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Eve Online’s great experiment

March 21st, 2008 (Visited 2475 times) Tags:

For those who don’t know, the player council in Eve continues to move forward. In the past, I have commented that it seemed less like an actual player government than like an advisory council of sorts. But based on this article, it seems to have developed into more:

Giving players the control stick in EVE Online – Massively

I think it’s a question worth exploring as to why exactly this sort of thing is happening more aggressively in some game worlds than in social worlds, despite the fact that game worlds are more restrictive to the scope of user behavior in so many ways.

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Bloggers | The Cesspit. wrote on March 27th, 2008 at 12:58 am:

[...] target of criticism is considered a developer. Source: Psychochild Categories: Bloggers 18:04 Eve Online’s great experiment For those who don’t know, the player council in Eve continues to move forward. In the past, I [...]

Game Tycoon»Blog Archive » Articles of Interest wrote on March 30th, 2008 at 2:53 pm:

[...] Via Raph, news that players of Eve Online will have the opportunity to elect the members of a player council that will dictate in-game policy. Seems like an exciting experiment in MMO democracy — looking forward to hearing more about it. [...]

Reader Comments

Bri said on March 21st, 2008 at 10:15 am:
Perhaps it is because game worlds are more restrictive. Do you need a player council if players already have the ability to rain digital genitalia on each other while represented as underage furries?
Aaron said on March 21st, 2008 at 11:25 am:
A game setting is structured to force all players into a unified system. Players share goals, methods, and a perception of setting.

A virtual environment like Second Life leaves everyone to perceive the environment and respond to it however they please.

People generally don’t group together without shared interests and needs. Game settings and rules provide that for them.
Eolirin said on March 21st, 2008 at 12:26 pm:
Didn’t Bartle and Jessica Mulligan already break down why this isn’t really a form of player government at all, and really is just a way for them to have an easier time of dealing with customer relations? The article doesn’t seem to indicate that anything’s really changed, it’s just thrown in what appears to be player speculation as to how this could be abused. There’s a comment like “what if they decide to ban a player corporation from the game?” but there’s no indication that they’ll actually have the ability to do that at all. The interview certainly never even remotely hints in that direction. CCP doesn’t seem to really be letting go of any of their administrative power, so the Council is really just a way for the player base to elect representatives to bring player concerns directly to the devs. Didn’t SWG do something like this eventually?

Actually, looking at the EVE website, it’s pretty explicit that the council has absolutely zero in game power.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=545

Specifically this part: “It cannot be stressed enough that the council will not have any formal power within CCP; it will function solely as an advisory council to CCP by serving as a communication conduit between the playerbase and CCP.”

So more socially based game worlds won’t be doing this, simply because either the players have real power in those settings, or there’s not enough of a game element that there needs to be a clear and open channel between the players and the devs.
Prokofy Neva said on March 21st, 2008 at 12:33 pm:
And the answer is: because they don’t have private property, RMT, and therefore a cash-out, some sort of stake coming in and out that would cause real disputes.

I’m not clear about how the Eve loot gets changed into these news stories like “$16,000 US worth of fraud”. That isn’t a legalized game exchange is it? That means on ebay or gamestop right? Or? How does it work?

If your answer to “why” is going to be “isn’t it lovely that game worlds with out RMT, and making everyone equal at the outset so you have to skill to succeed and only skill and creativity and endurance has stake” and “therefore that makes the best governance council in the business” and then QED we must use this game model to bring about peace in the Middle East, you know I’ll be right there saying “bollocks” to all of this.
Raph said on March 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm:

because they don’t have private property, RMT, and therefore a cash-out, some sort of stake coming in and out that would cause real disputes.

Oh, disputes are plenty real. Some of these sorts of disputes have led to lawsuits and everything (though not in Eve, to my knowledge).

I’m not clear about how the Eve loot gets changed into these news stories like “$16,000 US worth of fraud”. That isn’t a legalized game exchange is it?

No, it is gray market RMT.

If your answer to “why” is going to be “isn’t it lovely that game worlds with out RMT, and making everyone equal at the outset so you have to skill to succeed and only skill and creativity and endurance has stake” and “therefore that makes the best governance council in the business” and then QED we must use this game model to bring about peace in the Middle East, you know I’ll be right there saying “bollocks” to all of this.

Heh, no, quite the opposite in fact. Let me present it from a thoroughly capitalist and very different point of view instead.

Arguably, the potential monetary loss, brand risk, and so on are far greater for someone like CCP than for something like Linden. In other words, there’s both less demand for it AND greater risk in doing it for CCP than there is for a social world operator.

So why is it that we see Iron Realms, Dark Ages, CCP, and others messing around with incorporating player governments, even if not wholeheartedly, when we don’t see it much in the social worlds?
Raph said on March 21st, 2008 at 12:45 pm:

Didn’t Bartle and Jessica Mulligan already break down why this isn’t really a form of player government at all,

Yes, and I noted in the post that i have said much the same.

That said, I still don’t see other worlds doing stuff like player-elected representatives. That is a not-inconsequential step, even if they are powerless. We can argue about the adequacy of what they are doing, whether it’s right to have for-show councils, whether it’s likely to develop into something else, etc — but I think my question stands.
Michael Chui said on March 21st, 2008 at 2:52 pm:
Interestingly, Simutronics also did a more honest version of this with Dragonrealms not two months ago:

http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=1&topic=1&message=2354

So why is it that we see Iron Realms, Dark Ages, CCP, and others messing around with incorporating player governments, even if not wholeheartedly, when we don’t see it much in the social worlds?

I think the answer to your question is “LambdaMOO”. People in general, and gamers in specific, aren’t interested in governance. Those gamers that are, generally end up in positions of de facto governance (like guild/clan leaders).

Still, I also don’t feel I understand your question.

The IRE games and Dark Ages don’t have player governance, as I understand it. They have a political dimension in their gameplay: player factions.

EVE and Dragonrealms have company-approved player voices: people who have distinguished themselves enough as idea leaders such that the GMs now explicitly pay attention to them.

And then you have guilds and clans, which are really just dynamic player factions. (As opposed to static ones as in IRE games.)

Governance is challenging. And I think that social worlds frame challenge as an obstruction, whereas game worlds frame challenge as fun. When I was designing my own MMORPG (snicker), one of the first things I did was decide that Politics would be an important part of it. My inspirations were from Achaea and Dark Ages. I didn’t have a playerbase. I didn’t have a couple hundred people suggesting the game be tweaked this way or nerfed that way. The idea of players lending a voice (as they do in, say, ATITD, between Tellings?) to the process didn’t even come up. But I already wanted Politics to be a part of the game.
Eolirin said on March 21st, 2008 at 5:44 pm:
Well, what exactly would they *need* player-elected representatives for exactly Raph? Keep in mind that this is basically a method for dealing with funneling gameplay related issues that the playerbase is having to the devs… if you have minimal gameplay elements, why would you even consider having representatives at all?
Prokofy Neva said on March 21st, 2008 at 7:15 pm:
Well, Raph, I’m sorry, I’m proving strangely resistant to your claim that this is “player government”. Because…it sounds like an advisory council.

There is no separation of powers.

There is no delegation of authority, no representation, no acclaim even.

There is no securing of borders, authorization to tax, standing army, compact ethnic groups, you know, nation stuff.

There is no constituent assembly.

Well, perhaps you’ll tell me I have to go play Eve Online or I won’t get it.
Eolirin said on March 21st, 2008 at 10:16 pm:
Er… he never said it was a player government… (Yeah, I kinda implied that a little too, but he really didn’t)

It’s really not a player government, but it is a player elected system of representation, which we haven’t really seen much of to be honest. I just think it’s odd that he’s questioning *why*, since the most obvious reason is that Eve could actually benefit from a clearer communication with the player base, or at least the appearance of clearer communication. The more gameplay elements you have, the greater use there is for out of game systems for communicating information. More things to balance, more things to complain about. Where with a primarily social game in game communication is more important than out of game, and that’s stuff that players can do all by themselves given the right tools. So you never need to elect officials or anything, the players will attend to themselves.
James Hogan said on March 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 am:
Lots of people point out that it’s ultimately CCP deciding how much power to give the council, and then conclude that the council therefore has no power.

That doesn’t follow. The council has however much power CCP decides to give them, and that’s a subtle but crucial difference. Saying that the council “has no power” is like saying a company executive “has no power” simply because he has someone to report to. It all depends how much freedom his boss gives him, and how strong of a leader the executive is.

From what’s CCP is published, it’s clear that they don’t intend to give the council anything approaching absolute power. But there’s still a wide range of possibilities left.
Eolirin said on March 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 am:
Eh. They explicitly say that they have *no* in game power.

I already posted this, but here it is again:
“It cannot be stressed enough that the council will not have any formal power within CCP; it will function solely as an advisory council to CCP by serving as a communication conduit between the playerbase and CCP.”

There’s no deciding to be done here, they explicitly are *only* a communications conduit. This is a way to deal with the logistics of getting reasonable responses from a player base approaching 300,000 users, nothing more. They’ve said as much in about as clear English as can be expected. And that dev blog post that this comes from is dated 4 days ago, so this can be expected to be up to date information.
Sheepherder said on March 22nd, 2008 at 11:10 pm:
“Eh. They explicitly say that they have *no* in game power.”

By the same token, I guess the players have no power either…

…But if an unpopular change goes through, and half the player base is lost, you can be certain that CCP will feel the hurt, so I guess they *do* have power, don’t they? Just not direct power.

As a channel for player input, this council has the ability to make cognent suggestions in a fairly direct way to dev’s, on the flip side of the coin it serves to focus the minimal power each individual player has. At the very least it would look very bad for CCP if their own little experiment in player “governance” backfired, and the entire council cancelled their subscriptions, like entire hardcore raiding guilds disbanding and leaving one of the most popular MMO’s to date because all the new content sucks, except of a greater magnitude…
Michael W. said on March 23rd, 2008 at 1:24 pm:
I’m surprised nobody has used the metaphor of student government, because it seems like this is pretty much the same thing.

They will most likely get to vote on the theme for the prom, and if they are lucky they will get to help pick the destination for the class trip.

CCP is still the Principal.
Kerri Knight said on March 24th, 2008 at 8:45 am:
As a channel for player input, this council has the ability to make cognent suggestions in a fairly direct way to dev’s, on the flip side of the coin it serves to focus the minimal power each individual player has. At the very least it would look very bad for CCP if their own little experiment in player “governance” backfired, and the entire council cancelled their subscriptions, like entire hardcore raiding guilds disbanding and leaving one of the most popular MMO’s to date because all the new content sucks, except of a greater magnitude

I think one way to mitigate this risk is to ensure you’ve selected from a broad pool of views available. I can see trouble for player governance with real ability to influence change in a game like EVE, where those changes can unfairly benefit some factions over others. I’d need some serious reassuring as to these people’s personal integrity and ability to be impartial and fair in their recommendations.

After all, some players will leave when they aren’t being treated as the exclusive ‘golden children’ anymore. You need a good mixture of raider and non-raider, pvper and non-pvper, casual and hardcore, and a lot of mixtures those dichotomies don’t cover if you want a discussion on what is in the cohesive best interests of the game.
Ingrod said on March 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm:
There is no separation of powers.

There is no delegation of authority, no representation, no acclaim even.

There is no securing of borders, authorization to tax, standing army, compact ethnic groups, you know, nation stuff.

There is no constituent assembly.

These things are ingame…

EVE is one of the few MMOs that give power to players for control resources and territories and organice thenselves in corps and aliances resulting in authentic states with his own economy and rules, some corps can act how democracys, other how jerarquic empires, other how pirate gangs, etc.. They dont need rule the game world because currently have power ingame with the actual game rules.

For me the EVE council is a system for have some player control on the devs decisitions for avoid disasters how the SWG-NGE experience, where devs changued almost completly the game landscape without listening the player base real needs.

The EVE players dont need control the game for changue it because they liked EVE in the current form and the power that the gameplay give to then, they not want dont see their beloved game turned in other WoW, for that they need have some control in the future of the game and have a voice for point the game problems and claim for a fix to the devs.

That are the reasons because some game worlds need advisory councils, I dont see how these situations can have place in a social world without gamerules giving objetives and gameplays that need be conservated or balanced.

In RPG game worlds players want adapt theselves to a world with his own rules and have a place inside or build something in that world. In social world they need build all without the objetives or reasons giving by game rules, for socialice and shopping they have the real world and web features connected to the real world needs and objetives, and for that they perceive social virtual worlds how boring, no inmersion, no other world, only the same real world but in a virtual space.
Eolirin said on March 24th, 2008 at 1:17 pm:
Sheepherder, the ability to leave and stop paying sub fees isn’t in game power… it’s out of game power. The Council is an out of game institution basically, so things like “I want this Corp to disappear” or “These people should be banned” can’t occur. They can make suggestions as to what direction CCP takes, but they have no authority over any other player or organization. It’s just a way of focusing the will of the playerbase into an easily understood form of feedback. That stuff like feedback should be important to CCP is pretty obvious though, this is just an attempt to streamline things, rather than an attempt to really do something wildly new. EVE is big enough and has enough system complexity that it’s useful to do this, but it’s still all out of game power, not in game power.

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