EVE’s Council of Stellar Management: Bringing Democracy to an MMO Near You

Steve sits down with Petur Oskarsson, Valerie Massey, and Ned Coker from CCP Games to discuss EVE’s Council of Stellar Management, a democratically elected group of players who serve as advisers to the development team.

Now in its second year, the interview covers a few of the changes that have been brought about as a result of the CSM’s suggestions, as well as some of the potential pitfalls that such a system invites.

Read on for the transcript.

The MMO Gamer: When you first told me about the Council of Stellar Management last year, I was picturing either the game turning into a banana republic, with a new president every week, or a dictatorship where one guy goes on eBay and buys ten billion credits to bribe everyone.

How has it been working out?

Petur Oskarsson: It actually has been working out quite well. And buying ten billion to bribe people, sure, you can do that, but there is no guarantee that they will actually vote for you. They might accept the money and just cast a vote for someone else.

Valerie Massey: Have you ever seen anyone do something like that?

Petur Oskarsson: Well, yes. One guy was actually asking me if he could do that. And we said, sure, go ahead. But there’s no guarantee that they will actually vote for you. So, you can spend your money on that, but it might be for nothing.

Valerie Massey: Did he try?

Petur Oskarsson: Yeah, I think so. I think he was trying to distribute PLEX for votes. That’s a pretty bold move.

Ned Coker: That’s an expensive move!

Valerie Massey: [to me] Do you know what PLEX is?

Petur Oskarsson: It’s game time that you can buy in-game. So you can play the game, and then make enough in-game currency, and you can actually pay the subscription fees with it. So you never actually have to dish out real money, if you’re clever.

Ned Coker: Yeah. You buy a game time code, and then through our web site can change it to in-game items, and sell those on the market or through the contract system. It’s sort of supply and demand. In some areas it might be more expensive or less expensive in others.

Somebody can pay their in-game currency for that item, and they can redeem that for 30 days of time, whereas you get in-game currency. So you can pay, basically, 35 bucks for two codes and then get about 250 million to 500 million, or whatever, in-game currency.

It fulfills a lot of peoples’ needs that really want to engage in that sort of thing. But ina legal, legit way. So, it’s been going really well, a lot of people really like it.

Valerie Massey: I can’t think of another game that does it, so that’s why I brought it up.

Petur Oskarsson: So, we’re now heading into the third elections in May. Each council is only for 6 months. So it’s the third, it’s been going on for a year.

I did some numbers checking and the council has brought up 128 topics for CCP. And out of that, nine have been denied. The rest has been either injected into a backlog, or if it was already in the backlog it has been given an added prioritization.

The MMO Gamer: Morbid curiosity, which ones were denied? Free ponies and rainbows for everyone?

Petur Oskarsson: Nobody actually thought of asking for that.

The denials were mostly because the players simply didn’t understand the technology behind certain things.

So, they were simply were asking for features that either were technically impossible or extremely difficult to implement. I mean, we could do anything. But do we want to spend a year of development time changing the entire sub-structure of EVE just to get that done?

What became apparent in the elections and the candidates running was that people seem to vote based on play style, not based upon group allegiance in-game.

The MMO Gamer: So the hardcore guys voted for the people who campaigned on a platform of, “I’m going to make everybody get ganked harder”?

Petur Oskarsson: Yeah, and the loot guys voted for the PvE players.

I mean, we thought we would see more group-based voting, but that didn’t happen either. Not yet, at least. One of the sitting council members now was talking about, when they came to Iceland in January, forming a political group, not based on in-game allegiances but on play styles.

And I don’t know if she’s already done that, but that was her intention, at least.

Continued on next page…

Pages: 1 2 3