I don't know if someone has added something to the water supply in the Puzzle Palace but something pretty incredible just happened. Tonight Eve Uni ran a class with live input from some CCP QA guys on bughunting.
The talk was quite interesting, lots of details on the QA and Bughunting process with plenty of questions answered and input given. Even for someone who's reported his fair share of bugs it was very interesting to listen to and may even have given the BH team a chance to do a bit of recruiting on the sly.
The content of the talk might not have been riveting to most people but it's pretty exciting to see (well, hear) CCP staff interact with players in such a way outside of Fanfest. Sure, we've had 'Live' Devblogs in the past but they've been pretty well regulated and run by people closer to the top. In the wake of T20 CCP staff became much more insular and while in the short term following that debacle it may have been a good idea to allow people to 'cool off' they've left it far to long to show their face again. It seems that they are relearning that communication and interaction with the players that isn't a pre approved and internally vetted answer on the forums from behind a faceless avatar is a good thing and not something to be scared of.
I spoke briefly about it with Dierdra Vaal, current CSM member and owner of possibly the shiniest head I've ever seen. Apparantly this sort of thing has been tried in the past but been swatted by CCP down due to concerns about showing favouritism to certain player corps. That's quite well founded but out of all the player corporations and alliances out there Eve Uni is probably as impartial as you can get, they opened up their voice comms and the event was publicised it well. Eve Uni is, as near as you can get, a perfect host and forum for these sort of events. I'd also raise the point that maybe CCP hasn't wanted to engage in discussions like this for fear of someone putting a foot wrong and saying something daft or the whole event not resulting in a particularly desirable outcome. That's a reasonable attitude to have but it's a risk that CCP are going to have to start running if they want to engage more with the players. I'd say the negative connotations of locking themselves away FAR outweigh those that might manifest themselves from getting back out there and engaging with players 'face to face'.
Hopefully this is the start of something new and we'll see more events like this in the future.
The talk was quite interesting, lots of details on the QA and Bughunting process with plenty of questions answered and input given. Even for someone who's reported his fair share of bugs it was very interesting to listen to and may even have given the BH team a chance to do a bit of recruiting on the sly.
The content of the talk might not have been riveting to most people but it's pretty exciting to see (well, hear) CCP staff interact with players in such a way outside of Fanfest. Sure, we've had 'Live' Devblogs in the past but they've been pretty well regulated and run by people closer to the top. In the wake of T20 CCP staff became much more insular and while in the short term following that debacle it may have been a good idea to allow people to 'cool off' they've left it far to long to show their face again. It seems that they are relearning that communication and interaction with the players that isn't a pre approved and internally vetted answer on the forums from behind a faceless avatar is a good thing and not something to be scared of.
I spoke briefly about it with Dierdra Vaal, current CSM member and owner of possibly the shiniest head I've ever seen. Apparantly this sort of thing has been tried in the past but been swatted by CCP down due to concerns about showing favouritism to certain player corps. That's quite well founded but out of all the player corporations and alliances out there Eve Uni is probably as impartial as you can get, they opened up their voice comms and the event was publicised it well. Eve Uni is, as near as you can get, a perfect host and forum for these sort of events. I'd also raise the point that maybe CCP hasn't wanted to engage in discussions like this for fear of someone putting a foot wrong and saying something daft or the whole event not resulting in a particularly desirable outcome. That's a reasonable attitude to have but it's a risk that CCP are going to have to start running if they want to engage more with the players. I'd say the negative connotations of locking themselves away FAR outweigh those that might manifest themselves from getting back out there and engaging with players 'face to face'.
Hopefully this is the start of something new and we'll see more events like this in the future.
When you consider that Hilmar himself at several times in the past stimulated people helping others, same way as EVE Uni does - even a devblog concerning initiative to enable players to help a newbie - it really does not make sense to simply "write off" events like these on that basis.
ReplyDeleteIt shows a policy is needed for it (scope, focus, requirements, scheduling, participation, platform, etc), but tonights event showed once again how beneficial these things can be.