CSM Campaigns

This man talked to me for a while about Eve one time, and what he said made sense.

Also, I'm in NCdot so I guess we're supposed to be enemies or something? F**k that noise; he'll be high on my ticket.

If I vote for you, will you promise to make CFC leadership stop using these ******* dumbass siegefleets?

I want to fly a real ship.



oh **** you're responsible for it aren't you

okay undo it we have caps now

Pffft. He doesn't point out that both CSM candidates for the CFC members are part of the Cabal. Clearly there must be causation!

i heartily endorse this event or product

I'm already sad that I'm not going to be there for EDU this year. You guys put on a great event, and I certainly had a blast. Of more immediate concern though is surviving the shift from the summer down there to the winter up here. So cold.



You're essentially asking a space politician why he is standing for an election. The vast bulk of what I do is political, and the CSM is at least in part a political entity. Beyond that, essentially what I do is space project management: Matching the right people with jobs they enjoy doing and that we need done, making sure people have the tools they need, ensuring follow through, building consensus, that sort of thing. Perhaps you see the role of CSM differently than I, but I'm quite certain that such skills will be useful.



What if I promise to lead a siege fleet instead? I'm sure that would end in hilarity. Or tears. Maybe both.




I think it important to have someone on the CSM who is familiar with the complex interactions of people, events, and mechanics that serve to give nullsec its distinct flavor. That and, as many others have said, EVE as a game is at a place that legitimately worries me as a player. Since I enjoy fixing things and helping other people fix things, I figure that perhaps my first hand knowledge of what drives alliances in nullsec will prove to be a useful asset in making the game better for everyone, goons included.

Possibly. Not sure. Might be asking a large dog why he's barking so loud. I don't know Goon politics in the slightest. Were you elected before?



I do see the role of CSM differently. I feel as though you are saying your qualifications as a writer and dispatcher of messages ensure that you would make an excellent messenger. You might find it more natural to stick to ruling than serving.

While I appreciate the need for candidates to acquire labels and build constituencies for backing, I have a natural constituency already. I'm a goon running as a goon candidate who happens to metagame. So it isn't what I'm running on particularly, it is just what my background is and informs the way I play the game.

As I said, I don't think EVE is in a particularly good place, at least in 0.0. In the years I've been doing this, space politics has gone from a highly complex minefield of dynamic variables to a largely predictable and comparatively boring landscape. The major players haven't changed really at all, they've perhaps acquired new alliance or corp tags, but the same battles have been playing out amongst the same people for years now. The trend is toward consolidation of power, and the elimination of diversity of smaller, newer entities. The more power consolidates, the less room there is for genuine surprise, and the less room there is for significant new entities to make their mark on the game.

In general, there are two major lines of thought on this. The first is that coalitions are ruining the game. The second is that EVE itself is broken.

There's no question that coalitions have changed the game. But if not the CFC, another entity would eventually fill that particular role because that is currently how the game is incentivized and what mechanics promote. What the CFC embodies is indeed bad for the game in the long run, unquestionably. This is generally the point where I get asked "okay, but aren't you responsible for this? Couldn't you just reset people for fights an hooray things would be fun again?"

The answer is yes, I'm certainly responsible, at least in part, for this. But my responsibility is to our membership, and to make sure they have a place in EVE to have fun with Goons in Space. There is no policy I could change, no decision that I could make, that wouldn't necessitate the sacrifice of the well-being of goons so that someone else might get some kind of fleeting joy at our expense. That's not leadership. More importantly, all that would accomplish is kicking that particular can down the road until someone else found the same measure of success that we did, which would happen sooner rather than later. Remember, New Eden is an extremely hostile environment, and the evolutionary pressures found in 0.0 are pressure cooker that weed out all but the hardiest. Mixed metaphor there, but it holds.

So the answer then, if you buy the reasoning above, is that coalitions would have come about and survived because of, not in spite of, mechanics and the metagame. Again, if EVE selects for the strongest, the the casual arrow here is pretty clear. If the mechanics didn't demand or reward coalition type game play, coalitions would not exist. They'd have been fallen like so many other failed experiments in EVE.

The problem then is rooted in mechanics, incentives, and risks. The mechanics set a prohibitively high bar for the entry of more new players into 0.0. There's no real incentive, save ego, to hold space. The risks are simply too high to justify the gamble, given the rewards. This sets up a self perpetuating cycle of n+1 where the big get bigger, and the small are either assimilated or bulldozed.

Goonfleet could never have come to be in the current environment of EVE. We were lucky to have the chance to grow in a linear fashion, to make mistakes, and to slowly learn the lessons that are required to make a capable alliance. Now though, someone trying to do the same would run up into one of the major blocs regardless of where they turn. And there is no compelling reason for a major bloc to gamble already scarce resources on newer players instead of funneling them into the endless maw that is n+1.

This is why the meta of null is slowing down. The few major players that are left have worked with each other for years, know what to expect, and tend to have similar goals. Sov war is too demanding and expensive to indulge in for sport, and there's no compelling reason to fight over space that at best provides marginal additional benefit to already sprawling empires. New and aspiring space tyrants can't compete with these well established groups, and the incentives even if they could compete don't justify the required risk.

Montolio and TEST are the case study of what I mean by all of this. They were a new player in 0.0, made waves, got brought into a coalition, flourished, and founded their own coalition. They took space, fought well, and had a lot of fun along the way. But then, presumably feeling penned in by the restrictions of running a coalition, dissolved what they had worked hard to build. And inexplicably afterward, their leadership decided to break a diplomatic deal with us, which brought the full weight of our entire coalition down upon them. Had TEST leadership made a few different and more pragmatic leadership calls then, they'd still hold space and likely would have taken the bulk of the south. But they didn't make those pragmatic leadership calls, and opted instead to try to have fun on their own terms.

So if a former coalition leader and megacorp can't retake sov in today's EVE, what chance do any new people have?

My intent was to imply that I don't think you are going to break the NDA. Maybe I did not imply hard enough. I, probably naively, assume that you wouldn't even run if you weren't sure you could resist the temptaion to talk. I suppose my real question is, do you have the willingness to recuse yourself from Coalition or Diplomatic talks if your CSM knowledge would color your decisions?

Sion is a very relaxed and considered chap. He'll make a great CSM.

Coming from that point-of-view, what would your major concerns and/or wishes be that you would express during a hypothetical meeting where CCP present you their vision for new space that can be reached via player-built stargates?