CSM Summit – June 2010 – Friday

After a nice lunch at CCP with the CSM and a couple of Devs, the meetings got down to brass tacks.I had the opportunity to sit in on three discussions on Friday afternoon before having to come away, I honestly wish I could have spared the time to sit in on more. I would include more photos but they would just look exactly the same as theose I took on Thursday. I have included a pic of a sunset at the end of the post though, it was very pretty.

The first was more of an impromptu presentation on network theory and how it applies to EVE from CCP Warlock. Very interesting stuff about distributed computing, network topologies, information carrying limits, and how these complex mathematical subjects apply to something like EVE. It is touted around that EVE runs on a single server, this is technically untrue, though from the client side it may look like being the case.

EVE actually runs on a networked cluster of 200 servers, and if you want to include the clients in that calculation you could feasibly say that EVE runs on over 60,000 computers. This is a complex thing to manage and while how to manage it is something CCP are constantly evaluating and thinking about. This presentation demonstrated that there is some pretty high level thinking going on at CCP about the basic building blocks of what they are doing. CCP Warlock has a masters and doctorate from MIT, and evidently thinks a lot about how the network of machines that makes up TQ communicates and works at the fundamental mathematical level. The CSM asked for a dev blog from CCP warlock at some point in the future and was told that this was a definite possibility.

The next discussion was with the UI team. As we all are undoubtedly aware EVE’s UI is in need of work, be it in the form of little tweaks here and there which make it more intuitive, or a wholesale overhaul of the entire UI. A theme started to make itself known in this meeting which was also apparent in the meetings I was privy to yesterday, though not as close to the surface. The UI team agreed that there were many things that they would like to do to the UI, but that due to resource constraints  they were unable to dedicate time to them.

The CSM put forward ideas regarding a modular UI which only presents the information directly relevant to the player’s current activity as one way, the removal of modal windows (that you need to action before doing being able to do anything else) was also put forward as a small fix, but there was little in the way of commitment one way or the other to making these changes from CCP.

The next meeting was ostensibly about the corporation management system and the application of grantable roles and titles which did not need director status within the corporation. During this meeting the underlying tensions between the CSM and CCP made themselves felt and it became a more general discussion of the path that CCP is taking with the game.

Basically the CSM’s point was that CCP was wrong to be devoting their entire development resources towards big new features whilst leaving issues that have been brought up by them time and again in the backlog. It was admitted by those representatives of CCP in the meeting that there were loads of things that the CSM had raised that they knew needed fixed, but that because new features were being given priority they had no development time left to devote to them.

I got the feeling, and indeed it was explicitly stated by the meeting moderator, that this frustration was something that had been expressed in previous meetings. With the CSM raising the issues that the players had brought to them, CCP agreeing that these are valid issues but not really being able to say yes or no to fixing them.

Various members of the CSM made the point that player retention should be the primary goal of CCP with regards to EVE Online, over and above gaining new players.  Flaws in the core of EVE, the portions of EVE that all players must use in order to access the various facets of gameplay that they prefer (Factional Warfare, Mining, PvP, etc), could potentially prevent said players from playing the game the way they wanted to, thus leading them to leave the game. This point was conceded and CCP Xhagen made the point that as a company CCP was moving from a strategy which relied on gaining new players to one which was focussed on retention , but that such a transition would take time.

Basically what it boiled down to was that if CCP wanted the CSM process to gain momentum among the playerbase they would have to give way on a few minor fixes, so that players had demonstrable proof that the process was worth participating in. As was evident from the survey I performed, a great many players hold the view that the CSM is a waste of time as CCP don’t listen.

As I see it the main problem that the CSM process has with regards to turnout is convincing the players that it is really worth their time to vote, the point was made by a few delegates that if there are small fixes that can be made which will greatly improve the user experience the value of these fixes in terms of player retention and faith in the CSM process would far outweigh the time needed to implement them.

As an observer I could see that the CSM had found a lot of the responses they had received from CCP over the three days frustrating. The point was also well made that communication between CCP and the CSM with regards to the status of issues raised was somewhat lacking.

After three days of meetings it was easier to see the frustration in the CSM with CCP’s intransigence, it was also easy to see that no amount of stamping of feet and repetition of arguments was going to achieve anything. The primary goal, as I have seen it, of this CSM Summit was to put across how much more important the little fixes and development of features introduced in the past was to the playerbase, over and above the introduction of new features.

After that meeting a timeout was called and everyone was allowed to relax and unwind for a few minutes before the next meeting began. I took the opportunity to thank the CSM for allowing me the opportunity to sit in and get a fly-on-the-wall view of how things were done at the summits and took my leave.

From my limited experience  of sitting in on a few meetings, it doesn’t look like there is likely to be any movement from CCP in the direction of fixing what many players perceive as being broken about EVE for some time. This is not to say that they aren’t aware of the issues, it just that the resources are not available at the moment to fixing them.

As a player being allowed to sit in on the few meetings I attended and the brief chats I’ve had with various delegates between meetings has been incredibly informative, giving me an insight into both the processes of the CSM and those internal to CCP which I feel very privileged to be privy to. As a reporter, I hope I’ve managed to get across how hard the CSM works on your behalf, and how passionate both they, and CCP, are about the game you play; a passion which can become quite heated on both sides on occasion.

Make no mistake, the impression that I got from CCP overall was that they value the CSM for their big picture view and their help in defining the landscape of EVE as a whole. Something I came away from the meetings with though was that in that landscape they knew about the sick trees and dying roses and wanted to fix them, didn’t need to be told to fix them, but that there were only so many gardeners to go around; and until the major landscaping work is done, there aren’t enough of them to do the weeding.

Once the day was done any furstrations were put aside over dinner at a wonderful Restuarant in Reykjavik where conversation flowed freely and ranged over a wide variety of subjects that were not EVE. A great way to wind down after three days of tension building meetings.

From the past couple of days I’ve seen evidence of the passion which both CCP and the CSM bring to EVE. Believe me when I say that both CCP, at the non-executive level at least, and the CSM want to make EVE the best MMO it can be. I would urge any players who have an interest in seeing this happen to participate in the CSM process. Vote in the elections, post in the CSM sections of the forums and make your voice heard. I can assure you that CCP are listening. They may not agree with you, but they are listening.

M out

Oh, almost forgot, heres the sunset I promised you:

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