CSM Campaigns

Got my support, think it would be nice to have a new players perspective on the challenges of entering and remaining a part of this game's community and competitions. It's a great game, and there are some nice new player tools, but it can be a rude awakening for folks coming from other game types too which may drive them off :)

Can you confirm rumors that you are, in fact, a female in RL?

This will get you my vote as I am young, impressionable and full of hormones.

Also you seem intelligent and I love your blog.

1 day? Are you editing things?

Also could you change the link in your signature so that it actually links to your www.legacyofacapsuleer.com ? I have noticed your tendency to flame anyone and everyone for their diction, grammar and imperfections so this tends to stand out a little.

Also it is spelled "Yourself"
Thanks.

o7 Thank you for that, Talene, Henry. I appreciate the support. :)

IRL I help run a small business, doing most of the accounting. I have also worked at a CPA firm in the past, and am a hobby economist. Although I am not running on an economics/market platform, it is something I have enjoyed researching and playing with. I understand things like return on investment, the way markets reach their prices, and the sort of cost v value calculations that people make when they are laying their plans and deciding what they want to do.

I've also been a gamer for most of my life, and have played a number of other MMO's in the past where I have been in group leadership and/or support roles. Although there are inter-corp dynamics quite unique to Eve Online, I still have plenty of experience working with diverse groups of gamers, building relationships and helping maintain a cohesive group.

Thanks again for having me on. :)

Edit: forums hate my phone

Your interview is up. You can download the Mp3 here:
http://www.legacyofacapsuleer.com/mp3/CSM9_interview_14_Karen_Galeo.mp3

I will upload the YouTube version tomorrow.

I do hope you are sincere and can certainly see Winthorp's concerns.

Hello there Ms. Galeo,

I've personally communicated with select candidates that I feel are of particular interest over the others, and are worth increased consideration concerning CSM9's vote ballot. In my opinion you certainly fit that description, but I continue to worry that you may fall short this year considering the line up is quite exceptional. Who to vote for is a more difficult choice compared to last year, I will say, and so I give you this opportunity to sway my considerations in the favor of what you believe to be best for Eve Online.

It is a frequent concern of the player base that you have participated in Eve for a short while, meaning you may be too inexperienced to give developers the best possible player insight. Once elected NDA obligations tend to prohibit specific outward communications, and insomuch as you have the developers and the rest of CSM9 available to question, I'm sure it will feel like you have to stand on your own two feet and personal experience. Isolated, in a way. You have been posed with questions of this nature repeatedly, so I will refrain from the same and merely put it out there for you to touch on, should you feel it a worthwhile topic (and not beating a dead horse).

What I will say... It is my strong belief that the CSM and its process should be very careful not to become elitist in nature. Of course, the more insight you have to offer the developers the better but this is only a part of what your responsibilities could be. Fresh blood, a brand new perspective - someone capable of piping up with the n00b point of view - these are qualities that the voters need to keep in mind for the CSM. Incumbents that we already voted in last year with these traits - Ali Aras, Mike Azariah perhaps - lose their grasp on these very traits over time. The potency of their new point of view fades because they aren't n00bs anymore.

Ali Aras was last year's best example, a player of some nine months who had dived head-first into null-sec, player-vs-player combat, fleet command, etc. Highly unusual styles of play for a new player to commit to, and she brought fresh perspective to the table. She also did her utmost to communicate inwardly to CCP and outwardly to the players, essentially wearing the double burden of Secretary and Vice Secretary when a certain member of CSM8 decided to vanish. Google hang outs, blogs, twitters, you name it. She did it. Eve character was the youngest, and she was right up there with the likes of Ripard Teg and Mike Azariah, outwardly communicating. Making sure the player base wasn't in the dark.

That said, she first tried the game some six years ago - high sec carebear mining veldspar and crying when she was can flipped - so she had at the very least recognized the game ages ago, put her two ISK in and left again. So as for my first real question of this post - hooray Esha is getting to the point! Where the heck have you been all this time? Why has Eve not been important enough to you for the last 10-11 years but now suddenly it's super-duper important enough to run for CSM9?

I note you have a blog, and you're making use of that recently. Bravo! Maybe you can follow in the footsteps of retiring CSM8 member Ripard Teg and his bravery concerning where the line of the NDA is drawn and how close to the line you're allowed to place your toes? I hear you're also dipping those toes in the forums - careful they bite in there - so that's also a plus. How else do you plan on committing to your soon-to-be responsibility of outwardly communicating to the player base? Do you use Twitter considering a rather large, vocal portion of the community make their voices heard there? It's essentially an information feed that you plug into your brain when you're following a lot of people, and vice versa can transmit information to a great deal of people swiftly and accurately. Quite the CSM9 weapon to have in the arsenal I'd offer.

Anywho's, tldr; talk talk too much talk questions suggestions.

Thank you for your time. If my theory is correct and you don't make it this year I expect you to take a page out of Mike Azariah's book. Never give up.

*salute*

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and your considerations; that was an excellent post and I will do my best to fully provide answers for you.

At the time I decided to run, I had been following Delcarations of War, and Ali Aras, for a while - but I didn't know she was that new either. I find it heartening, but I do want to make it perfectly clear that I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to be Ali 2.0. She is a wonderful asset to the community and sets a fantastic example, but we must all forge our own path and do things our own way.

You asked where I have been. I touched on it in one of my blog posts - I was too poor to get into Eve back when it launched, and by the time I was into MMOs I had heard enough dark things about Eve Online that it simply did not sound like fun. I myself have never had an account on Something Awful, but I had friends who competed in Photoshop Friday, and friends who are huge fans of Let's Play, and whenever I mentioned Eve they would have stories of Goons ruining people's days and tell me not to play. From other sources, I heard about hundred-dollar spaceships being blown up, people being scammed, corporations being gutted from within for the giggles of it... and, quite frankly, my opinion of Eve five years ago was that it must be some horrible game with horrible people that do nothing but horrible things to each other. I also tried getting into a few other space-themed MMO's, and all of them did fairly poorly; my impression of the entire genre suffered.

With the Star Citizen kickstarter gaining so much press, I decided to try getting into space MMO's again. I have never been a fan of dogfighter games, though; I wanted fleets of battleships, rail cannons volleying smaller ships into pieces. I wanted a game with a large scale, where you could take systems and lay siege to starbases. Eve offered all of that, and I decided I should give it a fair try.

It certainly wasn't love at first undocking, I'll admit. The NPC corp chat was bad enough that I left it hidden most of the time, and several of the people that I met and liked churned out of the game early. Mining was boring, but it seemed like all I could do while I waited for skills to train up. Being lonely and bored is not a good thing for a new player's morale, and I was ready to simply let my account expire after the initial three week .

That changed when our corp was wardec'd and we accelerated our plans to move into w-space. In the span of twenty four hours, I helped move the corp assets into a C2, set up a POS, and packed in everything I'd need for a couple of weeks. It was fun. It was thrilling. We got into a lot of fights with other groups that week, and more in the following months, and that taste of PvP and the independence of living in a wormhole system hooked me - ever since then I've regularly been spending 8 - 10 hours a day on Eve and Eve-related things, learning (and putting into practice) everything I could about the mechanics and metas in w-space and throughout the rest of the game.

The blog has been fun, and is here to stay; if I do make it into the CSM, I will certainly be posting regular updates there, and I am not a stranger to NDA and confidentiality agreements. I'm comfortable talking around the edges of things, although I would absolutely under no circumstances breach the NDA, in letter or in spirit. I'm old enough that I remember the early days of the internet, and so I am rather slow to pick up on things like Facebook or Twitter (I did not have a Twitter account previously) but as you say, it is important to be able to hear what people are saying in any channel you can.

Thanks again for the post, and I hope I continue to hold your interest. o7

I admire your enthusiasm for jumping right in. It's very EVE-like, in the best way.

A few questions:

1) You mention being unimpressed with your experience of EVE as a new player. This is a common enough problem that CCP is actively looking to address it--and specifically, the issue of getting new players hooked into the existing social networks--as we speak. With the perspective of an abject newbie fresh on your mind, what would you tell them if they asked you for feedback? How did you find your corp?

2) You sound like the type of player called an "enabler:" the people who buy, schlep, and set up all the stuff so that everyone else can use it. CCP Seagull, one of the senior producers, said a year or so ago that EVE treats enablers "like ****," and vowed to change that. As a wormhole dweller, you're (getting) used to a particularly maddening kind of logistics, although nullsec large-alliance logistics are a whole different kind of hair-raising. What do you like? What do you not like?

3) How were the tutorials, in-game guides, and suggested further reading helpful? How were they unhelpful? How did the whole arrangement strike you in terms of engagement and effectiveness?