December 23, 2024

Gameology News

Know Your Games

‘Dual Universe’ developer Novaquark hire former CCP Technical Director as new CTO

2 min read

Novaquark, the game developer behind the sci-fi MMO ‘Dual Universe’, have recently hired Högni Gylfason as their Chief Technology Officer. Gylfason was previously a Technical Director at CCP, where he lead the DevOps team and implemented games-as-a-service cloud solutions for EVE Online, helping to turn it into one of the most revered games in its genre.

Gylfason’s expertise lends itself perfectly to Dual Universe, where he will help optimize workflows and support the development of a highly scalable platform with potentially millions of players in the same game world. This will ensure that every player has a great experience in spite of the sheer volume of traffic — truly a unique feat in the scope of online gaming. “Given the popularity of other games that serve as an outlet for players’ creativity, Dual Universe can rival even the largest ones while providing a single world for everyone worldwide to play together; a world that is also entirely editable thanks to Novaquark’s integrated voxel technology.”

When asked about the similarities between EVE Online and Dual Universe, Gylfason brought up the single-shard universe, a concept where everyone plays in the same world at the same time, and the technical implications of implementing it. “Where the two differ however,” he continued, “is how Dual Universe deals with the issues surrounding supporting a massive number of players in the same location.”

Hiring the best talent has always been imperative to Novaquark, and both the team as well as Gylfason are excited to start working together. When asked to comment, Novaquark’s CEO Jean-Christophe Baillie said, “We’re very excited to have Högni working with us on the game. The company has always focused on hiring extremely skilled and creative people and I’m certain that with Högni joining the team, we can truly realize Dual Universe’s goal of pushing the limits of massively-online, emergent experiences to new heights.” 

Gylfason’s arrival comes at a pivotal time, as the company heads into the Alpha 3 release for Dual Universe coming this January, with the Beta 1 planned to release in Summer 2020.