Enjoy!

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?

So why all of a sudden am I participating in the Blog Banter?  Why the hell should anyone give two shits what I think about it?  Well, I’m guessing it’s because I can’t sleep and if you don’t care about my immeasurable insights into the CSM, then stop reading.

The CSM is a good thing.  Well, let me elaborate on that a little bit.  The IDEA of the CSM is a good thing, the execution of it is another thing entirely.  What we have here is a fledgling organization that is still trying to find its way in the world.  Nobody else has done ANYTHING like this before and it’s unfair of us as players to think that there won’t be bumps and bruises to the process, the egos, and the very fabric of EVE itself.

While I don’t have any hard facts to back up my statements, I do know from personal experience that blazing a trail is never an easy thing and I would be quite surprised if peoples often unrealistic expectations of how things are “supposed to be” lived up to the reality of this very ambitious and progressive project/endeavor.

To be honest I’m stunned that CCP is doing this at all.  Ask any other game designer to do something like this and I’m sure you’ll be told politely that it’s a “good idea” and they will “consider it”, but I’d bet you every ISK in my wallet, and every ship in my hangar that nothing would come of it.

I’m always entertained by those who criticize without coming up with a better option and then DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.  In my opinion if you haven’t served on a CSM you really have no business bitching or complaining at all.  If you see something wrong, get up off your ass and DO SOMETHING to make it better.  The people who have served on the CSM have given up a lot more of their time and effort than any ticket to Iceland is worth, so PLEASE stop using that as a motivation for those serving on the CSM.

I have hope and faith and here is why:  The people serving on the CSM and the people at CCP who sponsor and participate want to make EVE better.  They want this game, this environment, this community to grow and become bigger and better than any of us currently imagine.  We all want EVE to become something more and we are all working towards the same goal.  The place where we differ, is how to get from where we are today, to that amazing greatness of tomorrow.

Things WILL change, things HAVE changed as a result of the CSM.  Hell, they got me a skill queue and if they never do anything else they can ride that win for quite a while in my book.

Here’s my thoughts on the matter.

We play EVE.  EVE is a vicious, cruel place where there are acts of kindness and acts of remorseless vengeance that play out on a daily basis (very similar to the real world).  This is part of what makes EVE the game that it is today.  It’s a sandbox environment and you don’t have GM’s enforcing certain rules about what’s “moral” or “ethical” (other than RMT) and they pretty much let us kids loose in the sandbox…  Where we promptly choose to throw sand at each other, and swing little plastic pails around hoping to bonk the other kids in the nose to make them cry sweet sweet tears.

This is the beauty that is EVE and the hulkageddon event is simply a more organized way for us kids to throw sand at one another.  It’s what makes EVE great and if you don’t like it, get the hell out of the sandbox and go crying to your mother while the rest of us laugh our asses off.

Show notes to come later as a comment from Chad.

Eve trib w 21 grand prize – Lobos
Eve trib w22 tyrannical – Lobos
Eve trib w22 insurance reform – Elora
Eve trib w 17 an industrial guide – Chad
Eve trib w 17 the rehabilitation of the cormorant – Chad
Dev AT8 – Chad
Solar spymaster 42 – Charles

Keep up the comments on the music we need to get that right so everyone can hear. Also I need a superlative to attach to Lobos’s name and would love to hear your ideas.

In a nutshell this guy (www.ViewYonder.com) posted this blog about some opinions of FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) that came out as part of a Gartner paper and Gartner got ahold of it, found out that this guy worked for Cisco and proceeded to put the screws to Cisco to get this guy to lay off their precious papers.

That’s right, a guy writing about his own opinion (who happened to work for Cisco) was catching heat from his employers for a blog.  Eventually Cisco stood behind their employee, but not after a fair bit of sweating and nervousness on the part of ol Steve Chambers.  The post is off his site by the way.

Why am I talking about this?

I think it’s important for people to understand that in this great, wonderful blogosphere and world of social networking, there are real ramifications to speaking your mind and that what you do, and what you say can have both a very good impact on you personally as well as a very bad impact…  that and I almost started a blog about virtualization and VMware, and at this point am very glad I didn’t.

Many of you will probably groan, but I’ve been taking a break from Eve for a while and needed a significant change of pace to re-invigorate me and to drag me back into the game.  So I’ve joined up with a wormhole corp and started moving into W-Space.  So far I’ve learned a lot of new things and really had a great time.  The people are fun, very organized and there’s things to get involved with even if I’m on for just a short time.

I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of me in the next few weeks.

Silicon Buddha

http://www.geekologie.com/2010/04/mmorpg_tactics_how_to_mine_for.php