Get Out And Vote

In my last post, I mentioned how I was unhappy with the level of commitment CCP were showing to this election. Since that post was published, two very important things have happened. Firstly, CCP sent out a mass Evemail to a huge proportion of the player base (I never got it incidentally but meh) urging them to get out and vote with clickable links so they could vote in the in-game browser without even leaving the client. Hardly the most exciting promotion of an election I’ve ever seen but I would hazard a guess and say it was fairly successful.

Secondly, there was a dev blog from CCP Dolan with soundbites from key personnel within CCP explaining exactly how important the CSM is to them. I have no words for how awesome this dev blog is. It would have been a lot better had we seen it a week earlier but better late than ever. This is especially true when it is such a good blog. You get a real feeling for what CCP actually think about the CSM and how important it is to the development of Eve Online.

Now before you go any further, I am not so egocentric or narcisstic to believe for a second that my previous post had anything to do with either of these two initiatives from CCP. The Evemail and the dev blog are both likely the result of a huge amount of work from CSM7 and certain members of CCP. That both happened soon after my previous post is purely coincidental. On the other hand, I don’t accept any accusations that my post was premature – there was three days of voting left when I put that last post live and I still believe, as good as these two initiatives are, they would have been so much better a week earlier.

Some have suggested my post had a little too much hyperbole because I am a little close to this issue personally. I’m not sure that’s the case – I really do feel there was a huge miscommunication issue here from a lot of parties. But yeah, maybe some of the language I used wasn’t that helpful.

I want to thank the guys in CSM7 who I have been speaking a lot to during this, especially Hans and Aleks who were always available to discuss what was going on as far as they could outside of the NDA. It is a huge loss to the CSM that both these guys aren’t standing for re-election for CSM8. I also want to thank CCP for heavily promoting my CSM8 interviews. The project wasn’t discussed with them beforehand and I had no expectations that they would do anything with it. A lot of this is down to the obscene amount of work CCP Dolan has put into this election but CCP Fozzie and CCP Eterne have also been absolute soldiers in this regard.

Anyway, the main point of this post is we have 13 hours left as I write this before the CSM8 elections close. Go vote. Read Dolan’s post and you will want to vote. Once you have voted, tell everyone you know to vote. Friends, corpies, people in local, randoms in jabber, #tweetfleet, everyone and everywhere you can possibly think of. Just get out and vote. The more people who take part in the process, the more relevant and important the CSM becomes in CCP’s eyes. I am the one who is on record as saying the % voter turnout will be down on last year’s election – this is your opportunity to make me look like a fool in front of everyone!

CSM7 have laid some magnificent foundations. This is our one opportunity to help CSM8 build on it. Get out and vote.