Ariadne Invictus
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
0
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Posted - 2013.03.13 02:40:00 -
[2] - Quote
Cearain wrote:
Consider these options for csm candidates:
1) GOOD communication and persuasion skills and has GOOD ideas for game design/development
2) GOOD communication and persuasion skills and has BAD ideas for game design/development
3)BAD communication and persuasion skills and has GOOD ideas for game design/development
4) BAD communication and persuasion skills and has BAD ideas for game design/development
The worst case scenario for EVE is a csm that matches #2. Very persuasive with their game wrecking ideas.
3 and 4 are basically nullities since they aren't good at communicating and persuading their ideas.
I don't mean to thread jack, but I have to respectfully disagree in light of some IRL experience. First, good and bad communication skills are relatively objective. If you talk to someone in a meeting, or see someone give a presentation at a seminar, it's pretty easy to tell if they're an effective communicator. Degrees of "goodness" can be assigned based on how well a person reaches diverse audiences or other factors, but usually effective communicators are easy to spot. Good and bad ideas, on the other hand, are largely subjective. What you call game breaking I might call game saving and vice versa. Even the criteria for a good idea is subjective. Is a good idea one that expands subscription revenue? Is it one that improves the quality of gameplay despite a loss of revenue? And so on.
Secondly, the most dangerous person on your list is probably number 3, assuming his ideas fit your criteria for good. Why? Because people tend to brand their ideas. Here's an example. If I were to say to an American in 2008 "Barack Obama" most people would immediately think "Hope and Change". What your read is on those "ideas" doesn't come down to their merits a lot of the time though, they come down to what you think of Barack Obama. So lets say you elect an inarticulate sociopath who has the cure for each and every thing that ails Eve right now. His or her ideas will never get anywhere because he or she will inevitably stigmatize them as having come from "that guy". On the other hand "bad" ideas articulated well can be taken apart on their merits by sufficiently intelligent people. I'll take a good communicator of "bad" ideas for Eve over a bad communicator of "good" ones any day.
If you think I'm wrong, just look at how many people have written off J315 because they project his activities in game, as a character, onto his ideas for changing the game as a person. While I don't agree with him, it's pretty easy to tell once you start reading what he writes that he's an effective communicator. But he also has a brand, or, if he doesn't his campaign certainly does. And that brand puts a certain spin on his ideas that makes some people less likely to listen to him and others to pay closer attention. In business (and yes, this is a business), like it or not, people become their own brand. And if you brand yourself as an inarticulate fool, most of your ideas wind up getting dismissed right off the bat. |