CSM Success
I just wanted to post a quick congratulations to the community on apparently doubling CSM4’s voting turnout, for CSM5. We still don’t know who is in the leading positions (CCP to reveal on May 26), but regardless, we should all consider the jump in participation a real accomplishment—for EVE, but ultimately for ourselves.
A lot of people tend to act lax on the importance of the CSM, writing it off as not taken seriously by CCP, therefore it doesn’t deserve serious attention from us. It’s dismissed as a fluffy PR stunt, or a pipe dream, so why try? This is an entirely flawed mentality.
For every vote the CSM gets, every bit of good publicity, every brilliant piece of input and discussion about making positive change happen, I will guarantee you, CCP is only going to take this more seriously. After all, if only an extremely small percentage of the player base were to vote each time, can we really blame CCP for not making their requests high priority? It’d be questionable whether it represents even a fraction of the player base.
But a good turnout is going to get CCP as excited for change as we are. They want this to succeed. They want our input and if huge numbers of players come out voting for new directions, CCP can’t afford not to listen.
This isn’t to say, by any means, that if we all vote, CCP has to make all our requests happen. They’re still in control, and we’re all better off for that. But CCP will only take the CSM seriously if we do first. Not the other way around. It’s our organization, our opinions, and our gameplay. We’re the ones that need to make this work.
So cheers to the community. I think the voting turnout was influenced by the efforts of plenty of bloggers out there asking their readers to vote, all the great discussion and podcast interviews with the candidates, and a lot of buzz on the #tweetfleet.
Good luck to those running, and here’s to hoping the CSM5 continues to revitalize some mentalities about one of the most unique player-run efforts in gaming!
