EVE Online has been around for a good long while by now, having first launched back in 2003. While the game makes headlines every so often for its immense space battles with ships that are extremely valuable in real-world currency, its moment-to-moment gameplay is, for the most part, nothing like that.
In fact, jokes that EVE Online is a spreadsheet simulator have been around for as long as the game itself has been available, thanks to its various aspects having a sheet-like UI. Now, however, these jokes may well come to fruition, because CCP Games has announced that EVE Online is partnering with Microsoft to enable full integration with Excel through a special set of extensions for the application.
Microsoft's collaboration with CCP Games comes on the wings of EVE Online's previous Doctor Who crossover, though nobody saw it coming. Once the official plugins are released, players will have the option to export various game data over to Excel directly, with minimum fuss and virtually no complications along the way. Due to the nature of the game's hyper-capitalistic approach to progression, this should allow players to have a better grasp on all of their resources and currencies, streamlining this particular portion of EVE Online along the way.
It's worth pointing out that this news was shared with a sizeable live crowd as part of EVE Fanfest 2022, and the reaction consisted of laughter and ovations, marking this as a stellar move for CCP Games. The company achieved a similarly positive reception just a few weeks back, when the CEO announced that NFTs won't be coming to EVE Online in any way, shape, or form, even though the team had been keeping track of blockchain technology for some time.
For as long as it's been around, this uniquely popular space-based MMO doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. Last year, EVE Online's CEO said it would never die, comparing the game to the Great Wall of China and the Bible. According to him, EVE Online is a "social construct" that does a good job of staying relevant and keeping up with the times, and since it has no real competition to speak of, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
What's particularly impressive is that EVE Online players helped with COVID-19 research when the pandemic was at its deadliest, producing over 300 years' worth of effective analysis tasks that helped real-world research, as they participated in a mini-game that identified cell surface proteins. The upcoming Excel integration could make tasks such as this even more helpful in the long run, and it shows that the developers know their audience very well indeed.
EVE Online is available on PC.