Microsoft Excel integration

These lunatics in Reykjavik have solely gone and performed it. EVE On-line developer CCP video games has at all times had a component of self-knowledge about it, and a singular relationship with its group, who love and detest EVE with a life-overtaking passion. One of many long-running gags concerning the game is that it is actually simply “spreadsheets in area” and, after saying the collaboration some time in the past, EVE On-line has, 20 years after launch, change into the primary videogame to seamlessly combine Microsoft Excel, the world’s favorite spreadsheet software program.

Excel is now a free add-on for EVE On-line, and “allows you to effortlessly entry and analyze your in-game information throughout all of your accounts and characters”. On the latter level, I used to be a non-serious EVE participant and had a number of accounts and characters throughout them, so you may think about simply how a lot information the massive boys are monitoring. As soon as imported Excel will can help you “create customized stories, graphs, and charts to realize deep insights into your in-game actions, monitor your progress, and strategize your subsequent steps”.

Any EVE participant is aware of precisely what which means. Prepare for the company shows! Once I flew there was one wing commander who’d sometimes take a squad out, test our ship suits completely, and make us all do roll name like a college meeting earlier than the primary warp: think about what such a thoughts will do with this energy.

CCP says, considerably optimistically, that this new software “brings added equity and accessibility to everybody”. And it truly is a primary, do not take my phrase for it:

“CCP Video games has intensive expertise within the MMO area, so it’s solely pure that we collaborate with them to launch the first-ever native Microsoft Excel add-in for a online game,” mentioned Catherine Pidgeon, Microsoft’s head of product for Excel. “We’re excited to see how gamers of EVE On-line of all ability ranges can use Excel to streamline information administration and take their in-game expertise to new heights.”

So if you wish to, ahem, “change into the info pushed capsuleer you by no means knew you wanted to be” the EVE Excel add-on is obtainable now. It tracks numerous in-game information together with your belongings with location and merchandise worth, market orders, merchandise market costs, pockets transactions, abilities, and when you’ve got the suitable roles integrates with company funds. There’s even, amazingly, a pattern workbook on CCP’s site for wannabe area accountants to get began, an EVE Academy guide to utilizing Excel, and a brand new matter on the EVE Assist Centre about it.

Wait until the spies get their noggins round this one. Effectively, I suppose at a single stroke this kills each “spreadsheets in area” joke stone-dead, and is a fairly super instance of proudly owning and leaning into your game’s foibles. You simply understand it will not be lengthy earlier than some nerd works out an obscure trick that lets them bankrupt a company with this and, as a part of EVE’s ongoing twentieth anniversary, there are few extra becoming birthday presents.