Post NDA CSM Tales

The past week of tales of bots and invasion plans and what not got me peeking in /r/eve on Reddit, something I tend to steer clear of.  As with many open forums the signal to noise ratio is too high and I prefer to follow somebody on Twitter or elsewhere who will pull out the choice tidbits worth reading rather than chase them down myself.

But today my curiosity with what was going on in EVE Online paid off, as Jester of the now silent Jester’s Trek blog, known in-game as Ripard Teg, had an AMA going Reddit earlier today.

The only time I can recall seeing him in space

Jester was on CSM8 and his five year NDA expired recently, so he decided to, if not tell all, then at least provide insight on his time on the CSM and his dealings with CCP.

You can find the Reddit post here.  He has tried to reply to serious questions and has recounted a few tales he had previously promised to tell, including the reaction of CCP executive staff to the Dominion trailer.

There is certainly some new information to be gleaned from his responses.  The tale of his posting about Erotica 1 and the bonus room controversy certainly sheds new light on the affair, and not in a way flattering to CCP.

Probably the biggest surprise for me were kind words said about the former CCP Pokethulu, David Reid, who is now running MetaArcade.  My somewhat sour outlook about him involves his hyperbole around Rift and the infamous Tabula Rasa is Triple-A and Here to Stay story over at Massively when he was president of the newly created NCsoft West, shortly before they announced they were shutting the game down, something that ground Editor-in-Chief Michael Zenke’s gears quite severely.

It can be hard to discern from the outside what sort of impact any one person has on a company, but Jester seems to think he was doing a good job given the resources he had.

Aside: While digging up the Tabula Rasa story on the Wayback Machine I ran across what may be the first post fretting about titan proliferation in New Eden.  Band of Brother’s 13 titans were viewed as frightening.