Hilmar Pétursson is CEO of CCP Games, creators of EVE Online—one of the longest-running MMOs in gaming history. Before CCP, Hilmar worked at Oz Interactive in the mid-90s, building metaverse concepts inspired by Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash, decades before it became a Silicon Valley buzzword. We talk about those early experiments, why they led to EVE's player-driven economy and hands-off governance, the decision that nearly killed CCP but defined the game's ethos, and why they're open-sourcing the Carbon engine to create virtual worlds that could last forever.