How I do it

Being on the CSM, I get a barrage of complaints about the game, and people who contact me usually expect me to do something about it.

I spend countless hours reading about issues and problems voiced by people who engage in all of the activities eve has to offer. Living at a POS in wormholes is much harder than it needs to be, supercapitals are broken, industry hasn't had improvements in ages and many of the POS modules are useless, bots ruin the game, mining is boring and not really profitable, lowsec has no purpose, hybrids are broken, Black Ops are worthless, ... I could go on and on all day.

Many of the past CSM delegates burn out after a term, or even during the term, in no small part because not only do we get to listen and repeat that things are broken day in and day out, we have to face the frustration of dealing with the internal politics of a company, something the average player doesn't have to deal with; that the realities of software development are hard; and that resource allocation is never what we think it should be; etc. In addition to the "Eve Online" drama, we have the CSM Drama and the CCP Drama... CSM Members get sometimes bashed when CCP blunders, but you don't get to see how many blunders we actually manage to prevent.

Former and current CSM members sometimes comment "I don't know how you manage to do it and not get submerged by all this". I never thought about it very much, I just keep trudging along through thick and thin. After some thought the answer is pretty easy however: As it is, Eve Online is a good game. It has a large community of players, they're engaged, they communicate, they create things within the game and out of the game. The game itself is ever evolving, people find new things to use and abuse, groups of people rise and fall, everyone in their little corner of the game has something fun and interesting they're doing. They may be trying to build a mining corporation in highsec or shooting sansha in the face for fun and money or making traps for one another to blow their hard-earned spaceships up, but everyone is doing something, has a plan or a goal or a vision...

Eve is something that provides fun for the 18 year old college student in search of PvP adrenaline to my 81 year old (it's true) corpmate who enjoys logging in 1 or 2 hours a day to gather minerals and doing missions while chatting with people. We focus so much on the negative aspect we often lose sight of all the things that make Eve the great game it is, even with its issues.

I haven't turned all stary-eyed and morphed into a fanboi all of a sudden, I'm usually extremely [constructively] critical, I've been characterized as "Pitbull" or Mr. "What the hell is wrong with you" Cop during CSM-CPP meetings, but when trying to fix the flaws, it is sometimes nice to remember why we want to fix those so badly in the first place... So I take a step back, look at the game as a whole, and then dive into problem fixing :rage: mode.

Each has their own thing, but if you're curious my friends in Rooks and Kings are invaluable in providing the kind of fun I keep playing the game for (when I'm not busy manufacturing stuff :p), the latest examples of which can be read about here and here.