EVE General Discussion

With respect to people banging on about blocs and grr goons and such... Also with respect to the diversity of the CSM9 slate: what diversity do you think is missing from the CSM?

We have, to my knowledge:

2 lo-sec people (Sugar Kyle, Major Silva)
3 hi sec people (Mike Azariah, Steve Ronuken, Mangala Solaris)
3 science/industry people (Mynnna, Sugar Kyle, Steve Ronuken)
3 new player people (Ali Aras, Sugar Kyle, Matias Otero)
2 community people (Xander, DJ Funkybacon)
1 PvE person (Mike Azariah)
5 0.0 sov people, including 1 non bloc (Mynnna, Progodlegend, Sion, Corebloodbrothers, Xander Poena)
1 W-space person (corbexx)
1 3rd party app/API person (Steve Ronuken)

And the CSM9 members could probably add several more secondary specialised areas of expertise in addition to what I have hastily compiled there. Mynnna is knowledgeable in medium ship PvP, for instance. Mike flies with Bombers Bar and knows a fair bit about stealth bombers. And so on.

The "0.0 sov people" could actually be broken down further; mynnna is a trade/industry specialist, Progod is a fleet commander, Sion is a diplomat, Corebloodbrothers is from CVA (non bloc) and Xander operates in game as a low level grunt member: "an ordinary guy" - so each brings a widely different and useful perspective.

Likewise the "industry slate" has 1 0.0 person, 1 lo-sec person and 1 hi-sec person. Ideal!

Likewise the "hi-sec slate" has 1 science & industry person, one PvE person and 1 PvP person.

I won't claim that the spread of expertise is perfect, but you know, I think it's pretty damb good If CSM9 puts in the hours that CSM8 did, I don't see any reason why we the players can't consider ourselves as well represented to CCP as we could reasonably expect to be.

At least one former CSM, Malcanis, and one current, me, have read you post and likely your blog as well.

Turnout was poor. Agreed. I'd love to know how to change that. As people have pointed out . . . only a small percentage of the player base give a damn or even know about the elections. They see it as someone elses gameplay, not directly impacting their own play. If they know about it at all.

If you took everything that was written here as gospel then you have another reason not to vote . . . the 'CSM is useless/PR stunt' crew.

If you went to the CSM panel at Fanfest you would have seen the a bit more than half of the people who went to that panel claimed to not have voted. And they were voluntarily attending a panel on a political body that they could not be bothered to vote for.

I'd say a bigger ad in the launcher but some players even bypass that, if they can. As for most of the rest of the players? It is just background noise and ignored.

Organizations organize and get their members to vote. It is not in their best interests to 'get out the vote' outside of their own boundaries as that would dilute their effectiveness. So it is up to more independent sourcing to motivate the electorate. This most recent election saw a mass emailing targetting the new players.

In the end it comes down to what CCP Leeloo had to say . . .



I agree with her and look forward to seeing what success we have.

m

I've said it a bunch of times, but it bears repeating: it is a mistake to think of "CCP" as a homegenous, totally unified entity. CCP is composed of numerous sections and within those, dev teams. Some co-ordinate with the CSM more, others less so. Some not at all. That's their choice. (And sometimes it's even appropriate. What can the CSM say to Gridlock for instance, that ordinary players can't? Everyone wants better performance as soon as possible, the end.)

Post Somergate, marketing have been a little more communicative. I'll shout out David Reid in particular for leading that. I suspect he was perhaps a little surprised by the outlook of the CSM when he met us in January, but I think pleasantly so.

"We feel that this is due to a lack of awareness about the CSMs form and function"

Wow, empty words.

Hey, look! We realized that the fact why nobody cares is because nobody knows or gives a damn!

D'uuuhhh ....



You are no people-persons.



Absolutely not. In no way or form.
Personally, I only know the CSM from the forums.
I bet that doesn't even ring a bell, right?



CCP sucks at this and they're clueless about it.
They'll address it in their disconnected ways as usual.


You suck at this, because you're simply no people-persons.
You may be good at other things, sure! And yes, you have your voters ... absolutely!


Does that make you people-persons? Hell no!
Voter turnout is ridiculously low.

Does any of you understand why?

No!


It's hilarious for me to think about how the CSM and CCP sit around
with smoking heads thinking about how to "solve" this issue.




Why not try me instead? (:

So the point of your prose verse is what? That the CSM is unpopular because you're not on it? Or what?

In my experience, in this community, you don't have to be interested in the CSM to complain that the sky isn't blue/yellow/red/black enough or to have an opinion on a wide variety of things that don't effect you.

This I think is the key issue.

People tend to either complain that the CSM is useless, has no power and can't change anything, or complain that the CSM is has almost ultimate powers and is controlled by groups that only push their own agendas.

The fact is that the CSM is a (possibly a bit glorified) customer focus group.

Just like the ones used by basicly every single mass market developer of any form of software.

Used by developers to test ideas on, to bounce concepts with and to ask for new ideas.

The big difference with the CSM is that CCP allows the users to select the group, tags the individual members and encourage users to interact with the members of the group.

And lately, letting the focus group to be more tightly integrated in the development process than most normal focus groups.

But yet they can yell at the devs until their voices give in or file carefully formed documents and spreadsheets until they run out of bandwidth.

All decisions are taken by the devs, or more correctly by the executive producer(s).

The importance of voting and help selecting the group you want is that they can help CCP make the correct decisions.

But they have the 'political' power of a citizens council in an absolute dictatorship ;)

people keep assuming this is about me. my interest is purely scholarly and to start a blog to help kill some of my freetime...

Thank you for replying

Sadly I couldn't attend fan fest due to a wedding date conflict but I have watched all the posted videos after the fact and the keynotes live.

I'm looking forward to seeing what this CSM does because it is an interesting group of people. I went about this start to try and shove the CSM to get the CCP to consider what political atrophy the csm has endured and try and fix that in the eyes of the player base.

As Far as fixing voter turn out potentially adding a gift for voting mentioned earlier in comments might drive the voting up and seed common non player made items.

I added in research regarding the voter turnout in 2008 for the US presidential elections and it was interesting to see when people associate "change" with both candidates the voter base is more likely to get out to vote when needed.

Potentially there are other more subtext ways of promoting CSM from CCP. for instance stating in releace info "from CSM requests and discussions we felt x was a good way to go" making it seem like the 2 are coordinated and gives lots of exposure to CSM in a positive way.

here is the advantage of the CSM, although any player can start a conversation on the forums, the CSM can start a conversation and have devs actively listening to why without having to sift through the trolls to find the good ideas.

simply put devs can ignore input from the forums its difficult to ignore a board of people that all say there is an issue and can discuss the issue in a two way conversation with the devs.

I have to respond to a post a few up from here about bashing power blocs if cfc n3 couldn't round up enough votes I would be seriously conserned.

The NDA is more so about restrictions on the flow of information. Ccp uses this a shield to protect them from releasing the really bad ideas. But also from releasing info til it is ready for the public. Otherwise having a csm would be the most profitable business in eve.

I think and this is in no way related to comments before that ccp is too afraid to make mistakes publicly. Now let me step back and present the ideas forum where the player base openly discusses some of the worst. Ideas. Ever. But there is also some buried gold in those posts somewhere. Just a matter of finding it. I don't think the player base would be entirely against hearing a bad idea or two then getting the credit for shooting it down thselves. Or giving the csm credit for downing the bad idea.

The key is activating the player base. Ccp already has the praise of the community for listening to the players wants. Showing a more direct connection to players ideas and release content may aid in gaining back the votes