What Game Devs Should Learn From EVE

An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Gamesradar about EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management (CSM), a group of elected player representatives that serve to facilitate communications between the developers and the community: "On the last day, the devs announced that after the earlier discussions about improving the CSM’s ability to effect change, the CSM was being raised to the status of its own department within CCP. This is revolutionary; in one swift move, the CSM went from what could be considered a glorified focus group to what CCP considers to be a 'stakeholder' in the company, given equal consideration with every other department in requesting development time for a project. That means the CSM — and the entire playerbase it represents — has as much influence on development projects as Marketing, Accounting, Publicity and all the other teams outside of the development team. This is, of course, the stated intention. But has any developer gone to such lengths for its fans?"

Comments

This is why

[toxygen01]

EVE is so popular. It's not a game (anymore). Everyone takes it very seriously.
CCP even hired economists to be able to cope with in-game markets...

CSM elected by less than 6% of the players

[harl]

The only problem is the CSM has no mandate. They do not represent the players. They're elected by 4-6% of the player base.

The whole thing is widely viewed with scorn by the player base. Election turn outs make the states look good. Most candidates are viewed as fanboys wanting a free trip to iceland.