Eve Online to Elect Player Oversight Group

StCredZero writes "The New York Times is reporting on plans by EVE Online developer CCP to open itself up to independent oversight. In response to the recent allegations of misconduct, they are proposing a system of 'nine player-overseers who will act as ombudsmen for the game's subscribers. The company says it will hold the elections in the fall.' Systems will be put into the game to support this ombudsmen status, making this (effectively) a player-run world governance system."

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[m0rph3us0]

Who will watch the ombudsmen?

Great idea

[Reason58]

Lord knows if you can't trust your own paid employees to not cheat then you can certainly trust anonymous player volunteers.

Glorified P.R. visit

[CaseM]

"I envision this council being made up of nine members selected by the players themselves, where you announce your candidacy, and if you win the election, they come here to Iceland, and they can look at every nook and cranny and get to see that we are here to run this company on a professional basis," said Mr. Petursson, CCP's chief executive. "They can see that we did not make this game to win it."

Wait...are they going to be checking for roaches in the cafeteria or something? Looking in "every nook and cranny" means looking at source code, checking logs on home computers, and reading in-game chat logs. i.e. it's not possible. The problem is a social one, not necessarily a technical one. Even if in-game exploits and "god commands" were removed, the extra information from being an employee is still enough to tip the game in your corp's favor.

So "The 9" are going to go for what amounts to a P.R. visit so that CCP can wash its hands of the mess and say "See? I told you we were a fine, upstanding company! Just look at how clean our cubicles are!"

Re:Whoa.

[Anxarcule]

I doubt the player council will have any real powers. This is just going to be a recipe for more drama, and subsequently more publicity for the game. Which is fine, since people love drama, and drama is a main reason why people still continue to play an online multiplayer game.

Re:Great idea

[Reason58]

If your only contact with someone is through the internet then they are anonymous for all intents and purposes. Doubly so if all your contact is through a video game.

The company should be able to do this...

[rbanzai]

I know some might herald this as proof of progress, but I believe this is proof of CCP's utter failure to manage this problem. This should be completely unnecessary, but they've dug themselves such a hole by continually lying about their internal responses.

Their inability to control their own employees is pathetic. I've played alot of online games, (AO, EQ, SWG, CoH, LotrO, DDO) and have never seen a need for something like this.

Wow talk about needing a life

[svendsen]

Seriously how screwed up can you be if you take a game this seriously. This isn't life or death, this is luxury entertainment. You pay X per month and if you aren't happy you go elsewhere. It is no different then if you play a sort, take dance lessons, martial arts whatever.

So these 9 people will have oversight? So they can see all source code, all chat logs, all everything anytime? Will the company pay for them to go there? Unless they are rich the avg. person will not be able to do this.

May I suggest a good game of chess?

Re:Glorified P.R. visit

[cowscows]

There was that whole previous cheating issue, in which case CCP initially told us how it was all a big misunderstanding and it could never happen. Then a few days later, oops looks like it did really happen. The consequences for the guilty parties in that case were insignificant.

Pardon us if we don't take CCP at their word after that. They lost any benefit of the doubt with that performance, and their explanation this time around all but ignored some of the more serious accusations and focused on an issue that could've been settled quietly at the very beginning if they had a proper and professional customer service set up. Firing people randomly certainly wouldn't make EvE a better game, but we've never really seen any sort gesture by CCP towards regaining the trust they lost beyond them telling us it wouldn't happen again.

A Game

[colganc]

It's a game. CCP is putting even more burden on their customers. Paying customers. CCP should be taking care of this not their paying customers. CCP provides a services to their customers and is paid to do so. The customers should not be responsible for making sure CCP doesn't cheat. I quit. I cancelled my two accounts. This won't bring me back.

GIVE ME LIBERTY or GIVE ME SOCIAL CLIQUE

[neuraljazz]

When in the Course of virtual non-events, it becomes necessary for one whiners to dissolve the factional bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the computer program, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Internet and of EULA entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of whiners requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Toons are enforced as equals, that they are endowed, by their User, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Money, and the pursuit of Headshots.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Toons, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Whiners to whine to technical support, and to institute new Social Clique, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their MMO addiction.

NO SUBSCRIPTION WITHOUT WHINER INTERFERENCE!

/ If you don't like the game you're playing, then quit // If you believe people are cheating, then quit /// Personally, the player's sense of entitlement to run the game is the biggest problem with MMOs today

Wolf in wolf's clothing

[MMaestro]

This is just a PR move. Anyone with any MMO experience will tell you this "oversight group" will simply end up being dominated by a clique of the most powerful players in the game. The most popular players, the leaders of the most powerful guilds/clans/corps and the richest players will all take the top seats and nothing will ever get done. Corruption will run rampant and eventually the users are going to get fed up and ANOTHER scandal will eventually be revealed.

Re:The company should be able to do this...

[phildawg]

With your extensive resume... I don't see EVE listed.

I should probably let you know now that there is a saying among fellow EVE players... All MMOs before and after EVE are just the training grounds for the real MMO, Eve Online.

EVE is way beyond the grindfest of the hardcore EQ days. We are talking about a game that has PVP wars where if the victors were to sell their spoils on ebay, we would be talking about 100,000 dollars... We are talking about ships that if blown up are worth 5-10,000 dollars to replace. Eve isn't a game played for casual fun... it's the definition of hardcore gaming...

And to anybody who wants to reply to this post saying 'get a life d00d', that's what they like to do with their life... When the hell did having a live mean playing with a Frisbee outside... I say go live in a 3rd world country ya backward ass fooks if you don't care to embrace technology.

This is silly

[Jaeph]

After the first incident, the company should have forbidden the developers from playing on the main server (have fun on test).

I think the cost of having the developers playing the main game well outweigh the benefit.

-Jeff

Re:Thank you for this utterly useless insight

[StewedSquirrel]

Meh.

One of the issues is likely the uniqueness of it all.

it would be simply silly for a developer to seed some in-game item so that one guild on ONE shard could have some advantage.

The simple fact that the game is full of truely "unique" items, concepts, areas, etc.... that's what makes it prone to this. It has nothing to do with the developers or whatever.

If some dev on WoW sees the "Magical Uuber Magic Sword" for his buddy, who notices? After all, didn't you hear about that guy on server #422 who had a "Double Magicaly Uuuber Magic Sword"? What about that one guy on server #721 who once got sucked into his computer screen? So what if you saw a guy with the "rare crystal of boobville". You know there are at least two on every server, which means there are 900 of them. Even if it a developer "testing" things by spawning rare items, it hardly matters.

Nope, there are items that are truly unique and truly rare. Even the developers don't really have a place they can have a "real" battles and industry with "real" items. If someone has a T2 ship BPO, that's fairly unique, isn't it? I would wager that the larger organizations have a pretty good idea of where ALL the T2 ship BPOs are and who owns them. IIRC, there were exactly 7 in game, of each. Given some time, you could have a pretty good idea where they are and where they are produced and who does the work. If another source suddenly appeared, wouldn't that really throw off your intelligence?

I think the new 'invention' features are good because it removes that artificial monopoly, but there are plenty of other monopolies, such as those on space and complexes, etc. CCP has done a good job to spread those around as well with new regions and exploration, etc, but seriously, the nature of the game as a single, monolithic, shard really changes the political dynamic, and the psychological pressures associated with being a safekeeper of that.

Eve is simply too complex to be as simple as "good dev" or "bad dev".

Stew

the whitsleblower

[crabpeople]

Did they even unban that guy who discovered this in the first place? Let him be the ombudsman!

But I guess its better than nothing. I love how the bob slime claims that they will take over the entire galaxy. Over my frozen corpse they will.

CCP amazes me

[brkello]

This is the stupidest idea I have ever seen. The elected officials are just going to be the ones that are already buddy buddy with CCP as they belong to the larest orginization. They are just giving more people power to abuse the system. I agree with others on here...this is all come about because their complete incompetance to managing their staff and dealing with the people who abuse powers in the game.