Excel in EVE Online; Official Plugin Adds Tables Support
For the first time, Microsoft Excel has been officially integrated into a video game, which will make it easier for EVE Online players to manage their virtual possessions.
EVE Online is one of those titles where the gameplay can be compared without any sarcasm to Excel. Especially now that CCP Games released the promised module, enabling us to use Microsoft Excel inside the game.
The plug-in (accessible from Excel or its network version) has been announced back last year, when the developer partnered with Microsoft. Later, the implementation of this "add-on" was confirmed in a roadmap from January, in which development plans for EVE Online for 2023 were discussed.
This novelty, in principle, does not require a longer discussion. The free plug-in enables you to import data from the game into Excel, including all characters and accounts. After that, the player can check his all the app tools to create charts, makes analysis, etc., and quickly check his holdings in EVE Online.
The benefits of this plugin, seemingly a bit ridiculous in its concept (at least for those unfamiliar with EVE Online), are obvious in a game that, by the developers' own admission, the players call "charts in space." In a game where death can take a costly toll, and gameplay seems to have more to do with politics and governance than carefree space exploration, information is at a premium. Without the right data, it's easy to make a fatal decision.
At the same time, the Excel plug-in is meant to make EVE Online more accessible to players. Veterans of the game used sheets of this or similar applications anyway. Only that until now it required entering the game's data on one's own, which even the biggest fans of statistics and tables would have to consider a laborious task.
Excel integration makes it easy for any player to gain easy access to data on their possessions and income in EVE Online and, as Bergur Finnbogason (the game's creative director) points out, can easily manage them thanks to the app's capabilities:
"Our players are constantly encouraging us to find more ways to make EVE Online more accessible. Advanced players are known to use spreadsheets as a data management tool, so the Excel plug-in is a key step in achieving this goal. Regardless of a player's role, skill or identity in New Eden, the power of this add-on is at your fingertips."
In a press release (via Games Press) CCP Games also pointed out that this is the first plug-in of its kind in the video game market. Though I guess in this case we'll have to wait a while before someone adapts a similar solution.
If you are not interested in tables and charts - on June 13 EVE Online received a major update, titled Viridian. It introduced, among other things, a lot of changes to corporations to further encourage players to cooperate.
