CSM 9 Campaign Post
My name is Asayanami Dei, but most people call me Asay. I have been playing EVE for over 5 years, the majority of which has been spent living in Wormhole Space. You may know me from my silly tweets. Or from my time in the EVE University where I occasionally run an event or teach a class. More prominently as a video content producer on youtube where, with the help of Adhocracy Incorporated, I'm trying to reach out to players about Wormholes and showcase daily life with the U-Boat series.
I am here to announce my candidacy for CSM 9, where I want to offer my support to two minorities, namely Community Content Creators (and everyone who enjoys their work) and Wormhole Space Residents.
When it comes to W-Space, I have my fair share of experience and knowledge which enables me to make educated decisions about any changes and tweaks to game mechanics involved, and I can and will offer feedback or input regarding balancing, adding or removing content in wormholes in any future iterations. Whatever I do not know, I'm not hesitant to ask about.
I would like Wormhole space to stay unique to other regions of New Eden, maintaining its core principles and mechanics, while evolving to broader changes that are impacting New Eden. It is a harsh place to live in, with amazing lore and excellent content, however little has changed since Apocrypha. Apart from minor tweaks it has remained relatively stagnant while the rest of the universe evolved and changed over the years, which leaves W-space denizens hungry for something new on the proverbial platter.
As it has been mentioned over and over again, Black Hole effect could use a bit of refreshing, simple things like the W-Space nebulae haven't changed even though the rest of EVE got a face-lift, C4 space drives people away rather then draw them in, and some quality of life fixes (POS system) would mean a world to people living here. With the help of the community a number of issues have been indentified and previous Councils have been working with CCP, ironing them out one by one. I would like to continue that effort. I love wormhole space as much as The Mittani loves the meta games, and I can't imagine my EVE without it. And if you still have doubts, google "bob the wormhole god" and look at the images section.
Second thing I would like to focus my efforts on is expanding and improving the community related side of EVE.
What do I mean by that? Well, let me explain.
In the past any community created content, be it blogs, websites, music, podcasts, fan art, short stories, videos, player driven events or gatherings, have had a hard time getting through to a wider audience that is the Eve Online player base. People used the Eve Online official forums, namely the 'My Eve' section, 3rd party forums such as FailHeap Challenge, and corporation forums such as the EVE University's forums - to reach out to people, let them know and draw some attention to their, often, under appreciated work.
With the rise of various social media platforms, social news, and entertainment websites. With the advent of twitter, facebook, youtube and reddit, it has become easier for the creators to get their content broadcast. Same thing goes for finding the content you want to watch, read, or listen to. These social media assets are the definitive sources where people go to find content they enjoy and appreciate, share their findings with others, or even start creating something of their own to share with people with the same interests. Bloggers have taken refuge on twitter (#tweetfleet) while video makers often use reddit to spread the word about their newest films. Podcast producers most often use official forums and their own websites. There have been numerous player projects promoting content such as the 'Our EVE' Series by JonnyPew, articles on news sites such as the themittani.com, and websites such as podborn.com.
There is demand and then there is supply.
Not everyone in EVE is interested in the same things, because even though we all play EVE, we don't always play the same game. There are people madly involved in nullsec and politics, for which there are writers and video makers, blogs going in depth about espionage and infiltration. There are people who love PvP for which there are blogs about piracy, small gangs and soloists, video makers commentating on the insane, mechanically excellent engagements. There are others like myself who are passionate about the depths of wormhole space and love to read and watch videos about it. Industrialists, market tycoons, incursion and mission runners, people who are still learning about the game, spending hours upon hours educating themselves about the game, looking for concise guides and tutorials about various aspects of the vast universe we live in. On top of that there are the streamers and roleplayers.
Among all those people are the content creators, people who are passionate about the game enough that they spend countless hours, utilizing their talents to bring the community things that are truly special. Unique and enjoyed by thousands of capsuleers.
In the past year we have seen incredible improvement when it comes to CCP's support of such creations. Apart from the Fansites program, we have seen an ever increasing involvement of the CCP staff in community projects. CCP Manifest has been updating the official social media channels with player created content regularly. CCP Eterne has put upon himself to showcase the creators in his Community Spotlight Dev Blog series, which I am incredibly proud to be featured in. Many of the devs have been tweeting about blogs, videos, player made fan art, streams. They even go out of their way to help players organize events, promote community projects, or even film machinimas.
Where am I going with all of this?
In my opinion there is still room for improvement.
There still isn't an easy way for people to promote their content. By extension it means that it is hard for people looking for content to find what they are interested in. Yes, you can Google, there is twitter, reddit, youtube, Eve-O official forums, however that means one has to visit multiple sites to find what they are looking for. The Eve fan website which lists all the fan sites submitted by players is far from ideal. Recently added filter options help to find what you are looking for, but many people don't even know that such a list exists. The community spotlight does a far better job at promoting player content. From my experience, only a fraction of the actual Eve player base reads it as the blogs get lost in the constant stream of patch notes and developer blogs. Right now the best way to discover new content is reddit and twitter, it is very easy to miss something you might be interested in simply by not visiting the websites on a daily basis.
What I would propose is a central hub for community created content, similar to what eveisreal.com and the True Stories websites were. I would like community.eveonline.com to become a place where people go to share, support and discover new player made creations, with the support of CCP community management staff, showcasing the best, most popular and endorsed content. I would like to be able to search for videos, blogs, and stories related to the things I like about the game more easily, comment and show my support for them all in a single, well organized place. I would like to see a place where people could not only promote their content but reach out to the development staff and get help creating it.There are already foundations for a structured hub like this, it simply needs some work and guidance from the community to make it shine. I think, with the help of the community and CCP staff we can make it happen.
Why?
Because it would not only encourage more people to start utilizing their talents by creating something new, beautiful and interesting and have an easier way to reach out to people but it, by extension, promote eve as a game and the community of eve in a wider spectrum. Make eve known in media not only its massive, virtual battles and espionage, but also as a beautiful, exciting, living world, which occupants are passionate and excited about. Players are already doing similar things with the Blog Pack, the EVE Youtube chat channel, with r/eveporn and many others, so let's make it official. Because in the end, we wouldn't be playing this game if it wasn't for the people we've met in it. You come for the space battles, you stay for the people.
W-Space
Given the current state of wormhole space there is a number of pressing issues that need to be adressed I stand:
In favor of:
Against: