EVE Evolved: It's election time in EVE online

The month of May is election time for EVE Online as players vote for members of the game's democratically constructed Council of Stellar Management. Voting opened on May 5th for all players with an account older than 30 days and continues until May 19th. Once assembled, the council is tasked with bringing the concerns of players and ideas for game improvements directly to CCP. Players propose issues on the official EVE forums and the rest of the player-base can give the thread a thumbs up to show their support. Issues that get enough support from the general EVE community are elevated to the regular CSM meetings, in which the issue is discussed and voted on by the council members. If the council deems the issue important enough in a meeting, they'll add it to the list of items they plan to discuss with CCP.

In this week's politically charged EVE Evolved, I look at the role of the CSM, how it's changing with this fifth term and the impact the council has had on EVE's development.

Good ideas

Once every six months, the CSM meets with CCP in Iceland for a week of intensive meetings on all the important issues raised during their term. This means the CSM acts as a kind of filtering mechanism for player feedback, finding the best ideas and bringing them straight to CCP. EVE's players have a history of producing some fantastic ideas that have later gone on to be implemented in the game, but with a player-base of over 330,000 active accounts and rising, it's not feasible for developers to dig through the forums to find those increasingly rare good ideas.

Since its inception, the council has represented EVE's players in direct contact with CCP, backed countless player ideas and had a significant impact on the game's development. They played a key role in helping CCP design the new sovereignty mechanics that came in with the Dominion expansion. The first two councils laid a strong foundation for the sovereignty system overhaul and the third was directly involved in gameplay brainstorming sessions. The CSM is also responsible for the new scan probe mechanics and the updated ship fitting interface. They even managed to convince CCP to implement a 24-hour skill queue, an idea they had previously rejected. CCP have previously estimated that 60% of ideas put forward by the council have been implemented or are in the pipeline for a later release.

Changes to the council's format

This fifth round of the CSM comes with some much-needed changes to how the council operates. In previous iterations of the CSM, players were limited to serving in a maximum of two six-month terms to prevent the same set of players from dominating the scene. For the latest election, this rule has been removed as it was barring perfectly good, experienced candidates from applying. Without the enthusiastic and talented individuals that made up the first few councils, its usefulness may have been diminished. In the running for CSM this time is a whole slew of names you may recognise from earlier terms. As former CSM members have a considerable body of publicly accessible meeting minutes behind them, players are also in a much better position to make an informed decision about them.

The second big change CCP has made is the increase in term sizes from six to twelve months. Under the previous rules, members could only stay for two separate six-month terms. This meant that while some of the group would stay together for a full year and learn how to work well together, new members would be swapped in halfway through and shake things up. With twelve-month terms, council members won't have to spend as much time out of the year learning the CSM processes or getting to know their fellow council members. Unfortunately, this also means council members that aren't pulling their weight or are being disruptive may stay for twelve months rather than being kicked out at re-election time in six months.

To accommodate the longer term lengths, the group will meet with CCP in Iceland twice per term instead of just once. As the same members will invariably be present for both meetings out of a given year, the second meeting should let the council follow up on progress with issues pushed at the first meeting of their term. How this change works out in the long term is yet to be seen.

Representation

With 49 candidates in the running, it might be difficult to figure out who should get your vote. Players are generally encouraged to vote for the candidate that most represents their play style so that their views are more likely to be elevated to a CSM vote and are better supported in meetings. To help players figure out which candidates represent their interests, each person in the running is expected to write a short statement of intent and run a campaign on the forum leading up to voting season. Although some candidates each year don't bother with a campaign, it's proven extremely effective at attracting votes.

With the removal of term limits allowing all the old familiar faces to return, new entrants that aren't willing to make a significant campaign effort are unlikely to win enough votes to secure a seat on the council. Of the 49 candidates in the running this year, 12 didn't bother to write a serious statement of intent and only about 20 seem to have put much effort into them or put forward any serious kind of campaign.

A total of 33 alliances have had at least one member apply for a seat on the CSM. The biggest two or three alliances in the game usually stand a good chance of securing a seat for their entrant by sheer weight of numbers. As the general turnout at the polls is only a small fraction of the EVE player-base, the thousands of votes a major alliance can generate internally adds up to a significant portion of the total votes cast. Some have argued since day one that this is unfair and means the council doesn't proportionally represent the actual player-base. Others have said that it helps ensure the game's biggest few political entities are represented, which can be viewed as in positive light.

Summary

The Council of Stellar Management has been in office for four terms and it's clear by now that they're really making an impact on EVE. With the updated rules for the fifth CSM, the programme should continue to be a useful way for players to pose important issues to the game's developers. If you're interested in voting for a candidate in the current election but aren't sure who to back, stay tuned to Massively's EVE Online coverage tomorrow. I'll be posting a full listing of all the CSM candidates with handy links to any interviews they've done and campaign websites, along with a brief description of what they stand for. If that doesn't help make up your voter's mind, I don't know what will!

Brendan "Nyphur" Drain is an early veteran of EVE Online and writer of the weekly EVE Evolved column here at massively.com. The column covers anything and everything relating to EVE Online, from in-depth guides to speculative opinion pieces. If you have an idea for a column post or guide or just want to message him, send an e-mail to brendan AT massively DOT com

Special thanks go to Massively reader DragonDawe for suggesting this topic!