I wish I was consistent too. CSM!
Posted: 2010-07-07 Filed under: eveonline | Tags: ccp, csm, dust, eve oline, eve online 17 CommentsSo, Mynxee and A-something have both posted their retrospective on the CSM meeting.
After having read both of them, it’s gratifying to see that the CSM we have elected perfectly portrays thousads of whiny forum goers in the important facets. More on that later.
Both of the CSM people seemed to say the same thing: CCP is working on Dust and Incarna right now and doesn’t have the time to fix your lowsec/poses/FW/nullsec/ectera.
I feel this makes sense. CCP’s been hyping dust/incarna for a good while now, and I think that by this point everyone inside and out of CCP just wants to get the fugger out the door and be done with it. While still making it excellent or passable, tho.
Looking at PI insofar, I’m worried Dust’s gonna flop. Insofar, the trailers have depicted huge battles controlled by space generals over planets for the glory of all yeah yeah blah blah blah. That works, by itself, assuming the space generals don’t have so many idiots hiring people so that the FPS players in general don’t completley ignore their generals in favor of murder, along with the two economies being a bitch to manage. On top of all that, here’s Dust’s main problem: Planets are big.
If someone were to magically come into my C1 WH and drop down a command center, there is no mechanic in place to stop him from doing so. I would completely be at his mercy in terms of wherever he wanted to do insofar of him…. making my planets look ugly, I guess. Again, I’m sure CCP will make planets more important eventually or just dedicate Dust to dealing with the the silly little highsec carebears fighting tiny little silly wars over dinky little planets with fewer base metals than an alkaline convention.
I’ve gone off track a little. In any case, on the CSM thing:
Mynxee seems to be a tad upset that CSM isn’t coming into CCP and saying “jump” and CCP isn’t jumping, citing they don’t get enough attention as stakeholders which apparently CCP has made them.
If a product has been working for, what, six years, do you think the average shareholder is going to tell the company how to run things? Being a shareholder doesn’t grant you magical CCP changing abilities, but it probably should allow you some more insight into CCP’s “what we’re working on now” shizzle. Which is what the CSM seems to have gotten in the form of new devblogs.
Working as intended \o/
For those who say being a stakeholder means having a say in the company, here’s a link to the wikipedia article.
My theory is really that CCP is a bit scared of change. If you were to walk up to, say, Coca Cola, and say that about a half pound of sugar in two liters of Mountain Dew is a bit much, they’d shove you out the door with nary a goodbye, assuming you could get in in the first place. I don’t think I need to remind you of new coke.
Oh, and on tyrannis 1.0.3 patch notes:
The Planetary Commodities cargo hold on the Primae couldn’t be loaded with Water or Oxygen. It can now.
How’d they figure that out, someone actually used that thing for PI?
k162space 
Wrong stakeholder.
In Agile development terms, a stakeholder is someone who “owns” the product and gets to set development priorities.
See here:
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/activeStakeholderParticipation.htm
In those terms, the CSM as a stakeholder means something to setting development priorities and if CCP says “no, you can’t set priorities” then the CSM is not really a stakeholder.
Are you arguing with wikipedia? That is a very demanding path, good sir.
Pretty sure I’m just saying you are wrong. But if wikipedia is your alter of correctness, here is the correct stakeholder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_stakeholder
I am, I’m just hiding behind Wikipedia. I’m sure CCP would prefer the first definition tho 😛
Indeed. They certainly can’t stop working on Incarna and DUST now.
Other then the fact that Mountain Dew is a Pepsi product, the anology is still not the same.
The consumer of a mass rpoduced product has virtually no say in said product. If you don’t like it, then buy a different product.
In a smaller, more cohesive consumer base (like EVE), the chance of being a valued Stakeholder is much higher. Taken to an extreme situation where your company has only one client, and that client suddenly has a great Stake in your comapny.
That CCP formed and continues to seek the input of the CSM shows thay are Stakeholders. The fact that CCP is trying to launch new products and has Stakeholders related to each of them, just means that the CSM is competeing for a limited resource (development time) with other Stakeholders and needs to do as good a job as possible to make sure the top issues get addressed.
Mick
Right stakeholder:
There i shaving a say and then there is going overboard. The current CSM crew are working to push their agenda and then turn around and act like they are the primary stakeholder that determines how things are done period. They then seem to get mostly upset or disappointed when things fail to go exactly as they want. CCP has to balance game fixes with new content, and there is no easy balance there. Things like the UI, bug patches and lowsec improvements are on the back burner in favor of DUST and Incarna at the moment. If they lost their current forward motion on those projects to focus instead entirely on, or even partly on the demands of the CSM there would be even more disasters come expansion time than there already are. CSM input is valuable and helps focus CCP on what the players think is important, then they have to balance that with what CCP thinks is important.
Mynx is being a touch overzealous in my small opinion, especially when it comes to her summary in her blog. I appreciate where she is coming from but I can also see where CCP is at and recognize the difficulties facing them. Besides it would not be the first time CCP made a broad sweeping change that many didn’t agree with as opposed to doing what the CSM and players thought they wanted. There is something to be said for staying the course for both CCP and the CSM. Each time they meet some good comes of it. That is what is encouraging to me, not either side getting fully what they want when they want it.
I think CCP said more along the lines of “no you can’t set priorities at the moment because we are currently overtaxed making DUST and Incarna a reality and do not have the manpower to meet the requests of them as it is let alone the extra items the CSM wishes to address.” Once DUST and Incarna release I see CCP having more manpower to devote to fix some nagging things about the game.
Well said; they do have a say, they just don’t have the only say.
Another link about stake holders:
http://blog.3back.com/scrum-industry-terms/stakeholders
If the CSM is really a stakeholder, they need to be involved before the start of a sprint or a series of sprints. Coming in the middle of a series of sprints and being told to “shut up” means CCP wasn’t serious.
I went and red Mynxee’s blog entry and it seems power has gone to his or her head. Ultimately users make really bad stakeholders. The customer is usually wrong and usability study after usability study proves that point. Users usually don’t keep the whole context in their head and often make design decisions that result in really bad designs because it’s not their job to know. What is useful is when the developers can make queries and study the users as they play. Do data analysis and figure out what is and isn’t being used. Asking a typical user what they want and implementing it blindly will often lead you to ruin. Watch the users, study their actions, look at the market, but whatever you do, don’t simply do what they tell you to do.
It’s nice CCP is looking for input from the CSM and I think they know what they’re doing in that regard and I think that’s why they’re reluctant to give them too much power or agree to too many direct deliverables. I just hope they stick to their guns and keep the CSM as useful resource and don’t allow them to run the company.
Pathetic. CCP encourages us to have a voice in EvE. Excellent Idea, when given that voice they are brushed off and told doesn’t matter what the hell you say our development is for the next big thing. What is the god damn point in having a voice then? SO you can say change it and they say no? Who gives a rats ass about that. THEY WANTED our input and when given it by the CSM they says…sorry wont commit and we cannot commit and oh yea you wont see X, Y, Z change for a god damned year. It is a waste of time then.
Asking for input isn’t the same as asking someone to tell you what to do. They didn’t elect the CSM as their bosses. They wanted to know what the players wanted. The fact that some of the CSM are currently on power trips and demanding things without thinking about the full ramifications of their demands is absurd..
[blockquote cite=”http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/2010/06/csm-june-2010-summit-retrospective.html”]Going into this meeting, I was determined to keep a list of every item we asked for that CCP said they would provide for later follow up. When I mentioned in the Summit wrap-up that I would be holding CCP publicly accountable for these items by tracking their status/disposition on my blog, there was a fairly hard push-back from CCP.[/blockquote]
I think some of the CSM forget that they are guests of CCP. The users of Eve should be familiar with the concept of free market principles and understand that if they don’t like it, there are other MMOs. Those who do like it, but wish to input can say, “I like this or I don’t like this. I hope this would be better.” But boldly stating on your blog that you are going to personally hold them accountable reeks of grandstanding and egotism.
I would hazard a guess that few, if any, of these people are experts in game design, massively-scaled game database design, or other Eve-specific skill sets. Some might be, but even then they’re not familiar with the Eve infrastructure. They haven’t sat in the dozens of meetings during the year where things get hashed out and rehashed and all the subtle little problems that very large systems have.
It’s important when someone asks your opinion to acknowledge that you might not know everything and there might be reasons — some even hard to explain — that may prevent them from implementing your suggestion.
Thankfully this isn’t a player-designed game. If it were, it would ultimately suck since committee-based design always does. Knowing what the users of your system are thinking and how they interact and getting a sense of what they do and don’t like is useful. As a software designer, I’m wise enough to know that taking users inputs verbatim usually leads to sucky design.
I agree with your point that a comittee designed game would suck and honestly if I were CCP I would be somewhat peeved at Mynxee for all her pushiness as chair. But then if we didn’t have someone pushing for accountability, labeling of prior/future CSM ideas (seems kinda important to me I dunno) and other such we would have people going “Oh hey do you think this is cool? No? Okay I’m gonna go sit over here…”
So I’d say yeah, she’s overzealous, but there’s a reason why overzealous people do good in such situations. They’re just enough of a pain in the ass to make things happen. There is of course the issue of Incarna and DUST but I would bet money that no matter how much CSM kicks and screams CCP won’t be taking resources away from those projects so I wouldn’t worry about it. But if Mynxee and the crew are able to make some changes in how CCP and CSM interact then maybe further down the road we can get some of the things done we want.
Oh and another good post by the way. I find that if it can instill useless ramblings it was a good post. 🙂
They wanted input, not orders.
And it looks like somebody on CSM wasn’t honoring their end of the bargain:
http://www.eveonline.com/news.asp?a=single&nid=3979&tid=1
I think Mynxee’s and co’s stance should be applauded. She and the other CSM members are representing us and I’m certain there’d be a community backlash if all they did at the summit was nod and smile like good little sycophants. There’d be countless ‘gravy train’ accusations.
The CSM members seem damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Personally I’m glad they are seizing the opportunity to make an impact with what little influence they have.
The Primae PI cargo hold still won’t hold Noble Gas, a P1 commodity, I tested it on my POS fuels setup in nullsec just to see which commodities it wouldn’t hold. I have a 5 day old petition unanswered still at this point to report the bug. Confirming water and oxygen fit in the PI hold though (they must have fixed this before I tested it).