CSM: Running for Office: Week Nine

The end is near. Voting ends on Tuesday and then a week and a half until CCP releases the results. People often ask me, “How are you doing?” I tell them that I don’t know. None of us know. There is no count. Every guess as to who will win one of the fourteen seats is a guess. Some guesses are more educated than others but they are all guesses. I am getting a steady trickle of traffic from the CSM candidates page.

 I also did a podcast episode with DaeHan Minhyok (Click here to listen!). He is starting up a low sec podcast he is calling Low Expectations and he invited me on to chat with him for about an hour. We met at the local VA/MD/DC meet last month where he suggested the idea. I’m always up to discuss low sec. I know everyone else must be too. :)

 We will find out on May 3rd. I do have to say that CCP has not promoted this as I would like. I am very close to the election and it is a very large part of my game life right now. But we have had a few tweets for votematch, CCP Dolan has done some interviews, a Dev blog, a video, and links to the launcher. Susan Black brought up the fact that the CSM represents a small part of the player population due to the fact that so few players vote. I have attempted to convince people to invest a bit of time into the process and see if there is someone (me) who they could agree with. I know other candidates have done the same. Some have taken to spamming local or sending mail. Many are reaching out to each other. The players are the main method through which word of the elections is spread but we are speaking to a small circle. It is a very frustrating thing.

 But! Instead of worrying about how I will do I am taking advantage of all the communication I have received. I write a lot of Eve Mails. People have been sending me thoughts and ideas and one of the first things I like to do when I get on is answer any waiting mails that I may have. I personally hate when I send mail to someone and it vanishes without an acknowledgement. So I do my best.

 Some very interesting topics have been given to me. They will help fuel future blog posts. Some are large issues addressing the very nature of Eve. Other’s are thoughts and possibilities. My google document files needed a new layer of organization. I split my documents into folders labeled “ideas people bring to me” and “problems people bring to me”. When thinking about the future there are different things that need to be addressed. Someone asked about unfinished exploration missions in Mynnna’s CSM thread, for instance, and he dumped that into the lap of a Dev. Sometimes it is just a connection that needs to be made. Other topics are huge questions that look at the fabric of the game’s philosophy. I like to drop those on my chat room since I have a varied group of people in there and see what is said and why it is said.

 We’re down to the last call. Procrastinators, fence sitters, and those who haven’t voted need to make their final decisions. Encourage everyone. This is the players electing their player representation and only we’re going to make it happen. Next week I can start reflecting on the process and the week after… well… I have a lot of hope for that post.