Blog Banter 34: The Rise of the Spaceship Politicians

This entry has been written from an ‘out of character’ point of view to discuss EVE’s development.

In reply to Blog Banter 34: The Rise of the Spaceship Politicians.  The question this time around is;

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

Well, I’m late to the party on this one a little as the polls are closed, the results are in and we already have the first scandal of CSM7 under way.  I am however going to ignore ‘what The Mittani did’ as its not really very relevant here.  Suffice to say I didn’t vote for him because I dislike the persona he presents to the world, regardless of how much an act it may or may not be.  That hasn’t changed and I’m not even a little surprised by the whole thing.

Anyway.  CSM6 for me was the most successful CSM to date and has finally cemented the whole process as a credible endeavour in the eyes of a large chunk of the community.  However, I do not feel that it was a very representative selection of the wider playerbase.  Null sec interests were heavily presented, the other areas of the game much less so.

CCP have given a couple of strong indicators that they share that concern, as I recall Hilmar saying in an interview (somewhere) that he felt CSM6 was ‘overly concerned with a single playstyle’.  The CSM needs to become more diverse in its representation, but retain the organised approach CSM6 apparently took into meetings with CCP.

A major issue with CSM elections is that null sec voting blocs have a natural advantage in championing their own candidates.  The largest player groups are found in null sec and vote in bulk for the candidates they know best; leading to an inevitable majority for null sec.  Earlier CSM’s probably had less of an issue with this as interest in the position was lower than today, with fewer votes being cast it was easier for candidates from smaller groups to get in.

This time around CCP experimented with having all candidates go through a ‘primary’ of having to gain 100 ‘likes’ on the forum in order to get their names on the ballot paper.  The principle behind this was to reduce the number of candidates down to a more manageable level come the voting, reducing the numbers of ‘wasted votes’.  It was the right idea, but not the right implementation.

I hope that next time around CCP will come through with a more robust system where each account can only place a single vote.  The lack of restrictions on ‘likes’ meant that anyone could ‘like’ as many candidates as they wanted to, watering down the results and adding more candidates to the voting; leading to those wasted votes again.

Goonswarm, and The Mittani, made no secret of their intentional ‘trolling’ of the system, which was a tactic that doubtless played to their advantage.  The more outsider candidates there are, the less chance of any credible challenge being made to The Mittani’s chairmanship. I don;t think it would have changed anything, but there you go.  😉

I hope that CSM7 does prove to be a more diverse group, and I hope that CCP refine their initiative for the next election with a more meaningful filtering system that delivers a more ‘focused’ election on only the more credible candidates.