The King of Space needs no introduction to this audience. He takes the stage wearing very fancy shoes.
“The important question is not about the CSM, it’s whether you are doing this the right way – it’s 3 PM in Vegas, you should be smashed.”
Mittani’s giving sort of an off-the-cuff speech on his totally biased opinions on the CSM.
The Mittani: “It’s pretty much just going to me talking about – “
UAXdeath: “Myself.”
Mittani’s introducing himself (showing the famous Chairman LMAO slide from Fanfest).
Lifecycle of a CSM member: “Hey, I just won an election! This is awesome! Hey look, I’m going to Iceland, this is gonna be really cool. Oh shit, I’m in Iceland and I’m at a summit. Holy crap, what is happening here. Why are you guys doing things this way. Oh no, I’m back in Iceland for an emergency summit, and the shower water smells like rotten eggs.”
Now Mittani is going over his history of the CSM, giving shoutouts to UAxDeath and Zastrow. He’s covering the origins of the CSM from its origins in the T20 scandal through its history in the “Assembly Hall”, in which it had very little effect. “How many of you have been to the Assembly Hall forum?” A few hands go up. “How many of you look at Assembly Hall once a month?” Only Zastrow and CCP Sreegs raise their hands. So the Assembly Hall is kind of a joke.
Term limits also hurt the CSM, because the smartest, most interested and involved people couldn’t keep contributing.
Now talking about the CSM’s rise to stakeholder status. CSM5 was awesome in its handling of the “18 Months scandal” but really screwed over nullsec with the jb nerf, since it was primarily made up of hisec and lowsec representatives who felt that it wouldn’t be a problem. CSM6 brought a huge backlash from the nulsec community, in which the nullsec bloc took firm control of the CSM.
Mittani is entirely happy if people continue to view the CSM as irrelevant or unimportant, because it means that the nullsec bloc can continue to control it.
Mittani also notes that this is a very ‘dirty’ election – there’s no regulation from CCP so scamming and vote buying is totally acceptable. You can’t vote against any candidate, so all publicity is good. If your rep isn’t there, you don’t have a voice – since Vuk Lau missed the “remove bridges” summit, no one said a word against it, and the nerf almost got through.
Expectations versus Reality
Expectation: There are ‘good CSMs’ and ‘bad CSMs’.
Reality: All CSMs work together – there’s no infighting.
Expectation: CCP doesn’t Listen
Reality: CCP isn’t monolithic – parts listen better than others
Expectation: CSM is powerless
Reality: Influence is what you make of it. People with charisma and political ability have far more success in the CSM than spreadsheet nerds.
Expectation: Parliamentary Model – invoked by the election format. Things are voted on in Assembly Hall and passed on to CCP.
Reality: The assembly hall has no binding power over CCP. It provides recommendations, not policy.
CCP doesn’t have to listen to the CSM; devs don’t have to get involved. The CSM’s “stakeholder” status is really vague and meaningless. So what the heck is the CSM anyway?
The CSM are lobbyists, not Congress. They try to influence decision-makers in order to change the game; they don’t change the game directly.
Mittani rightly points out that devs prefer to deal with “chill” CSMs – one that acts as an advocacy group for both CCP and players. This means that devs WANT to hang out on the CSM Skype channel more, so you have a closer channel to the devs for reporting urgent bugs. Most CSM scuffles end up being with management, not employees.
If however a CSM is “unchill” they get shut out completely – the devs just stop listening to anything you say. Good examples of this are the Open Letter about Incarna, which closed the doors between CCP and that CSM.
The Free Trip To Iceland
Summits are where most of the CSM action occurs. Meetings run from 9 AM to 6 PM; the official dinner runs from 7 to 10, and the unofficial lobbying happens at bars from 10-6 AM in a bar. (That’s where the real meat of the meeting is.) The alliance tournament guys have it easy, because they’re not working all day.
New Strategies
Using Skype channels for immediate contact with Devs as well as private CSM channels to present a united front to the devs.
Spotlights and Fireside Chats – used for tactical influence in order to highlight a particular issue. Spotlighting an idea gets the players interested and impacts CCP prioritization.
More exposure: The CSM now uses stickies, login ads and media to influence player opinion and interest.
No tantrums. A mature, chill CSM is far more influential and capable than an unchill one.
The Sucking Chest Wounds
Fleet lag and time dilation – in progress; Team Gridlock are heroes. CCP Veritas “literally walks on water”. They’ve made huge improvements and are working hard on this.
Iterative ship balance – coming up in Soundwave’s talk.
Supercapitals Online – death2all supercaps. There’s a mixed consensus but on the whole CSM feels they need work.
POSes are terrible.
Stuff We All Agree Is Broken
Lowsec
Faction wars
The UI
Mining
Botting and RMT
CSMing: Pros and Cons:
The good – you get to affect the game you love, free trip to Iceland (not counting the Summits.)
The bad – It’s basically an unpaid consulting gig. CCP can be infuriating to deal with as an organization. Voters from other blocs will drive you up the wall. Progress can be frustrating. There’s a lot of unpaid work, and a lot of burnout.
Q&A
Zastrow asks: “You seem so busy – have you ever considered taking a vacation?”
M: “It’s very hard being me. My day job takes a lot of effort, gardening and taking care of my puppy.”
Zastrow: “And has it been difficult to give this speech in the shadow of two of the greatest CSMs, me and Darius JOHNSON?”
M: “That’s true, Darius JOHNSON is a hero for dealing with Jade Constantine, CSM1 Chair and a terrible human being.”
Wormhole guy: “Isn’t the high-end ore nerf sort of the jump bridge nerf moment for your CSM?”
M: “I think it’s dumb that people jump out of Jita and into wormholes to mine high-end ore then jump out again, but there’s prioritization. We focus on the issues we view are more important, like supercap balancing and ship iteration.”
Player: “So if you’re the lobbyists… how do I bribe the CSM to champion my cause?”
M: “We sometimes literally bring gifts to CCP. I literally brought an entire bag of cheese from Wisconsin because Fatty over there (CCP Sreegs) couldn’t get cheddar in Iceland. As far as influencing the CSM goes, talk to the person you voted for with Evemails and so forth; they’ll take the time to talk to you if you’re not a jerk.”
Zastrow: “So does all this hard work create any friction between you and the wife?”
M: “A lot of time my wife wants to burn CSM to the ground.”
Zapawork: “What do you use in your hair?”
M: “A product called Lock, Stock and Barrel.”
Zapawork: “Do you ever grow tired of talking about yourself?”
M: “No, I love talking about me. Me, me me. Sreegs wanted me to just ignore my slides and start talking myself about to see how long it would take before people start throwing things at me.”
Zapawork: “Tell me about your puppy.”
M: “The summer has been really hard on her. Alaskan malamutes are like arctic wolves; the hot summer weather has been hard on her and she blames us.”
Player: “Thank you for what you’re doing…”
M: “Wow, defensive enough?” (crosses arms, copies player’s body language)
Player: (uncomfortable, uncrosses arms) “I, uh… are you planning on running again?”
M: “It depends on the level of burnout I have and the progress we’ve made. If it’s not too bad, I probably will.”
Player: “How will CSM continue to evolve in the future?”
M: “Communication between CSMs, and between CSM and CCP, is really important. Skype has been a huge improvement; that’s going to continue.”
Player: “What’s the worst corporation in GSF?”
M: “Worst in posting, or worst in EVE Online?”
Player: “What can I do to make my corporation the worst?”
M: “Get more (unintelligable).”
Player: “Since you asked us to, you’re a douchebag, please die.”
Player: “How do you feel about the crowdsourcing initiative?”
M: “I think it’s kind of pointless, but Trebor really wanted to try it. The problem I have with it is that it invokes the parliamentary paradigm – people vote and think it means something, when that’s not the case.”
Did Mittani just blame CSM5 for the Jump Bridge nerf?
I thought the same thing as soon as I saw it. Propaganda is the Goon Way.
the original "JB Nerf" they are talking about is a complete removal of all jump bridges from 0.0. This was on the way to happening because highsec and lowsec pubbies had no idea what jump bridges were.
CSM Mittani has voiced his support over the newer JB changes, of only 1 per system instead of 2.
pffffshhhhhh,
One day mittens' smug cloud will blow up like the hindenburg. Maybe if he's lucky he'll get on some titan km's with the epic explosion.
Mittani reeks of smug idiot.
I particularly liked how he makes himself the chill CSM, and makes others "unchill"(the proper term would be "non chill" or a haughty, jerky… dumb-ass).
The chill CSM's have brought EVE to the current level. The reason CCP doesn't shut you(oh the chill one) out is because they decide that you can have some carrot on a stick and be a happy idiot, while the "unchill"(Jesus, if American's could only correctly use their own language) don't like the carrot, and instead try to beat the bastard riding on their back and slapping them behind the ear.
Basically, you are just accepting their "compromises" which is like :
CCP: "there's a lot of stuff we need to do, but meh, don't feel like it, let's just continue with bullshit, and we'll call Mittani over for an "important" meeting. Then all the player base is astonished, wow, mittani so cool, me so horny…HE MADE CCP CALL FOR EMERGENCY MEETING. NOT.
It was the "unchill" guys that bothered to make those "unchill" open letters. Not that they made any difference, either…coz the "chill CSM" went to Iceland.
I don't particularly like the supercaps either, think they should have had a horrific limit to them in the first place, or even never been introduced to the game. Now it's just a goon propaganda, we can't fight supercaps with our superblobs. Think the supercap nerf should go in hand with nerf to alliance/fleet/bluelist sizes nerf. As it stands, whenever someone comes up with a way to beat the living shit out of his enemies in this game, there are pathetic bastards that simply scream for nerfs. NERF IS GOOD. Don't get me wrong.
tl:dr, eh?
(Jesus, if Americans could only – corrected the American's.
"Term limits also hurt the CSM, because the smartest, most interested and involved people couldn’t keep contributing."
I'm sure most politicians would agree with this. damn them inconvenient elections and fixed terms, i could do so much more good if you just made me dictator for life. It's in your own best interests! and besides who wants to waste time on an election anyways.
Term limits have never been the answer. It has been a informed voter that looks not at what they say, but at what they do. Also if the press really did their job, reps in congress wouldn't have been able to kick the can down the road for so long that you end up in a financial crises.
I can see where you are coming from and you may well be correct, but i personally do not like the thought of some sort of hegemony created through continued block voting. I think people having to sit out a term after serving 2 consecutive terms isn't a bad idea, mainly i suppose as i utterly do not trust any politician or anyone who would want to play that game. Of course those blocks would just chose a different person or puppet or whatever, but when they are on their todd in iceland they won't have their boss holding their hands and that in itself has the potential to give me amusement, which is what this game is about for me.
As for informed voters, unfortunately i think most people vote with their tribe, whichever one that may be.
Mittani was correct that they are lobbyists not congress. Bloc voting may well give the CSM to the largest corporations, but in the end CCP will care more about the money then the CSM. This means keeping the most players happy not the biggest lobbyists.
Power corrupts, not that CSM has much power. But can't help but notice that Mittani has been outspoken about supercaps for years, and now that he leader of CSM they are getting nerfed. I personally don't think any alliance leader should be on CSM, just look at the CSM now, it's kinda a joke how easy it is to control CSM really, not that I mind i'll live in 0.0 as long as I play the game, so having your whole null alliance/coalition just vote for thier leaders will more then likely keep the focus on improving 0.0 space.
MY CEO, MY CSM
Term limits is necessary to limit the ability for a single person to instill a stale vision from the eve user base.
In particular, Mittani's credibility is reasonable questionable since his use of the Ten Ton Hammer. "Sins of a Solar Spymaster" series was clearly self serving as he frequently spurged the poeple he hated. Like when he kicked OWN out of Dek. He used his column to wage a credibility war against his enemies. Given the power to be leading citizen of eve, he didnt hesitate to convert the platform for his personal agenda. So how is CSM different ?
Personally, I see Mittani as a guy that believes that his vision of goonswarm always plays the game the way it should be played and the game should be nerfed to meet this vision of play. He feels so strongly that he promotes two of his buddies to xerox this vision and limit the diversity of opinion that enters CSM. So the gameplan of "the Three Wise men" is to increase control of the CSM agenda for the goons.
So in the minds of most players, how is this good for the game ?
GoonSwarm exists to make EVE fun for the Goon Community… I'd say Mittens is doing pretty well at it, in and out of game.
OWN got booted because they were a bunch of lying faggots and failed at said lying so hard they had it coming. Then again, if Goons are so bad wouldn't that be a good thing for OWN?
Ya Know, there's something inherently exciting about putting someone else down. There are several things that Goons have done that concerned me, and from what I had heard, Mittani sounded like a dictatorial ego trip.
However, because I have lived long and well, life has taught me to not accept the "common wisdom".
People are self involved. Everybody has an agenda, and except for a few broken individuals, most people are extremely self-interested. So when I heard so many complaining about Mittani, I wondered why so many followed him. One would think that if he is a real ass that he would lose his following after a year or two.
So I got into an alliance that flies with him and saw the inside of GSF operations as far as an ally is allowed to see.
(Continued)
And all the stuff that was "common wisdom" about Mittani was bullshit. The goons can be wild en masse, but they are a smart bunch and they would not remain in the corp/alliances if they were being poorly led.
First, Mittani is a really funny guy. He likes to quip and quote and he knows a lot of real history. I suspect he may be a military intel guy IRL or something.
Second, he really has thought through the fine points of the game. His insistence on fleet fittings is the single biggest reason that the goons win so often. Some have claimed that his access to internal details created an advantage for him, I contend he know what worked before he ever came into the CSM better than the devs did.
Third, he is a brilliant planner. Do not play chess with him, he foresees all.
Anyway, despite all the false allegations and mean-spirited innuendo, Mittani is just a great leader.
I hope he goes into politics for real, the world needs more problem solvers!
Jesus, the more I read from this guy the more he just comes across as a complete plank with an ego problem.
All he really said is that if the CSM tells the Dev's thing they want to hear they get on fine and if they say things they don't want to hear they get shut out.
The word puppet springs to mind!