Fly Reckless – EVE Online

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?

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.