Space Politics, A Prelude

I don't envy the next batch of folks who will wind up on the CSM.

I tried explaining the concept of the Council of Stellar Management to one of my non-Eve friends once, and his response basically boiled down to "Are you seriously telling me there are space nerd elections?". I've always been a bit in disbelief myself over the fact that Eve is so self aware that we actually have an elected focus group representing the entire player base to the developers. But, that's the way it is and all things considered I think the Council does an exceptionally important job in keeping our day to day space lives going.

That said, the next CSM is shaping up to deal with an enormous amount of drama. Consider everything that we know will go on in the next year. Valkyrie and Gunjack will be released, and if they're successful there will be endless cries that CCP is taking too much focus from Eve and the CSM will bear a brunt of that (God help us if those games fail). The ongoing null sec revamp is only going to intensify as the quest for the perfect set of mechanics continues. Capital ships are slated for a massive reworking, meaning that a large number of the older and more invested players are going to have their worlds rocked. The upcoming Citadel expansion will start the long slog through a much needed revision to structure mechanics. The advent of "social corps" looms on the horizon, bringing with them untold questions over various aspects of gameplay, most notably war decs. Optimistically, this year will also open up new actual space to play around in once the Jesus feature of player built stargates becomes a reality (side note: this is pretty much my reaction when I saw the words "stargate blueprint" in the latest round of Sisi leaks). I could go on, but I think it's pretty clear that the next CSM is going to have a lot on it's plate, and that's to say nothing of the regular amount of drama that comes up over the course of a year in New Eden.

Taking into account the amount of damage done to the reputation of the CSM over the past year, the next session of the council is going to have a tough row to hoe. I think it's commendable to see new candidates stepping up (or even old candidates returning) in spite of all this, and I'm actually looking forward to hearing the variety of opinions and viewpoints in the upcoming campaigns (yes, even Xenuria's). Once the field is set, I'll whip up an actual endorsement list because my endorsements matter. Beforehand, though, I just wanted to point out what a tall order our elected focus group has before it and wanted to start the campaign season by saying I think all of you who are running are insane. Admirable, but insane.

Good luck :)