The professionalism of the CSM
Heh, once again, I manage to write something completely different than I promised. I have written quite a bit more about CCP’s communication channels. However, last night during my last round of reading the eve-online forums, I found a new thread-naught by current CSM member Vuk Lau(Chairman during CSM2).
The thread was about the customer service department. And to be quite honest, I kind of saw this coming. The CSM has had a fair bit of interaction with the game-master team, and I think the thread is the product of latent anger with the GM team.
Before I go onto the topic at hand, I’m just going to put up a bit of a disclaimer:
- Vuk Lau is a good guy, so if I disagree with the execution of this issue, it’s purely from an academic point of view
- I think that the customer-support team has been doing a fair job. However it’s obvious that there’s room for change. The sheer volume of people who have had a bad experience with customer support is a clear sign of that.
And I got to hand it to Vuk Lau. He has at the point of writing this, managed to get some 200 of his friends (and alts) to support the thread.
However, in my mind it raises some questions about the approach and role which the CSM ought to be taking. Reading the thread, I must admit that I found it to be non-professional, slightly unconstructive (Whiny) and void of suggestions for how to change. The post also makes a whole bunch of assumptions about CCP Internal Affairs, which I think is at best speculation.
As far as I’m aware, this is not a desirable thing to have taking place. The CSM ought to be professional enough to conduct a conversation without repeatedly biting the hand which feeds. And I’m afraid that if these sorts of issues are raised to just discuss how much the GM department sucks, that CCP’s trust in the CSM will disappear extremely quickly.
Another problem I’m finding is a lack of continuity. Well, rather the lack of respect for the fact that there has been previous CSMs. A couple of weeks ago CSM3 raised an issue which was dealt with by CSM2. The conclusion on the issue was that it was extremely hard from a programming perspective and that from a game-design perspective, there wasn’t consensus.
Fast forward 6 months, this rejected issue is now being raised again, using the exact same suggestion, despite them being aware that it was already rejected. As far as I’m aware, this is going to be a waste of time during a meeting which is already way too short. And it honestly doesn’t make the CSM seems professional.
I think that the conclusion here is that the CSM needs to consider its steps more carefully. Over the last year, people have put their heart and soul into this thing. By taking a piss on that and acting selfishly and unprofessionally is an insult to the community at large, which relies on the CSM to be a voice of reason between them and CCP.
And that leads me to what I’ll be writing about very soon. I’m currently finishing up a small post which will reflect on CCP’s means of communication, which will lead onto discussing how I see the future of the CSM. So stay tuned for that.
Tags: CSM
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under EVE Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 3rd, 2009 at 4:33 am
Good thoughts all around. I don’t have much to add except that I agree that the CSM should grow up and show some professionalism. I’m not sure it’s possible, but it’d be nice.
Noah
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
You have to put things into perspective Lvv. This CSM is not like the previous one, and quite likely only a prelude to the next one.
It is already quite clear from third party forums, pm’s and a stack of leaked ts meetings that the sole purpose of this csm round is found solely in getting the details on sovereignty and capital ship revisions before they hit a devblog.
Like one of the csm put it, this is just a way to get the scoop before anyone else, what we’re doing is nothing different then bob messing around on multiplicity on invite by a dev.
There are a few CSM in this round who are not part of the bigger boys in town, or who don’t have a feel for the sneak preview potential. But with the exception of Avalloc and Oz their contribution is pretty neglegible.
August 3rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
And what is unprofessional in issue I raised. Explicitely?
Noah? the same question
CAOD alt go troll somewhere else.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Hey there. I followed the link from Vuk’s customer service post and read what you had to say on the matter. I agree that there was a lack in the 12 pages of threadnaught of constructive suggestions, so I made some of my own:
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1135590&page=12
Maybe the CSM can use them as a brainstorming point to make some suggestions to CCP.
Thanks!
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:39 pm
You seem more worried about the imago of the CSM itself then the actual issue/content of vuk’s thread. Just because CCP is paying your CSM hotel bill and ticket doesnt mean you should be kissing their asses. Your the players voice not ccp puppets, however rude that voice can sometimes be to indicate something is severly wrong. Vuk in that sense can be very direct. I for one am happy that at least he isnt afraid to say it as it is.
my conclusion: its not CSM professionalism you should be questioning, thats not what you are for, you should be questioning CCP’s professionalism.
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Chee,
I really fail to see how this is ass-kissing.
As far as I’m aware, it’s in the interest of the player-base to have a CSM which interacts with CCP in a professional manner. In that way the player-base is going to get more out of having the CSM, because CCP isn’t going to ignore them because of the fact they act like kids.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:43 pm
@admin(Vista i assume?)
And what do you mean by professional? Ask ccp nicely to have another look at their GM dept? Sometimes it takes a little more to let CCP know how serious the issue is. Between CSM2 and now CSM3 there has been little sign of improvement on the GM issue. “pretty please” obviously didnt work. Lets go for a noisier approach.
Again, the way this is brought shouldnt shift attention from the actual issue itself: the GM dept needs dire improvement.
If CCP were to ignore the CSM, then arent they gonna shoot themselves in the foot? I mean, its their own project, their bills, and as they very well understand: their job to know what problems circulate within the game community.
August 3rd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
CSM2 didn’t talk about the GM department at large. Only how to deal with the Kenzoku deal.
Hence, there’s no need to get noisier, when CCP hasn’t even been approached about this issue yet.
Hence starting out by being a bunch of bastards about it isn’t going to get the CSM anywhere.
August 4th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Vuk Lau, you said:
>>And what is unprofessional in issue I raised. Explicitely?
The issue isn’t unprofessional. Your method of bringing it to light on the forums is. I just read the whole pdf of the meeting, and I thought it went well. But the forum post didn’t contain anything constructive. The three “points” you make at the end don’t contain any concrete ideas. They read the same as “fix POS’s! they’re broken!” Useless criticism doesn’t generate conversation, just frustration. I think Moon Dogg is on the same page as you, but he expressed his ideas and his thoughts a lot more coherently without looking like another angry forum flamer.
Grimmi admits his mistake and that they should be enforcing the policy more consistently in the future. Those policies could and should be clearer, but for now, what more can he do?
Noah