Friday, March 9, 2012

Blog Banter 34: The Rise of the Spaceship Politicians


The polls have just opened for the election of candidates to occupy the 14 seats on the 7th Council of Stellar Management. To kick-start a topical CSM-themed banter, CCP Xhagen - fierce champion of freedom of speech and in his words, "the guy that gets yelled at when the CSM dudes do booboos" - has offered this question:

"How would you like to see the CSM grow, both in terms of player interaction and CCP interaction?"

Banter on.

I did this post last month about the CSM elections. Technically I could have just used that one, but I thought I'd slim it down for this banter....

Basically I proposed that at least half the CSM should be officer positions responsible for a specific area of the game. That way the CSM would be more representative of the player base rather than being mostly null-sec power blocs.

Governments work like this. You have the Minister/Secretary for Education. Why shouldn't the CSM work like that? Have someone on the CSM who knows what they are talking about for each area of the game.

I've been putting in a fair bit of work this election to promote Hans Jagerblitzen. In the last CSM I didn't even vote! This time I using this blog, Twitter, Facebook, forums and in-game channels to promote the only real choice for the discerning low-sec pirate and/or militia member. I've voted for Hans with all three accounts.

Why? Simply because for the first time there is someone who really knows what is wrong with my area of the game (low sec and faction war) and has been working hard for the last year to try and raise the problems to CCP even though he was not on the CSM.

Without a "Low-sec PvP" representative position identified on the CSM, I don't have much of a voice on the CSM. Wouldn't it be good if we all had a voice and not just null-sec? As per last year we'll have the major null-sec power blocs voting in force. The Mittani won the chairman position whilst you were still finishing your breakfast on the 7th March (probably!). But by splitting positions into areas representing a different player-base, would we get a broader selection of player types?

So for player interaction:-

I want to see roles defined within the CSM so that the vast majority of players in Eve Online has a defined CSM representative that they can go to and they actually know what the player is talking about.

For CCP Interaction it's the same.

If you have plans for faction war there is an obvious choice who you need to speak to on CSM6.... nobody. Because nobody on CSM6 knows much about faction war so when plans for faction war are talked about CCP get "You always break null-sec sov when you try to fix it, so try it on FW first!". If the CSM was broken up into roles, the whole of the CSM could be asked questions, but the representative for that particular area or speciality should be listened to carefully. There may be little things that the devs could go direct to the right representative for feedback. A quick email, Skype or even sit down for 10 minutes during one of their visits to Iceland.


In summary:-

For player interaction - Defined CSM representatives by area of space and/or game-play type would cover the entire player-base better and give a voice for all.

For CCP interaction - Defined CSM representatives by area of space and/or game-play type would cover the entire player-base better and give better sounding-board.


P.S. Yes, I don't know how this would work in practice and how the system could be abused, this is just a starting point!

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