Jon Ferguson
JC Ferguson and Son Ltd
Ferguson Alliance
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Posted - 2011.07.26 06:45:00 -
[1]
I quite like this post over on failheap.
An excerpt:
"The long and short of it is that if CCP had now to write a fair, unbalanced, and objective QEN (or any report really) about the EVE economy, that in it they would have to own up to the fact that over the years a number of their rare interventions have all gone rather poorly to outright badly, and that the consequence of that now is that the EVE economy as a whole, and in particular as an enjoyable player experience, is quite in the doldrums. In the end all the Milton Friedman rhetoric can't hide the fact that sizeable parts of the EVE economy are fundamentally broken while others are sterile wastelands compared to what they should be. I.e., there is something rotten in the state of Denmark and things are not as healthy and enjoyable as they should have been. The idea that players, with their visible hand or not, could or should fix this forgets that for a large part they are patently incapable of doing so with the tools and numbers available and moreover places the burden that should be rightfully CCP's somewhere where it is not wanted and where it can only be misapplied. In the end it is CCP's game to run, and the players game to own. Anything else is just incompetence and a lazy dismissal to act when in fact no one else can.
CCP knows this, it has even admitted as much to the CSM, in black and white, in the minutes (CSM5 to be clear, CSM6 is, as usual, not on the ball). And the reality is that the only one to blame for that is CCP. And CCP simply doesn't want to own up to that because: 1. the 'unique' EVE economy is still something they trod out at every opportunity and they don't want to spoil its marketing value, and 2. the players will, quite rightfully so, point the finger and apportion the blame squarely to CCP and the people it hired for 'guiding' it. The question: "But why didn't you do something about it then", in the end, is not unreasonable. Not any more. Neither option is very attractive if: you are the one hired to 'deal' with it while you are also the one to write the QENs, and CCP just had a number of quite spectacular scandals behind it (all touching on the supposedly healthy EVE economy). So now the QENs, even as deluded as they sometimes were, have become an inconvenience to CCP. OK then.
This is nothing against Dr Eggnog personally, although he'll no doubt feel differently about it. He's probably a nice fellow, and yes, indeed, he may have been trying, or actually pushing, for all of this behind the corporate mask. Perhaps he is ignored or shunted out of the discussions he should, by all rights, be involved in. I have no clue. I don't know how things are dealt with internally at CCP (not very good I from what I do see and hear). But frankly, neither do you. But the buck stops somewhere, otherwise we'll go round and round in circles for ever (insert Pinky Pie clip). But, like it or not, dear Dr Eggnog is the public face for CCP for dealing with the EVE economy. And tallying up the score over the years, whatever the internal communication or situation, it doesn't look good. At any rate, who else do you want me to address? If he himself gets carted, or carts himself, out into the public eye as the 'EVE economy man'?" |