lonesamurai
05-18-2010, 10:10 AM
When players and devs work together, magic happens
Words: Josh Augustine, PC Gamer US
Inside, it’s life-and-death confrontations, cutthroat competition, conspiracies, betrayals and white-collar crime across the span of a hostile universe. But outside the virtual world, developers and gamers work together to shape the future of EVE Online. PC Gamer goes to Reykjavik, Iceland for a behind-the-scenes look at the Council of Stellar Management at work - and play.
“Well, at least I remember to pay my bills on time...” Noah Ward hides his widening grin by taking a sip of wine. A series of good-natured ooooh’s ripple out across the table and conversations cease as everybody pauses to see how the two men sitting on either side of me are going to respond. We’re eating a fancy meal at a classy Italian restaurant in downtown Reykjavik, and two EVE Online players just got called out for mismanaging internet spaceships. That kind of chatter is unusual enough to hear over a plate of prosciutto, but they weren’t merely being called out by some random joe on the forums - this particular ribbing was delivered by Noah Ward, EVE’s lead game designer.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Incoming_Big--article_image.jpg
For most gamers, sitting down to dinner with the developers of their favorite game lies firmly in impossible-dream territory, but for the nine EVE players sitting with me at the table, it’s very real - and over the past two years, these meetings have become an essential component of the game itself.
Every six months, elections are held in EVE Online to elect nine players to the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). And in an appropriate parallel to the kind of tactics players deploy every day in EVE Online, these seats are won through rigorous campaigning and corporate politics. The elected player representatives then work with the rest of EVE’s 330,000 players to develop a list of issues to be discussed when developer CCP flies them to its headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland to sit down with them face-to-face twice per year.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/IMG_6318--article_image.jpg
Above: The player-elected Council of schemers
After four months of talking with constituents, poring over forum posts and debating the relative merits of one issue over another, the Council members have finally arrived in Iceland to meet with the developers at CCP. And it’s obvious they’re loving every second of it.
Founding Fathers
It didn’t quite make sense to me how Petur J. Oskarsson, the Researcher at CCP who manages the CSM, and Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, CCP’s on-staff economist, could easily trust a game they care enough about to refer to it as “our baby” in the hands of players that are entirely inexperienced with game design. When I posed the question to them, Oskarsson told me, “EVE is our baby, and these players are a part of that baby.” Gudmundsson chimed in, “Like any good parents we always do what we think is best, and these talks with the CSM help us figure that out.” While I was naturally suspicious of the players, they (and everyone else I talked to at CCP) believe in player empowerment so much that it never even crossed their mind to not trust their players.
Oskarsson’s own credentials are in the form of a 21-page paper that established the impetus behind, the justification for and the implementation of the Council of Stellar Management. The report went so far as to analyze the theory of the evolution of societies and how EVE went through each step, citing the works of philosophers and social theorists, including Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes.
The first day: Worlds collide
If you haven’t been playing EVE Online, you’ve been missing out on some of the most astonishing developments and emergent gameplay moments of the past decade. EVE is a futuristic sci-fi MMO that revolves around player-made corporations battling for economic, political, and planetary control of the galaxy, and also revolves around one simple principle: if you want to do it, you can. This lawless, profit-driven Rapture-in-space has seen mercenaries spend months and months on planning in order to infiltrate a corporation and tear it down from within, launched more than a few careers in human slave trafficking and developed an economy so dynamic that CCP hired a real-life economist to manage it. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/ccp%20logo--article_image.jpg
Above: Office building mullet: professional up front, party in the back
But the economist works at the macro level and doesn’t intervene in cases like that of Goonfleet, which had been one of the largest corporations within EVE Online until its leader forgot to make routine fund transfers before leaving on a real-life vacation. As a result, just weeks before the summit, Goonfleet lost most of the facilities and planets it controlled due to an inability to pay the maintenance fees. When the leader returned to a group on the verge of mutiny, he looted what little assets Goonfleet had left, fired everyone from the corporation and fled to another part of the galaxy.
So Ward’s friendly wisecrack had to have stung a bit for at least a few players at the table. In fact, after a betrayal like that, I expected Asher Dratel and John Zastrow, the two members of Goonfleet on the CSM, to be seething with bitterness and anger. But they hardly seemed phased by the loss, and were eager to rebuild their alliance under a new banner. They laughed with everyone else at West’s prodding and happily told their side of the story.
This might strike most people as a little weird, especially considering that many other MMOs shenanigans like these could result in real-world litigation. But every EVE player is comfortable with this dichotomy. On the one hand, EVE is dark and dangerous: nobody can be trusted, everyone has their price and a swift, merciless death awaits you around every corner if you’re not careful. But on the other hand, players are optimistic, cooperative, entrepreneurial and often downright brilliant in the ways that they find to bend the game world to their ideas and purposes.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/IMG_6326--article_image.jpg
EVE’s society is always on the verge of anarchy; most alliances function in the sectors of space where there are no ruling government bodies or police force to restrict players’ actions. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes things go wrong. But there’s very little centralized authoritarian control applied in most MMOs that establish what can or can’t be done. In EVE, players collaborate with developers. Just like they’re doing now, around the dinner table, as everybody exchanges their favorite stories from a digital world still just a few years old. Stories that seem to emphasize that EVE Online is breaking out of its original mold and becoming whatever players want it to be.
Stories about CCP itself - not all of them flattering - were passed around the table just as merrily. I had flown into Iceland knowing little more than that you didn’t want to do your banking there, but by the end of the CSM, one thing was very clear: If Reykjavik was a college party town, then CCP would be the biggest frat house on campus. Yes, it’s a very serious developer of fine games, but just look at the facts: the majority of employees are young males; breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner are served in the company’s cafeteria by two grandmotherly Icelandic women; free snacks, sodas and energy drinks can be found in every kitchen; and “I was drunk” is the only excuse needed for showing up late in the morning.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Starmap--article_image.jpg
Above: The CSM represents this entire galaxy
And that’s not even taking into account the sheer number of “this one time when I was drunk” stories that everyone at CCP seemed to have on hand. The raucous, booze-fueled mayhem even extends to official CCP events, and this spirit - both laid-back and slightly crazed - contributes to CCP’s innovative development structures that incorporate player feedback with unprecedented efficiency. Where Blizzard is the buttoned-down suit assuring players, “Don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control” (and they do), CCP is the hung-over rock star smashing guitars, trashing hotel rooms, using excessive amounts of pyrotechnics and crowd surfing at every opportunity.
How it works
Step-by-step breakdown of the process agreed on for the CSM to request developer resources.
1.CSM members talk with other players and among themselves to develop a list of 10 issues they want the CCP development team to address.
2.The CSM sends the list to Petur J. Oskarsson, who presents it to the development team.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Smack--article_image.jpg
Above: CCPers having fun between sessions
3.The development team estimates how many development hours each of the projects would take and sends it back to the CSM through Oskarsson.
4.Taking into account the time required for each of the changes, the CSM arranges the issues into a prioritized list and returns it to Oskarsson.
5.Oskarsson presents the final list to the developers and makes sure that they are considered and included in the development process. Oskarsson reports back to the CSM as progress occurs.
The second day: Spaceships are serious business
If someone had asked me to predict what the first topic debated by the CSM would be, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed an hour-long discussion of political philosophy. But I probably should have. The 13 people in this room - nine elected players, three CCP developers, and one moderator with experience working for the European Union - are breaking new ground in game development. The CSM functions as a representative democracy, and they’re in charge of making sure the system gives voters adequate input without letting them overrun the entire development system - no easy task. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/dominion_sovDisruptor_01bBloom 2%20copy--article_image.jpg
John Zastrow, the only returning CSM member, jokingly referred to himself as “the George Washington of this CSM,” and he may not be too far off. If their plans are successful, years from now game developers could be looking back at the members of this year’s council as the Founding Fathers of a development structure that, for the first time in history, incorporated player feedback in a deep, meaningful way.
But the meeting certainly wasn’t spent entirely on lofty beard-scratching philosophy - it was still about a videogame, after all. This meeting, and all the meetings throughout the week, for that matter, were marked by the odd juxtaposition that exists in EVE: it’s a very serious, business-driven game that’s riddled with outrageous memes and the nothing-is-sacred irreverence of the internet. CSM members introduced themselves to CCP employees by saying, “Hi, I’m a space councilor!” in silly voices, and pictures of Kitlers (cats that look like Hitler) were brought up on projectors alongside flowchart diagrams that broke down the game’s development process.
The third day: Rocking the boat
As anticipated, the players weren’t shy about telling the developers what they thought needed fixing. The fist-pounding, shouting and occasionally messy exchanges between members would’ve fit right in on a reality TV show. One particularly bitter CSM member started his address to Sveinn J. Kjarval, the head of the Game Master group, with “I don’t hate you, but…” and proceeded to explain why he pretty much did hate him. It was a cathartic experience for the players; Zastrow told me, “Being able to look a game designer in the eye and pound your fist on the table to express your displeasure is something you just can’t do trolling forums. I can see the expression on their face change when I tell them what I think and see that it’s having an impact.” http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Moderator--article_image.jpg
Above: The moderator was essential in keeping the discussion focused
Considering the anger directed their way at times, as well as the occasional angry accusation from a CSM member that someone else’s opinions, statistics or responses were “bull****,” I was impressed with the completely unshakeable composure CCP employees constantly maintained. At times, even I was ready to leap over the table and take one or two CSM members by their collars and let them know that they were acting like jerks, but the developers (represented in each session by department heads and rank-and-file employees across a wide swath of departments, including Programming, Design and Community Development) always maintained an imperturbable stoicism, like Greek heroes holding their ground against a lethal hydra of nerd rage.
It’s not easy to stand there and take a verbal lashing from your harshest critics, but instead of banning dissenters from the forum and retreating to their development cave to pretend that the naysayers don’t exist like some developers (you know who you are), CCP flew some of the most vocal critics to Iceland to let them scream in their faces so they could understand their concerns, and every player there respected them for it.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/whiteboard--article_image.jpg
The occasional emotional brush fire notwithstanding, the atmosphere of the meetings, now past the halfway mark, was overwhelmingly positive - two groups with different perspectives coming together to understand why the other side felt the way they did, and trying to figure out how they could synthesize both perspectives into a concrete policy or game mechanic that would improve EVE.
CSM rep Tim Heusschen told me that he was particularly impressed with how seriously CCP took the CSM meetings; his favorite moment was seeing two developers grab pens to write down a suggestion he made. In fact, the developers took away a lot of good ideas, including one that a dev told the Council “is so good on so many levels that it arouses me somewhat.”
The fourth day: Money where the mouth is
But the most arousing experience for the players had to be when CCP agreed to give the CSM tangible power within the company. On the last day, the devs announced that after the earlier discussions about improving the CSM’s ability to effect change, the CSM was being raised to the status of its own department within CCP.
This is revolutionary; in one swift move, the CSM went from what could be considered a glorified focus group to what CCP considers to be a “stakeholder” in the company, given equal consideration with every other department in requesting development time for a project. That means the CSM - and the entire playerbase it represents - has as much influence on development projects as Marketing, Accounting, Publicity and all the other teams outside of the development team.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/PCG214.eye_report.opener3--article_image.jpg
This is, of course, the stated intention. But has any developer gone to such lengths for its fans? I’ve spent a week observing CCP, taking inventory of concerns and complaints from even the most aggravating of griefers among its players; there seems to be little question that CCP genuinely believes in the importance of the players’ feedback through the CSM, and the step to incorporate it into the company’s internal process goes a long way toward proving that their belief in player-driven experiences is no mere gimmick or promotional device.
If anything, EVE Online appears to be achieving what many social virtual worlds backed by millions of dollars of capital - including There and Second Life - have failed to do: to create an automous, player-driven society in cyberspace. This is what CCP believes produces the absolute best games, and it’s willing to take extraordinary risks to prove it.
The last day: 3 a.m.
Walking between bars in the wee hours of the morning on my last day in Reykjavik, we ran into a group of Icelanders singing and dancing down the street while another group threw beer bottles on the ground in the alleyway next to us. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/town--article_image.jpg
It suddenly hit me that EVE Online could only come out of a place like Iceland - a place where packs of friends wander the streets drunk until 6 a.m., doing pretty much whatever they want; a place where the only government presence I saw all week was an information center; a place where the people pretty much monitor themselves. CCP adopted this people-centric culture inside their company and inside their game, and now they’re proving that giving the power to the players can work for game development as well. Self-governance has never looked quite so sexy.
May 17, 2010
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/what-all-developers-should-learn-from-eve-online/a-20100517113116512049
Words: Josh Augustine, PC Gamer US
Inside, it’s life-and-death confrontations, cutthroat competition, conspiracies, betrayals and white-collar crime across the span of a hostile universe. But outside the virtual world, developers and gamers work together to shape the future of EVE Online. PC Gamer goes to Reykjavik, Iceland for a behind-the-scenes look at the Council of Stellar Management at work - and play.
“Well, at least I remember to pay my bills on time...” Noah Ward hides his widening grin by taking a sip of wine. A series of good-natured ooooh’s ripple out across the table and conversations cease as everybody pauses to see how the two men sitting on either side of me are going to respond. We’re eating a fancy meal at a classy Italian restaurant in downtown Reykjavik, and two EVE Online players just got called out for mismanaging internet spaceships. That kind of chatter is unusual enough to hear over a plate of prosciutto, but they weren’t merely being called out by some random joe on the forums - this particular ribbing was delivered by Noah Ward, EVE’s lead game designer.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Incoming_Big--article_image.jpg
For most gamers, sitting down to dinner with the developers of their favorite game lies firmly in impossible-dream territory, but for the nine EVE players sitting with me at the table, it’s very real - and over the past two years, these meetings have become an essential component of the game itself.
Every six months, elections are held in EVE Online to elect nine players to the Council of Stellar Management (CSM). And in an appropriate parallel to the kind of tactics players deploy every day in EVE Online, these seats are won through rigorous campaigning and corporate politics. The elected player representatives then work with the rest of EVE’s 330,000 players to develop a list of issues to be discussed when developer CCP flies them to its headquarters in Reykjavik, Iceland to sit down with them face-to-face twice per year.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/IMG_6318--article_image.jpg
Above: The player-elected Council of schemers
After four months of talking with constituents, poring over forum posts and debating the relative merits of one issue over another, the Council members have finally arrived in Iceland to meet with the developers at CCP. And it’s obvious they’re loving every second of it.
Founding Fathers
It didn’t quite make sense to me how Petur J. Oskarsson, the Researcher at CCP who manages the CSM, and Dr. Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, CCP’s on-staff economist, could easily trust a game they care enough about to refer to it as “our baby” in the hands of players that are entirely inexperienced with game design. When I posed the question to them, Oskarsson told me, “EVE is our baby, and these players are a part of that baby.” Gudmundsson chimed in, “Like any good parents we always do what we think is best, and these talks with the CSM help us figure that out.” While I was naturally suspicious of the players, they (and everyone else I talked to at CCP) believe in player empowerment so much that it never even crossed their mind to not trust their players.
Oskarsson’s own credentials are in the form of a 21-page paper that established the impetus behind, the justification for and the implementation of the Council of Stellar Management. The report went so far as to analyze the theory of the evolution of societies and how EVE went through each step, citing the works of philosophers and social theorists, including Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes.
The first day: Worlds collide
If you haven’t been playing EVE Online, you’ve been missing out on some of the most astonishing developments and emergent gameplay moments of the past decade. EVE is a futuristic sci-fi MMO that revolves around player-made corporations battling for economic, political, and planetary control of the galaxy, and also revolves around one simple principle: if you want to do it, you can. This lawless, profit-driven Rapture-in-space has seen mercenaries spend months and months on planning in order to infiltrate a corporation and tear it down from within, launched more than a few careers in human slave trafficking and developed an economy so dynamic that CCP hired a real-life economist to manage it. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/ccp%20logo--article_image.jpg
Above: Office building mullet: professional up front, party in the back
But the economist works at the macro level and doesn’t intervene in cases like that of Goonfleet, which had been one of the largest corporations within EVE Online until its leader forgot to make routine fund transfers before leaving on a real-life vacation. As a result, just weeks before the summit, Goonfleet lost most of the facilities and planets it controlled due to an inability to pay the maintenance fees. When the leader returned to a group on the verge of mutiny, he looted what little assets Goonfleet had left, fired everyone from the corporation and fled to another part of the galaxy.
So Ward’s friendly wisecrack had to have stung a bit for at least a few players at the table. In fact, after a betrayal like that, I expected Asher Dratel and John Zastrow, the two members of Goonfleet on the CSM, to be seething with bitterness and anger. But they hardly seemed phased by the loss, and were eager to rebuild their alliance under a new banner. They laughed with everyone else at West’s prodding and happily told their side of the story.
This might strike most people as a little weird, especially considering that many other MMOs shenanigans like these could result in real-world litigation. But every EVE player is comfortable with this dichotomy. On the one hand, EVE is dark and dangerous: nobody can be trusted, everyone has their price and a swift, merciless death awaits you around every corner if you’re not careful. But on the other hand, players are optimistic, cooperative, entrepreneurial and often downright brilliant in the ways that they find to bend the game world to their ideas and purposes.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/IMG_6326--article_image.jpg
EVE’s society is always on the verge of anarchy; most alliances function in the sectors of space where there are no ruling government bodies or police force to restrict players’ actions. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes things go wrong. But there’s very little centralized authoritarian control applied in most MMOs that establish what can or can’t be done. In EVE, players collaborate with developers. Just like they’re doing now, around the dinner table, as everybody exchanges their favorite stories from a digital world still just a few years old. Stories that seem to emphasize that EVE Online is breaking out of its original mold and becoming whatever players want it to be.
Stories about CCP itself - not all of them flattering - were passed around the table just as merrily. I had flown into Iceland knowing little more than that you didn’t want to do your banking there, but by the end of the CSM, one thing was very clear: If Reykjavik was a college party town, then CCP would be the biggest frat house on campus. Yes, it’s a very serious developer of fine games, but just look at the facts: the majority of employees are young males; breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner are served in the company’s cafeteria by two grandmotherly Icelandic women; free snacks, sodas and energy drinks can be found in every kitchen; and “I was drunk” is the only excuse needed for showing up late in the morning.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Starmap--article_image.jpg
Above: The CSM represents this entire galaxy
And that’s not even taking into account the sheer number of “this one time when I was drunk” stories that everyone at CCP seemed to have on hand. The raucous, booze-fueled mayhem even extends to official CCP events, and this spirit - both laid-back and slightly crazed - contributes to CCP’s innovative development structures that incorporate player feedback with unprecedented efficiency. Where Blizzard is the buttoned-down suit assuring players, “Don’t worry, we’ve got everything under control” (and they do), CCP is the hung-over rock star smashing guitars, trashing hotel rooms, using excessive amounts of pyrotechnics and crowd surfing at every opportunity.
How it works
Step-by-step breakdown of the process agreed on for the CSM to request developer resources.
1.CSM members talk with other players and among themselves to develop a list of 10 issues they want the CCP development team to address.
2.The CSM sends the list to Petur J. Oskarsson, who presents it to the development team.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Smack--article_image.jpg
Above: CCPers having fun between sessions
3.The development team estimates how many development hours each of the projects would take and sends it back to the CSM through Oskarsson.
4.Taking into account the time required for each of the changes, the CSM arranges the issues into a prioritized list and returns it to Oskarsson.
5.Oskarsson presents the final list to the developers and makes sure that they are considered and included in the development process. Oskarsson reports back to the CSM as progress occurs.
The second day: Spaceships are serious business
If someone had asked me to predict what the first topic debated by the CSM would be, I certainly wouldn’t have guessed an hour-long discussion of political philosophy. But I probably should have. The 13 people in this room - nine elected players, three CCP developers, and one moderator with experience working for the European Union - are breaking new ground in game development. The CSM functions as a representative democracy, and they’re in charge of making sure the system gives voters adequate input without letting them overrun the entire development system - no easy task. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/dominion_sovDisruptor_01bBloom 2%20copy--article_image.jpg
John Zastrow, the only returning CSM member, jokingly referred to himself as “the George Washington of this CSM,” and he may not be too far off. If their plans are successful, years from now game developers could be looking back at the members of this year’s council as the Founding Fathers of a development structure that, for the first time in history, incorporated player feedback in a deep, meaningful way.
But the meeting certainly wasn’t spent entirely on lofty beard-scratching philosophy - it was still about a videogame, after all. This meeting, and all the meetings throughout the week, for that matter, were marked by the odd juxtaposition that exists in EVE: it’s a very serious, business-driven game that’s riddled with outrageous memes and the nothing-is-sacred irreverence of the internet. CSM members introduced themselves to CCP employees by saying, “Hi, I’m a space councilor!” in silly voices, and pictures of Kitlers (cats that look like Hitler) were brought up on projectors alongside flowchart diagrams that broke down the game’s development process.
The third day: Rocking the boat
As anticipated, the players weren’t shy about telling the developers what they thought needed fixing. The fist-pounding, shouting and occasionally messy exchanges between members would’ve fit right in on a reality TV show. One particularly bitter CSM member started his address to Sveinn J. Kjarval, the head of the Game Master group, with “I don’t hate you, but…” and proceeded to explain why he pretty much did hate him. It was a cathartic experience for the players; Zastrow told me, “Being able to look a game designer in the eye and pound your fist on the table to express your displeasure is something you just can’t do trolling forums. I can see the expression on their face change when I tell them what I think and see that it’s having an impact.” http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/Moderator--article_image.jpg
Above: The moderator was essential in keeping the discussion focused
Considering the anger directed their way at times, as well as the occasional angry accusation from a CSM member that someone else’s opinions, statistics or responses were “bull****,” I was impressed with the completely unshakeable composure CCP employees constantly maintained. At times, even I was ready to leap over the table and take one or two CSM members by their collars and let them know that they were acting like jerks, but the developers (represented in each session by department heads and rank-and-file employees across a wide swath of departments, including Programming, Design and Community Development) always maintained an imperturbable stoicism, like Greek heroes holding their ground against a lethal hydra of nerd rage.
It’s not easy to stand there and take a verbal lashing from your harshest critics, but instead of banning dissenters from the forum and retreating to their development cave to pretend that the naysayers don’t exist like some developers (you know who you are), CCP flew some of the most vocal critics to Iceland to let them scream in their faces so they could understand their concerns, and every player there respected them for it.
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/whiteboard--article_image.jpg
The occasional emotional brush fire notwithstanding, the atmosphere of the meetings, now past the halfway mark, was overwhelmingly positive - two groups with different perspectives coming together to understand why the other side felt the way they did, and trying to figure out how they could synthesize both perspectives into a concrete policy or game mechanic that would improve EVE.
CSM rep Tim Heusschen told me that he was particularly impressed with how seriously CCP took the CSM meetings; his favorite moment was seeing two developers grab pens to write down a suggestion he made. In fact, the developers took away a lot of good ideas, including one that a dev told the Council “is so good on so many levels that it arouses me somewhat.”
The fourth day: Money where the mouth is
But the most arousing experience for the players had to be when CCP agreed to give the CSM tangible power within the company. On the last day, the devs announced that after the earlier discussions about improving the CSM’s ability to effect change, the CSM was being raised to the status of its own department within CCP.
This is revolutionary; in one swift move, the CSM went from what could be considered a glorified focus group to what CCP considers to be a “stakeholder” in the company, given equal consideration with every other department in requesting development time for a project. That means the CSM - and the entire playerbase it represents - has as much influence on development projects as Marketing, Accounting, Publicity and all the other teams outside of the development team.
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This is, of course, the stated intention. But has any developer gone to such lengths for its fans? I’ve spent a week observing CCP, taking inventory of concerns and complaints from even the most aggravating of griefers among its players; there seems to be little question that CCP genuinely believes in the importance of the players’ feedback through the CSM, and the step to incorporate it into the company’s internal process goes a long way toward proving that their belief in player-driven experiences is no mere gimmick or promotional device.
If anything, EVE Online appears to be achieving what many social virtual worlds backed by millions of dollars of capital - including There and Second Life - have failed to do: to create an automous, player-driven society in cyberspace. This is what CCP believes produces the absolute best games, and it’s willing to take extraordinary risks to prove it.
The last day: 3 a.m.
Walking between bars in the wee hours of the morning on my last day in Reykjavik, we ran into a group of Icelanders singing and dancing down the street while another group threw beer bottles on the ground in the alleyway next to us. http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2010/05/What%20all%20developers%20shou ld%20learn%20from%20EVE%20Onli ne/town--article_image.jpg
It suddenly hit me that EVE Online could only come out of a place like Iceland - a place where packs of friends wander the streets drunk until 6 a.m., doing pretty much whatever they want; a place where the only government presence I saw all week was an information center; a place where the people pretty much monitor themselves. CCP adopted this people-centric culture inside their company and inside their game, and now they’re proving that giving the power to the players can work for game development as well. Self-governance has never looked quite so sexy.
May 17, 2010
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Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/what-all-developers-should-learn-from-eve-online/a-20100517113116512049