CSM7 - Individual Impressions

(click for larger image)

Just some impressions of the CSM members, based on any number of things. Their performance during the CSM Summit. What they said during their campaign, and then what they did after they won their seat. Their visibility. The amount of work they put into the Summit Report. Podcast appearances. The amount and quality of their communications with the playerbase.

Overall, I think CSM7 is doing a far better job than CSM6, especially in the communications department. We know far more with respect to what this CSM is doing, what they're up too, what they're talking to CCP about, than we ever did with CSM6. We know far more in the way of specifics. CSM6 was generalized. We knew only what The Mittani wanted us to know. His CSM was an amorphous committee. Our CSM is a group of individuals working together.

Yes, there are flaws. There are mistakes. There are gaffes. Some personalities rub the wrong way. Some rub the right way.

These are just my impressions of the candidates.

I've decided to add some humour into the mix, so I've given each CSM member a Trailer Park Boys persona, which I'll try to relate back to them. If you're not familiar with the Trailer Park Boys, then the joke will be lost on you. If you're curious to check it out, it's a Canadian comedy, crass as hell, but exceptionally funny.

Seleene as Julian

Julian is what holds it all together. Everyone looks to him for direction. He's the leader.

He needs to find the time to write more. He's a great communicator when he finds that time. Definitely a fine choice as chairman for CSM7.

I feel Seleene's doing a better overall job than The Mittani did during CSM6. Seleene is a more democratic head. The Mittani would have never let a 160 page CSM Summit Report be released. Agree or disagree as you will with the size of the report, most in the CSM wanted to try for more transparency and Seleene said "go for it." I'm sure what they've learned with the last summit report, will make the next all that much better.

Mittens controlled his CSM with an iron fist. Seleene doesn't take that sort of big brother attitude, thus we get more communication overall from CSM7 than we ever did from CSM6. We don't just hear from the chairman alone. It's not just The Mittani this, or The Mittani that, as it was in CSM6. CSM7 is made up of individuals. Seleene makes no attempt to shut down the individual, rather he encourages it.

Seleene has allowed his CSM to set the bar high, a hurdle all future CSMs will have to reach.

Seleene does have a tendency to get locked into his mansion on the hill worldview. I think that's the case with many in Pandemic Legion. They live at a lofty height that few others do. But I do see him making honest attempts to see and hear all viewpoints, even if it is a struggle for him to see things from the viewpoint of the 10M skillpoint pilot with only a 100M ISK in the bank.

Two Step as Ricky

Ricky, always talking when he shouldn't be talking. Only sees his own small corner of the world, the bigger picture eluding him.

Two Step comes across as a dick sometimes. One of those "my way or the highway" sort of guys. He really needs to chill out. He has good ideas, but he also has a lot of bad ideas, and the bad ideas tend to only validate his limited worldview. Take his recent townhall about wormholes. I got the impression that if he had the power, he'd yank Transmission Lost out of their C2 and plop them into a C6, telling them "You were playing wormholes wrong, now play them the right way!" I think he's been playing the game for so long that he forgets that there's not just single paths to success within certain areas of play. His metrics for success are not written in stone. Everyone defines their own success in their own way. That is what the sandbox is. His small area of the sandbox does not constitute the whole.

His need to weigh in on every damned topic is also annoying. During the next CSM Summit, I'd like to see him take a backseat, let other's shine where they may. That will probably be hard for him to do, because he loves to talk, but he'd probably be more effective if he wasn't weighing in on every topic, offering up good ideas half the time, and utter shit the other half.

Trebor as Bubbles

Bubbles the rational man of the triumvirate. He knows Ricky and Julian are going to get into much trouble, he simply tries to mitigate it as much as possible.

He's the level-headed dude of the bunch. I think he grounds Two Step and Seleene much of the time, directs them back down from the clouds.

Trebor is the everyman on the CSM. Dirtnap Squad is a working man's nullsec alliance. Those guys aren't out defending against 50 supercarriers in their 16 titans. They're out roaming around in cruisers and frigates and stealth bombers. This is stuff the regular player can relate too. How Trebor plays the game is how most of us play the game.

He can be a bit short-tempered on the forums, but he seems easily approachable, as long as what you're asking or requesting is not ridiculous. He's not entirely out of line in thinking that players should be able to weed out the stupid requests from the smart requests themselves.

Some cite his experience with game design. But really, Wizardry and the Apple II are world's away from the current state of game development. His business sense is his stronger background attribute, which keeps his suggestions and requests to CCP within manageable bounds.

Elise Randolph as Sarah

Why is she hanging out with these people? Sarah could be doing anything she wants. She could do so much better.

Elise is my third favourite CSM member, behind Hans and Aleks. Even though he does come across as a bit of a Marie Antoinette ("Let them fly Titans!"), a tad out of touch with the regular EVE player, he does have expert knowledge of game mechanics. Unfortunately, he's often overshadowed by Two Step's constantly running mouth, or his Pandemic Legion running mate, Seleene.

Create a new alt, Elise, join Fweddit. See how the 99% live. It'll give you a better perspective of the game in the long run. You'll remember stuff you long ago forgot, like worrying about ISK, and training queue decisions.

He doesn't strike me as the most approachable CSM member, unfortunately. I've wanted to evemail him a couple times about his intriguing Keres fit, but have shied away from doing so, figuring I'd just be ignored as the horrible newb that I am.

Meissa Anunthiel as Lucy

Tied inexorably to Ricky, but fights that bond. Often despises him, but forever in his orbit.

Meissa should probably retire from CSM representation. Hard to have any impression of him whatsoever. He hasn't made a forum post since May. It's an annoying trend among some CSM, to be all public and chatty leading up to an election, and then to crawl back into the bomb shelter until the next campaign. How do these people get votes? Meissa has been on past CSMs. Was he more chatty in the past? Is he just pouting this year because he didn't make it into the top seven?

I know there's the old excuse many a CSM have used when called out for not being communicative with the playerbase: "You don't know what we're doing behind the scenes! So stop assuming!" Yeah, we don't know what you're doing. But if you don't speak up to tell us what great things you are doing, we can only assume you're doing jack-shit.

Meissa is an equal to Two Step, at least in terms of their overall game experience. Would be great to see Meissa start to speak up for himself. Maybe we need another Rooks and Kings beatdown of Aperture Harmonics, Meissa versus Two Step. Take some of the those talking points away from Two Step. But if that's not Meissa's style, there's always retirement.

Issler Dainze as Barbara Lahey

She's rarely around, but when she does show up at the park, she makes it clear that she's the owner and that she's making a difference. Really, though, she's not really doing anything at all, other than making an appearance every now and again.

She's invisible, until she sees an opportunity to claim credit for something she likely had little zero role in. I recently saw a post of her's on the forum where she was claiming that it was important to have an industry candidate on the council, otherwise such excellent changes as the mining barge buffs would have never happened. Of course, the real reason for the buff was Goonswarm's forever war against highsec miners. She didn't mention that.

Hans Jagerblitzen as Jim Lahey

Alekseyev Karrde as Randy

The two hardest working guys in the trailer park. They care passionately about the trailer park and its integrity. They're kept at arms length from everyone else, but still have their respect.

Two of the hardest working members of CSM7, right up there with Trebor, if not moreso. Both have made themselves very available to the public. It might just be their personalities, or it might simply mean they're not bitterCSMvets quite yet. That might take another term or two.

Neither of these guys get the trip to Iceland. If you've been following their CSM careers, you'll know that they deserve that trip and would make good use of it, certainly moreso than a couple of the people that are getting the free trip.

Aleks attended every single CSM Summit session. Hans attended 17 of the 22 sessions. That is dedication to the job. Their participation was equally high in the sessional dialogues, higher than a couple of people that were actually in Iceland. Amazing, given that they were hampered with timezones and video conferencing as their tool. I can only imagine how much more involved they would be in the process had they actually been in Iceland.

Both of these guys care deeply about their areas of the game. Aleks, representing mercenaries and pirates, his focus is on the new Crimewatch and war declaration mechanics. He's most interested in lowsec and highsec play for PvPers. Hans is most interested in lowsec and faction warfare mechanics.

Whereas other CSM members can sometimes be accused of self-interest, both Aleks and Hans are as unbiased as they come. Hans has never put forth suggestions meant only to benefit his faction. Most of his suggestions would be to the detriment of his faction's current position in the game. That's because he sees the bigger picture. He looks to the overall health of the game, the long view. Aleks is as egalitarian, as witnessed in his work during the wardec iterations.

UAxDEATH as J-Roc

Greene Lee as "T"

Dovinian as Detroit Velvet Smooth

The Roc-pile. Barely can you make out anything that they're saying, know what I'm sayin'?

I don't know much about the Russians, UAx and Greene. UAx seems like a pretty funny guy, judging from the Summit Report. He has some good ideas and some bad ideas. His dislike of all logistics is amusing and terribly bad at the same time. Must be that brawling Russian mentality. Brute force everything. He handles English fairly well, thus is able to contribute without barriers.

Greene, I hear, struggles greatly with English. I hear he's a funny guy. I'm sure he's popular enough with the Russians. But please, next time, vote someone who has a half-decent grasp of English. I'm not being an asshole here, but the common language between devs and playerbase is English. So, if a CSM is to be effective at their job, being able to communicate with the devs is mightily important. Hell, a reasonable command of English should actually be a requirement for the CSM. I'm sure the language barrier is the primary reason for Greene's lack of participation during the summit. He did get some points across, but not nearly as many, I'd imagine, were he more comfortable with English.

Dovinian. Why Test Alliance put this guy forward as their candidate, I do not know. Fairly useless CSM member. About the only thing I've ever heard about him is that he's a terrible racist. That tidbit guided who I chose as Dovinian from the cast photo above.

Kelduum Revaan as Corey

Wants to fit in, wants the same notoriety and respect as Julian, Ricky and Bubbles, but ends up being mostly a joke and mostly walked all over by the three of them. Doesn't know how to stand up for himself, his personality is incapable of it.

Kelduum was going to represent everybody, according to his campaign platform. He was writing forum posts. Appearing on podcasts. Then he won his seat. What public appearances has he made since? Is he actually representing everyone? Or is the CSM just some padding for his EVE Online resumé? The CSM just a feather in his cap, another reason for the EVE University newbies to swoon, because he definitely loves the adulation, even if it's adulation from a position of complete ignorance.

Everyone that voted for Kelduum, they should be ashamed of themselves. Double face-palm ashamed. He takes his free trip to Iceland and then mostly sits quietly through meetings. Was he voted in because he has great listening skills? Or was he voted in because people thought he could make a difference? Listening makes no difference at all. Then when it came time to write the Summit Report, he begged off. Too busy. Sorry. He wasn't too busy to go to Iceland, though.

Highsec can do better than this asshat. People didn't vote a leader when they cast for Kelduum. They voted an administrator. A spreadsheet wizard. Christ, he doesn't know anything about the game, outside of corporate management (and even then, he didn't offer up much during that session and actually proved counter-productive in a couple of instances.) Read any advanced topic on the UniWiki. His organization doesn't have a clue what it is doing outside of core fundamentals at their most basic level. That is what Kelduum brought to the table.

Kelduum spends more time on the CSM learning about the game than he does actually trying to improve the game.

Darius III as Trevor

The only person more useless than Corey is his pal Trevor.

There's nothing else to say about Darius. He represents the apathy among the playerbase of EVE Online. But if you're apathetic, you shouldn't be bothered enough to vote.