Blog Banter #19: War has come to EVE

Welcome to the nineteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This months topic comes to us from @evepress, who he asks: The CSM: CCP's Meta Game? The CSM, an EVE players voice to CCP. Right? In the grand scheme of things yes, the players bring up issues and the CSM presents them to CCP. But in its current iteration the CSM was supposed to be given small authority to assign CCP assets to projects that the CSM thought needed work on. As it has come out, this was not the case. So fellow bloggers, is the CSM worth it, has the CSM improved the game in any way, or is it just a well thought out scam by CCP to give us players a false sense of input in the game? What's your take?

Wow, my first installment into the blog banter and it is about a topic was trying my best not to talk about much ... the CSM.

Personally I think that the CSM is really a victim of it's own success. For the first few CSMs nobody really took it seriously. It was correctly assumed that the CSM was just a PR move from CCP to be used in marketing and to defuse some of the T20 scandal. CCP spun the CSM as an innovative and unique concept where players have input into the development process. It made for great marketing and drew additional players to EVE while helping to retain old ones.

The first two expansions out in the CSM era were quite good and well received. The Quantum Rise and Apocrypha were both excellent expansions that fixed issues and added great new content. However then came Dominion with its fleet fight crippling lag and finally Tyrannis with its near total lack of interesting features. Players became unhappy and the CSM was purpose built for them to vent their frustrations.

The meeting minutes from the last CSM summit reveal a disaster. Basically the CSM asked CCP to fix problems that exist in the game. CCP responded by saying that they were going to concentrate instead on developing new features.

In response to the summit there was a dev-blog from CCP-Zulu outlining the current development priorities of CCP and the resources dedicated to them. Like the CSM summit this was mostly a song and dance about how great the new features we are working on are going to be and that there are no resources to spend on fixing old features. That the development team at CCP thought that the post would lower tensions is an indication of just how out of touch they are with the player base.

War has come to EVE. But it is not war between players, but war between CCP and the players.

Who will win?

These are the two options:
1. If the players loose then players stop paying CCP $180 per year and CCP looses. :(
2. If the players win then CCP keeps getting $180 per year per account so CCP wins. :)

Should be an easy choice for CCP but the IT industry is littered with the corpses of companies who chose option one. let's hope that CCP does not make the same mistake.

See other participants:

1. Growing Pains | CrazyKinux's Musing
2. CSM: Hoax or Serious Business? « Lost in New Eden
3. CSM-Power to the people or puppets of CCP « A whole lot of Yarrrr!!!
4. Gaming the CSM | A Mule in EvE
5. A Taste Of Democracy | StarFleet Comms
6. CSM: Player Power or Paper Tiger? | I Am Keith Neilson
7. Governance Thrash Redux? « The Ralpha Dogs
8. CCP Doesn’t Care: Blog Banter 19 « OMG! You're a Chick?!
9. The Cataclysmic Variable: It's Crunch Time!
10. The 19th EVE Blog Banter is upon us… and about the CSM and CCP | Victoria Aut Mors
11. CSM: Lame Duck from the beginning?
12. Blog Banter #19 <<>
13. Be careful what you say, Roc « Roc’s Ramblings
14. Exchange Fraking Phone Numbers « Scrap Metal & Faction Ammo
15. Blog Banter #19: Assumptions
16. More to come...