What does CCP really want?

This is cool:
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1508536

34 pages, and some great ideas and suggestions, as well as the expected grief. Hats off to CCP for raising it, and here’s hoping with work done by CSM5 and now 6, that more of the players’ voice gets heard.

However I think while this is a great thing for CCP to do maybe it should be given to the CSM (now?) to collate, filter, poll (find out what players think across the demographic rather than individual opinions) and then report back the findings to CCP. The report should be made publically available, and maybe even a website setup in which the issues raised are categorised (high demand, low development/implementation requirement, etc) and UPDATES posted on progress.

This way it would be transparent, players would feel loved, CSM would have a useful role for CCP and everyone would frolic with joy. Naked?

But, I work in IT and have done a lot of different roles. Some of the key questions I ask a business when I start projects have never been raised with CCP it seems. This explains a lot of the disconnect between CCP and the player base.

Key questions ... what is you key business objective CCP? what are you trying to achieve and why? Why are you talking to me? What’s your budget to achieve your business needs?

Ok, they say the premier sci-fi environment, cool. It may sound stupid, jargonistic gooble-de-gook for narcissistic corporate nerds but a VISION is oddly very important. It gives direction, simply, and that filters down. Just like the personality of the CEO is reflected by the senior managers, and filters down to the staff and sets the tone for a company. The vision helps point you in a general direction.

A mission statement expands on it, helping pad it out and give some details. Then the senior team(s) map out strategic plans.

EVE is tracking well, growing nicely, with interesting impacts on the subscription rates with new releases, from http://mmodata.net/

So business wise EVE is doing well to date, and long may it do so we all hope. The key is where to from here? Will the graph dip or rise? Here’s an interesting one:

So is EVE aiming for more women? More players from second life? Thus picking up on a dying market sector with a new environment, namely Incarna and walking in stations. Dust514 is obviously to tap into the massive console market. So these moves make sense from s strategic business sense. But as all the players feel what about the core of EVE, the existing and potential future players. We play for pew pew, PVE and PVP, and all that goes with it. It’s the male demographic here and we like things that go fast and blow stuff up. Lets even be brutal about it – ‘sovereignty don’t work coz its ta hard to blows stuffs up’. The current player base can’t see the bang bang in Incarna, so understandably they shy away. Tapping into a massive potential market draws CCP to Incarna. Like it or not it’s coming and it makes business sense, but only as long as you don’t lose your core player base, and the CSM has done very well at raising this with CCP.  This is why CCP listened to them then, and why other items seemed to drift off into a void.

There needs to be a connect between the business model of CCP and the player base. CSM is it, and it was a very smart thing of CCP to do. How many other MMO’s have such a communication channel? As a result I believe in both CCP and the CSM. But the CSM must understand its role in the business. It is because players and developers at CCP love EVE, and I believe the management at CCP do too, that I think things will move in a positive direction. But we players also need to be positive if we want to be heard.

So when CCP asks for ideas, what they are really asking is not would you like the drake nerfed and the brutix with 50 more cap and CPU, they really want to hear WHAT IS YOUR VISION. Sadly we, as a player base, are being self absorbed focus on the trees and not seeing the woods, we are not telling CCP OUR vision, and we need to. Thankfully hundreds of useful idiots (to quote Lenin) volunteer their opinions and flame others resulting in some kind of synthesis all the same.

I say cool to Incarna. Bars, gambling dens, mini-games, retail outlets, virtual meeting rooms:

Bring it on.

If it brings more role-players and women, fair enough, it helps CCP’s business, so if it’s good for them it’s pretty likely to be good for the existing player base by making CCP’s budget bigger (more revenue = more cool stuff in game). CSM is to let them hear the voice of the bittervets and ‘blow-em-up’ brigade to keep it in touch with its roots. Dust514, more pew pew is cool, as long as both Incarna and Dust don’t mess with the existing game right?

So the crunch now is this – where to from there CCP, what is their vision? and for that matter what is OUR vision of EVE?

My Vision? Some people have some awesome ideas, let’s get the CSM to collect them, collate and manage them and relay that to CCP, some of mine to follow in subsequent posts....
If we love EVE, then we need to tell CCP not the little things we want but the visionary things we want. If that matches where CCP is going as a business then imagine the outcome....