Beitrag von: Aura am September 30, 2013, 03:07:20 Vormittag
I'm not disrespecting their intentions. I think they accepted their jobs, and have proceeded to do their jobs, with the very best intentions. The welfare of the game is at the heart of everything they do.
As an organization that is supposed to represent the concerns of the players, I feel the CSM falls entirely flat. Not because our representatives aren't trying their damnedest to represent us, but rather how CCP uses the CSM to further their own designs and agendas.
Most CSM members come into their positions feeling quite strongly about where the game could be improved. Those are generally pre-existing areas of the game with mechanics that could be made better. Nullsec sovereignty mechanics, for instance. Or the POS subsystem. Or corporate role mechanics. The CSM come into their jobs, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, sure that CCP will listen to their concerns, because their concerns are the concerns of the playerbase. And CCP exists only at the whim of the playerbase.
And CCP does listen. Sitting there silently, attentively, nodding at everything the new recruits of the CSM have to say. "Yep. Yep. Sure. Yep."
Then CCP goes away for a time. And then they come back with what they intend to work on for the next expansion. And most of this stuff are new features, which don't have much to do with what the CSM was concerned about. Radial menus. Exploration mini-games. Redesigns of character selection screens. There might be a couple of little things mixed in there, that sort of address a few pixels of the high-def image of concerns that the CSM had.
(Take Yurts. I'd like to think this is the first step towards a modular POS system. I really would like to believe that. I'd like to believe that CCP paid attention to a major, long-standing CSM concern. But there's a good chance that Yurts are anything but that. That all Yurts are is exactly what they're called "personal mobile structures." That there is no grander scheme beyond that. That POSes will continue to be broken for many years to come, and any feature you'd like to see from a POS will have to be served only at the personal level via Yurts.)
What the CSM becomes at this point is a rubber-stamp on these new features. The CSM gets to weigh in with some opinions and concerns, of which CCP does listen, does take some of that feedback into account. Then the CSM comes back to the masses, tells us all how instrumental in the process they've been. Unfortunately, little of what has been rubber-stamped has anything to do with the concerns the CSM brought to CCP initially.
In return for the privilege of this look behind the scenes, the ability to give feedback on features that nobody really asked for, the CSM is supposed to tell us all, before announcements are made, that they're reviewing exciting new features they wish they could tell us about. And if you look at most of the tweets and blog and forum posts from CSM members pre-Rubicon announcement, you'll see a lot of that. A lot of stuff they're excited about and that we're going to love.
The CSM keeps us invested in-between expansions. And if we're not particularly excited about a particular expansion, well the CSM is there to start telling us how incredible the features in the next expansion will be. And so on and so forth.
The problem is that CCP uses the CSM as not much more than a public relations and marketing tool. I think the CSM plays into this unknowingly, most of the time.
In terms of marketing, look to the Summer Summit. There was an entire session devoted to the EVE Online Collector's Edition. It was ostensibly called Session Sixteen: Sales and Marketing, but as Ripard Teg described the session, "Unsurprisingly, a lot of the focus of this session was [on the] EVE Collector's Edition." He then went on to describe the collector's edition as "undeniably awesome" and "in-cred-ible." Ripard even describes the session as a product pitch. The CSM fulfills its purposes, selling EVE to the players they represent. The collector's edition may indeed be awesome, but is that the CSM's role, to upsell CCP products? (I bought my copy of the collector's edition the day it was announced, as my disclosure on the item.)
The current role of the CSM, whether they realize it or not, is to sell the playerbase on this three-year (or five-year) roadmap. They're supposed to keep us invested in what is to come, even though few people have the foggiest idea what is to come. I'd be surprised if the CSM has been given concrete plans, and not simply something slightly less vague than what the players have been fed via Fanfest and Rubicon streams.
In terms of public relations, take the Somer Blink scandal. The CSM was not consulted on CCP's plans of giving Somer Blink unique prizes to offer through its for-profit service. Bypassing the CSM was not a mistake. If it were a mistake, then folks like CCP Navigator, CCP Manifest and CCP Pokethulu would be monumentally stupid people. I think those guys are anything but stupid, rather exceptionally bright. They knew exactly how the CSM would react to their partnership with Somer Blink. To have approached the CSM first would have denied them the ability to claim ignorance afterwards. Somer Blink is not an insignificant revenue stream for CCP Games, they encourage increased sales of game time codes. By giving unique items to Somer, it brings more eyes to that service, which in turn will drive more sales of GTCs. (As disclosure, in the past I've bought all my game time codes via Somer Blink, their blink credits for time codes scheme works.)
The best way to approach the Somer Blink issue was to avoid the CSM. CCP knew there would be a player outcry afterwards. Again, we're not talking clueless stupid people here. The Pokethulus, the Manifests, the Navigators, they are all quite bright. How you turn Somer Blink into a double-win is you let the player outrage grow to a certain point, you let the CSM do their thing as representatives, you let them write their open letter to CCP. And then you respond. With the right amount of shame and apologetic behaviour for the grave mistake, yada yada yada. The player reaction is then predictable, "OMG! CCP are listening to our concerns! Best company ever!"
CCP is a pretty good company. Made better because the playerbase has become their fiddle. Incarna has taught them a few valuable lessons in manipulation. The CSM helps greatly and unknowingly in that.
The CSM is supposed to serve the players. But in reality the CSM very much serves CCP, whether the CSM realizes it or not. And that's why the CSM is useless. Not because of the good intentions and objectives of the representatives, rather because CCP has manipulated them into public relations and marketing tools.
Source: The CSM Is Useless (Not What You Think) (http://)
Beitrag von: Tahnil am September 30, 2013, 02:57:26 Nachmittag