Shadow of Cerberus EVE Community Forum

Second coming of the Comment of the Week

So far, three CSM members that I'm aware of have responded to my posts this week about CSM history, activism, and the CSM "strategy document."  But the most interesting by far is from Alekseyev Karrde..  It wasn't necessarily for what he typed -- he mostly had a point-for-point refutation about a few things that I said -- but for what he didn't type and what's kind of hiding between the lines.

Let me take a couple steps back, because this could get complex.  CCP Unifex has been promoted.  Did you know that?  Me neither.  CCP seems to be keeping it quiet, but Unifex is now some sort of Executive Producer of CCP's games.  Now I don't work for a game design company but I have friends who do and they inform me that Executive Producers are much more about management of a company's whole stable of games rather than single games here and there.  That puts Unifex ultimately in charge of EVE, DUST 514, and World of Darkness.

Guess where his focus is likely to be for a bit.  Hint: not EVE.

Taking over for CCP Unifex as -- on paper -- the "Senior Producer for Release Development" is CCP Ripley, who was in that most recent CCP video dev blog.

That's why she was in that video instead of Unifex, who was in the last one.  As far as I can see, that role functionally makes her the chooser of features that will be included in EVE's next couple of expansions.  Remember, Hans Jagerblitzen tells us that the CSM document came to be born because Ripley was...

[struggling] with hitting the "sweet spot" between Jesus Features and more iterative patch-like expansions in the style of Crucible, Inferno, and Retribution.

Got all that?  Now read this piece of Aleks's comment:

• You put the emphasis on "already" instead of publicly. The irony of trying to make a point about things unsaid and then going on to miss the reason such a document needed to be made in the first place. Things are in flux, persuasion was (and is) needed. Unless you don't LIKE that little list you summed up...
• Likewise, making the assertion this was "giving a warm fuzzy to decisions CCP already made" is laughably inverse to reality.

Is it just me, or does it sure sound like Jesus might be back in da house?

Very interesting comment, Aleks...  Puts a document called "EVE Online Development Strategy" in a whole new light.
Source: Second coming of the Comment of the Week