I don’t care if CCP sells bullets that do a little more damage frankly.
-Matterall, CSM14 interview with Jin’taan (at ~17:40)
The CSM14 elections kick off on Monday, so the time for candidate research is coming to an end. You’ll soon be able to to cast your vote… at least if you are part of the minority of players that bother.
Elections start on Monday
Of note, Jin’taan did a series of interviews with some of the candidates. He served on the previous three CSMs and used his insight there to ask some pointed questions of the people he interviewed, keeping to the same questions for each interview and not releasing any of the interviews until he was done. This added an element of surprise and some discomfort to those being interviewed and give some unfiltered insight into the candidates themselves. We got to see past the bland electioneering statements and get into the candidates.
Overall, Jin’taan interviewed just six candidates that he found interesting. They were:
- Dunk Dinkle – Brave Collective
- ExookiZ – Scary Wormhole People
- Manic Velocity – Aliastra
- Matterall – Northern Coalition
- Mike Azariah – The Scope
- Vily – TEST Alliance
I like the format and I wish Jin’taan had been able to interview more candidates, however we get what we get.
Each of the candidates stumbled now and again but mostly adapt to the situation in which they found themselves… except for Matterall.
Matterall seemed to push back on the questions. That is okay, I suppose. However, some of the questions from Jin’taan started with straight up statements that CSM members would be asked for direct feedback or to bring up specific issues and Matterall, unlike every other interviewee, didn’t want to go there. (He didn’t even want to endorse any other candidate in the final question. Mike Azariah, for example, took that moment to endorse Matterall, but Matterall had no kind words for anybody else.)
In the end I came away with the impression that what Matterall doesn’t want to be on the CSM, that what he really wants is to consult with CCP on marketing and avoid in-game issues altogether except in the most general, high level sense.
And I guess that is a platform of sorts, even if he seems to be stating up front he won’t be doing the job that will be expected of him.
But then there was the monetization question. All of the candidates interviewed by Jin’taan went pretty quickly against CCP selling any sort of pay to win. That seemed like the obvious response, as a couple even said. As has been pointed out many times, any scent of pay to win in a PvP game can bring ruin to a game. Games that have run with that at times, such as World of Tanks and their gold ammo, have found themselves better off discarding that sort of thing.
Well, all of the candidates except Matterall.
Matterall, as the quote at the top of this post indicates, was quite indifferent to the idea of pay to win. I will expand his quote just to put in more context: [stumbles and things like “uh” not transcribed]
I know that monetization is a big deal to people. It’s not a big deal to me. If the game can make money by selling objects like Fortnite can and make however much gazillions of dollars they are making, I am all for it. I don’t see any problem with it. I think what they [CCP] have done generally in the past has been good, as far as a guideline, but this is not something I am passionate about. I don’t care if CCP sells bullets that do a little more damage frankly. I don’t see that as completely destabilizing the game. Because the game is not all about PvP. The game is about other things too.
He goes on to speak about things he would like to see… more books and such, and says he has every copy of EON Magazine… then starts to sound somewhat dismissive of cosmetic offerings. I came away feeling like he didn’t care for ship SKINs or clothing items.
This segment of the interview had me muttering aloud as I listened to it because there was so much wrong there.
First, I dislike the comparison to Fortnite. That seemed to be a lazy grab at the most popular title out there that is a genre apart from EVE Online. But more so, if that is your example, a PvP game that sells only cosmetic gear, it seems like a very strange jump to go from that to selling gold ammo. If you think that is what Fortnite does, go educate yourself. And that comparison gets even weirder when he sounds so uninterested in cosmetic options.
Second, one of Matterall’s repeated campaign slogans is that he listens to everyone. That seems to be something of an idle boast if he can blithely state that gold ammo isn’t a big deal. Or maybe he does listen, but just doesn’t care. Either way, if this is a hot button issue to you (it is to me, if only for the survival of the overall game) then Matterall would clearly not be representing you on the CSM.
Third, another of his campaign statements is about the unity of the game (you can find this over on his CSM Wire page for CSM 14), that he doesn’t like to break things up into null sec, high sec, faction warfare, and whatever. As he writes, “those distinctions don’t make sense to me.” But here we have him chopping off part of the game, PvP, which I would argue makes up a critical core of the game… you don’t have an industry game or a mining game or a hauling game unless people are buying replacement ships and modules due to losses… in a way that seems diametrically opposed to his stated position. If you want to take a holistic view you cannot then set aside major parts of the game.
Fourth, his attraction to literature as a monetization option seems misplaced. Not that I do not share his interest. I have many back issues of EON Magazine and most of the books and what not. The thing is, these are not, nor ever have been, a money making ventures for the game. Things like that, and the EVE Online Store (about which I have written), are marketing. They don’t make money, they promote the game. Rare is the gaming company that turns a profit, or breaks even, on that sort of thing, and I feel like somebody who wants to go engage CCP about their marketing efforts ought to know that.
Finally, I think that Matterall, who has been playing since 2008 and who has done a couple of presentations at EVE Vegas about the game’s history, ought to be aware of what happened the last time CCP brought up the idea of gold ammo and cash shop ships. While the event is erroneously called “Monoclegate” because the press likes a snappy term (with “gate” appended) for a headline, the backlash against CCP with the Incarna release was driven in large part by the leak of the Greed is Good internal publication that seemed to chart out a plan to monetize all the things, selling special ship and ammo and implants and whatever in the cash shop.
That did not turn out well for CCP and to be indifferent to that is a serious disqualifying factor to my mind.
Gold ammo – Artist concept
So there we go. I’ve spent time talking with Matterall at EVE Vegas and we get along. I don’t particularly want to bash him. I was even inclined to slip him onto my ballot… not in first position, as he was asking, but somewhere… however now I cannot bring myself to put him on the list. This interview changed my mind. It was almost 30 minutes of empty rhetoric and high concept where the one concrete issue that came up he said it didn’t interest him. That was only a couple minutes out of the interview, but it was the only part where the rubber met the road really, the only part where we had a glimpse of him being handed an actual topic of substance, and he didn’t have the moxie to go there because he didn’t really care.
Matterall, if you really do listen to everybody, listen to this: I think you went far astray on this one. You differentiated yourself, but not in a good way.
I hope, if you do managed to get elected after this faux pas, you are willing to do the job you’ve asked for and not just the bit you say that interests you. My cynicism regarding CCP and its use of the CSM, reinforced by the recent Jester post-NDA AMA, leads me to believe that somebody trying to blaze their own path is likely doomed, if not to failure, then at least to irrelevance.
This naturally leads to something of a larger question about what qualifies somebody to be on the CSM? Is having strong but more general opinions about internet spaceships, or the marketing thereof, enough? Should being able to discuss and evaluate the often intricate mechanics of the game in a detailed and authoritative way the sole requirement? Jin’taan and Jester both strongly imply that is really what CCP wants and, that if you fail at that, if you cannot engage at that level, you may as well stay home. CCP has proven in the past that they control the discourse, that if they don’t want to listen that no member has any real agency within the confines of the CSM unless CCP grants it to them. The only time that the CSM has successfully defied that was during the Incarna and Greed is Good imbroglio.
So do you vote for somebody you know will play by CCP’s rules and take the wins they can get, or do vote for somebody attempting to bring their own view of the role of the CSM and accept that it may well be a wasted vote?
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