I’d like to announce my intent to run for CSM.

Why are you running?

I feel that there isn’t enough representation advocating more creative, interactive and cutthroat gameplay in highsec. Eve is terrible when played as a grindfest with the non-interactive mindset that other MMOs encourage, and I notice a trend, both among players and within CCP, that interacting with other players in ways that they might not prefer is somehow evil or undesirable. It is my hope to show CCP that the messy interactions of one group of players trying to get what they want at the expense of another group of players is one of the greatest features of this game and is what allows the stories that inspire players to join or take a more active playstyle come about.

With a very large percentage of the playerbase in highsec (some estimate as much as 70%, although that’s likely not accurate) it is of the utmost importance that those players have an engaging game experience. I want players rushing to log in after they get home because they have a plan to take revenge on someone or to steal their assets or to make sure their rivals industrial never makes it to a market hub. I want to see corporations and alliances in highsec forced to become better because this game is one that features a consequence of loss. I want players to be trying to outthink, outmanoeuvre and outgame their fellow players, rather than repetitively rescuing the damsel until they’re in a marauder without building any community ties, wondering where to go from there and ultimately unsubbing.

Who are you and why are you qualified to represent me?

I am a wardeccer, awoxer, thief, scammer, occasional suicide ganker and all around content maker. Alongside my corp, The Skunkworks, we have dissected pretty nearly every facet of highsec looking for ways to make engaging gameplay for ourselves and our friends.

My successes include two rounds of wildly profitable incursion fuckery, hundreds of fun and interesting wardecs, several content-generating scams and thefts, and, most importantly, a great deal of community building. I’ve built an exceptionally talented community of belligerent undesirables, personally mentored dozens of players in an engaging lifestyle as well as inspiring many more and, when it looked like CCP was ready to completely crumple up engaging highsec play and throw it away, organized a round table of many of the most talented members of this walk of life in order to put our view forward to CCP.

And even if you aren’t on the leading edge of interacting with other peoples game play, I want to represent you as a highsec player because I want you to have a fun and challenging time. I want you eager to play, either in a defensive or offensive role. I want you to be excitedly telling any fellow nerd that will listen about the great time you had in space.

What changes, specifically, would you like to see?

Firstly, I want CCP on board with our lifestyle. It has long been known and recently confirmed that CCP does not allow its employees to engage in behaviour like suicide ganking or other things they view as not ‘light side’. They need to be having those experiences both so that they know the value of them and so that they have the hands on experience they’ll need when altering systems that effect those types of game play.

Secondly, I want to see a revamp of the corporation system that actually encourages people to group up, form relationships, and actually join and stay with a corp, especially during times of distress. The unfortunate truth is that if your goal is to gain as much money as possible by running missions the correct choice for you is to be in a one-man corp and never interact with the world around you, and I think that’s something that needs to change.

Thirdly, I want to work against the view that interacting with someone elses gameplay is somehow any more morally wrong than playing a better hand than someone at a poker table. If these tools that reactionaries tend to label as ‘evil’ were correctly viewed as simply tools, I feel that we wouldn’t be shackled with fun-killing nerfs all the time.