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

By Steven Crews | May 7, 2009 | | Filed under: Events, Features, Interviews | Tags: CCP, Council of Stellar Management, EVE

The MMO Gamer: I think the most interesting aspect to me was the creation of the political parties, with primaries and everything.

I was wondering, what happens if people starts posting Marx on the forums, and somebody forms the Communist Party, then they win all the seats and start demanding that you equally distribute all the wealth in the game to every player?

Valerie Massey: That’s what we’re saying, is it’s almost impossible for something like that to happen. I won’t say it is impossible, but almost.

The MMO Gamer: Marx is a very persuasive man, look what happened to Russia.

Petur Oskarsson: The reply to that question is, we would in turn ask “What would that accomplish? Is that something you really want to do? Do you actually want to bypass one of the major features in EVE that is, the market?”

It’s a legitimate question, but it requires arguments for it. So you can’t really just ask for pink ponies.

Well you can, but instead we just ask why…

The MMO Gamer: And they’d point you to the Communist Manifesto, comrade!

Petur Oskarsson: [laughing] It’s not a very strong argument, I think everybody would agree on that.

The MMO Gamer: Fair enough, alright I’m just rabble rousing for the sake of rabble rousing, now.

Petur Oskarsson: You’re welcome to; it’s a fair question like I said. We’re actually inviting this potential issue to our table by actually doing this.

The MMO Gamer: Just wait until the Goon Squad pays everybody off they tell you to change the name to “EVE - Brought to you by SomethingAwful.com.”

Petur Oskarsson: Again, there is no guarantee they will actually get the votes they bought.

The MMO Gamer: I’m sure Lowtax has plenty of bribe money to go around. What do they charge, five dollars a month to get on their forum?

Petur Oskarsson: I have no idea. Isn’t he contributing that to a legal fund or something? In case they get sued.

The MMO Gamer: Was there anything else you would like to tell our readers before we go?

Valerie Massey: We’re hiring. People should come to our website, ccpgames.com, and look for jobs. We’ve got 14 programmer positions open right now that we’re looking to fill immediately, and over the rest of the year we’ll be adding another 60 positions.

Ned Coker: Yea, we’re doing better than ever. Growth has been continuous, and that’s sort of due to game design concerns, our original game design.

We’ve kind of accelerated over the past five or six months. We’re up to 270,000 subscribers; we broke our concurrent user rate with 53,850.

The MMO Gamer: The last time we talked you said you were trying to exceed the population of Iceland.

Valerie Massey: We’re getting really close right now.

Petur Oskarsson: Yea, we’re up to 270,000 subscribers, so we’re only 40,000 off.

Ned Coker: Yep, we’re getting close. There’s going to be a really big party when that happens.

Petur Oskarsson: Optimists say that we’ll get it this year.

The MMO Gamer: They say that games are recession proof… games, and beer.

Petur Oskarsson: And movies. History has shown that the entertainment sector thrives when the recessions come because when…

The MMO Gamer: …things have gone to hell, people need more escapism. To take their minds off of how horrible everything is in their real life.

And on that note, the interview was adjourned.

Have we whet your interest in running for interstellar political office? Head over to http://www.eveonline.com to try your hand at EVE Online today.