The Legacy of CSM8

This is one of those horrible questions where I am guaranteed to miss something vital or set myself up for a fall in CSM9! Exactly the kind of question I would expect by a writer such as Noizy 😉 Anyway, here goes:

1) Communication. A wee bit vague I know but I’ve never hidden how important I think it is that the CSM constantly communicates what they are doing. Ali and Ripard lead the charge with CSM8 and it’s something 9 is running with. Everyone is disappointed with the voting turnout figures for the CSM9 election and a large part of combatting that over the coming year will be our communication with the player base.

2) Feedback. CSM8 worked incredibly hard with CCP to prove that they could turn around concise, accurate, valuable feedback in a short space of time – sometimes as little as 24 hours. CCP often has to work in tight timeframes and it has been hinted at previously that certain teams would avoid conversing with CSM simply because they couldn’t get the feedback they needed in a time required for it to be integrated into that specific project. CSM8 established that they could work turn around detailed feedback to whichever dev team required in a short period of time. A lot of that was down to…

3) Participation. It was widely quoted both from CSM members and CCP itself that 13 out of 14 members of CSM8 were active, contributing members to the Council. This is a massive increase on previous years – CSM7 had around half the number (I don’t know which member of 7 is the 0.5. I’d personally cut Two Step in half in a heartbeat). CSM8 didn’t just work hard, they worked hard as (very nearly anyway) a complete team. The ability to turn around feedback quickly and efficiently due to a great overall work ethic lead to…

4) Access. CSM9 has unprecedented access to CCP with teams keen to meet and get us on board with their plans for the coming year. The relationship between CCP and CSM has never been healthier and that is largely down to how hard CSM8 worked as stakeholders during the past year. CSM9 is under no illusions that to maintain the current level of access and openness, we will have to continue to work very hard but the benefits are going to be there for the player base to see in the new development cycle. What is 100% certain is that perhaps more than any previous CSM before them, 8 set a new template in how the partnership between the Council and CCP could operate.

5) Results. You may have your personal opinions on how CSM8 performed. Put them aside for a second and ask yourself, is Eve Online the game in better shape than it was 12 months ago? Ship rebalancing with Team Five-0, UI improvements with Team Superfriends, the new development cycle which allows CCP Seagull to make bold and important decisions such as delaying key features when necessary… CCP are on record as saying CSM8 helped make Eve a better game and I don’t really see how you can argue with the results. There are clearly major issues with Eve that still exist but New Eden is a more enjoyable place to be than it was this time last year. Are CSM8 purely responsible for this? Of course not. Were they a large contributing factor? CCP seems to think so.

For what it’s worth, I thought CSM8 was incredibly successful. I believe 9 can do even better and we will be working very hard to do so but I am under no personal illusion that we stand on the shoulders of those behind us. If CSM9 leaves CSM10 a legacy like 8 left us, we will have done a very good job indeed.