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CCP has just flicked a very important switch. Today - shortly before this article was published - the Icelandic company's PlayStation 3 shooter Dust 514 entered open beta testing, which for a free-to-play game like this is as good as a soft launch. It's the moment the game's digital doors are thrown open to the public. Although CCP is 15 years old, this is only its second game launch. It's a big day.The developer's head office is a modernist cube clinging to the edge of the wind-scoured fishing harbour of Iceland's capital Reykjavik, which clings to the edge of this sparse, bleakly beautiful volcanic island, which clings to the edge of the North Atlantic ocean and - it feels like - the civilised world. The top floor, with its lovely views of the city and the sea, was added after CCP ran out of space, and when the Arctic gale blasts in you can feel the whole loose structure flex.
Although it's nicely designed and furnished in the Nordic taste (raw materials, straight lines, fairy lights) it has a hint of the prefab about it - something it shares with many buildings in Iceland, where pretty painted cottages turn out to be made out of corrugated sheet metal. There's a vague sense of impermanence about everything here. It's as if, at any point, this 1000-year-old Norse settlement might simply call it a day, pack up and leave. Iceland is one of those places on Earth that still feels like a frontier, its inhabitants like frontiersmen. And that word describes CCP itself very well.
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