BB80 - Democracy in Action

Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 80th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are please visit the Blog Banter page.

Blog Banter 80 - A Voice for All Players?

CCP Seagull ecourages you to get involved in CSM12 and put your name forward to be a Space-Politician. On his blog Neville Smit noted that CSM11 had done a good job with minimum of drama. However he said he'd not be covering CSM12 like he has in previous years as he sees no point. The power-blocs will vote on who they want and unless Steve Ronuken manages to get on CSM12 it is almost certainly going to have every seat taken by the big null-sec blocs.

Is Neville right? Is the CSM moving more and more into just a voice for 0.0? Is this a bad thing? Are the hi-sec, low-sec and WH players going to lose out badly or is it really not an issue as its the same game? Could a totally null-sec dominated CSM 12 give a balanced voice for everyone?

Banter on!

BB80 - Democracy in Action

Will CSM 12 be totally dominated by null-sec as Neville Smit says in his blog post?

Almost certainly.

Just look at 2016 and see what happen's when you give the masses the vote. First the UK votes to leave the EU in Brexit, the most self destructive and idiotic thing a country has ever done... then the USA say's "Here, hold my beer and watch this!".

Technically democracy should work in Eve Online. The huge numbers of high-sec, low-sec and wormhole players should be able to get together and get representatives onto the CSM. The problem is they won't.

First off there are those who see Eve as a computer game. They log on, do their thing and log off. How many Eve players even know about the CSM? If you asked your average mission runner or trader in high-sec are they aware of the CSM? Do they follow Eve social media? Eve news sites or blogs? There is a massive difference between those who see Eve as a game vs those who see it as a hobby.

Next is do they care? Again the "Its only a game" crowd might not even be interested in voting even if they know about it. Yes technically its easy, but you still need to visit the Eve website, log in, go to the CSM area and then vote for your candidate. If you're not that invested in the game, why bother?

Then there is the final issue. All those candidates splitting the vote. What was it? 64 candidates? That's going to split the non-null bloc vote.

So whilst the other areas of the game could each vote on a representative its not going to happen. The null-blocs with get a list of people to vote for and instructions on what to do.

CSM 12 is very likely to be 90% null with Steve Rokunen the only hope for non 0.0 voice. This could be prevented by the other sections of the community getting organised, banding together, selecting chosen candidates and everyone voting (First candidate the one for your area, second and third for the other two). However this is not going to happen. Voter "turn out" in Hi, Lo and WH will be low compared to population and votes will be spread to thinly.

As anyone who has FC'd before will testify. Getting a fleet of Eve Players to do what you ask them is difficult enough. How are you going to control tens of thousands?

As Neville said, we can only hope that the null-bloc candidates have experience or interest outside of just 0.0.