The CSM election season is in full swing, with 53 candidates making campaign posts in the CSM campaign section of the EVE Online forums. How do I know? Because I've made 53 pages for CSM Wire, which you can access by clicking on the CSM Wire button underneath the title of the blog. But even that is understating the number of potential candidates. In an interview done with Cap Stable, CCP Leeloo stated that approximately 100 players had submitted applications to run in the CSM 10 election that begins on 25 February.
One hundred candidates? Probably not. Apparently, about a third of the applicants are not submitting scans of their passports. That will knock the number down to maybe 70. That's still a lot, though.
I think that the schedule that CCP Leeloo laid out really will play havoc with the plans of the "EVE media". I think a lot of people didn't want to waste time on joke candidates so didn't want to begin their coverage until after the official list came out. But with CCP Leeloo announcing the list is coming out on 23 February, that just leaves two days for them to do analysis. Sure, the voting takes place from 25 February to 10 March, but I expect the majority of the voting to take place on the first day. That means those candidates who made an effort to publicize themselves early will have a huge advantage. Unless, of course, a candidate is relying on a bloc in which people just hand out a link to use to vote the straight party line. In that case, no publicity is needed.
I should add one other fact. The campaign thread is full of English speaking candidates, with a few candidates from France and Germany sprinkled in. Where are the Russians? Probably on their own forums organizing themselves. I expect that in CSM 10, unlike the current body, CCP Leeloo will not be the only Russian in the CSM Skype channels.
We still have two weeks to go until the election starts and I'm already tired. As one of the talking heads appearing on the Cap Stable CSM X analysis shows, I've listened to all the interviews the Cap Stable crew have published. I think the total right now is 24, along with the interview with CCP Leeloo and CCP Falcon and 4 analysis shows. That doesn't include an additional 15 interviews they have either planned or are in the process of editing. For those candidates who have not scheduled an interview yet, sorry. The Cap Stable crew stopped taking interview requests last Friday. For those who think that's not fair, Cap Stable put out their first call for candidates to request an interview on 1 December and published the first interview with Borat Guereen on 29 December. If a candidate wasn't organized enough to put in a request before that, well, maybe next year.
Oh, and my hats off to the Cap Stable crew. I'll probably give them a shout out once or twice more before the whole process concludes. They, along with Marc Scaurus on Just For Crits, have produced the most information in the form of interviews that we have today.
Notice I didn't concentrate on the candidates themselves? You can get some of my views by listening to the analysis shows, but I'm so caught up in the process of pumping out information, even in the limited role I play, that I haven't taken time to really evaluate all the candidates. Perhaps that's a post I can make on the 24th.
I look forward to the actual amount of votes cast being publicized again, not who gets in. Are we going to see a significant move up from the previous disaster, or have much of the voting base realized the entire system is a mess, with the vested interests who want to maintain the status quo still controlling the CSM?
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I think that perhaps CCP has also realized the lack of relevancy of the CSM, or at the very least the CSM's biases are hurting overall subscription. Examine how many of the null sec cartel reps are whined about how CCP has bypassed the CSM, or handed them changes with no time to object. I think that CCP has figured out listening to the CSM as a major stakeholder of the ENTIRE Eve community is silly, and if CCP wants to grow the sub base, it is time to use a lot more common sense (aka Jump Drive nerf, AWOX nerf, etc).
So it will be interesting to see how many players actually vote for a group that may be becoming more toothless and irrelevant by the day.
Yet oddly, when measured over time, they are not becoming more toothless and irrelevant by the day. But it's an easy claim to make in the absence of higher-quality info released to the playerbase. To say the CSM is itself responsible for hurting overall subscriptions is just false. Sadly, I don't think there is any way of convincing anyone from the permanent naysayer crowd of that fact. It's not perfect or all that it can be, but its not irrelevant either. What it is is opaque to most players who want to know more. For the rest, those who are so anti-CSM or just don't give a shit to begin with, I'm not sure much can be done. They are pretty much lost causes. Bitterness and apathy are hard to overcome.
ReplyDeletePerhaps my post was poorly written.
ReplyDeleteCSM 7 and 8 had major impact on the game, as the cartels worked hand in hand with a number of devs to make the game as profitable as possible for said cartels.
Then along came the drop in subs. With that we had, according to the Goon website, the exit of 4 C-level exec's at CCP, the hiring of an EA exec, and then the subsequent nerfs to null sec cartel power bases. And the screaming as mentioned in my first post.
All of which occurred during CSM 9's tenure.CSM 9 was not responsible for these events. They merely inherited them. But it sure seems that the peak of CSM power has passed, as some semblance of fiscal sanity has taken hold at CCP, and they now realize that catering to the minority of the player base is bad for business. That means the CSM will continue to lose relevance.