Hilmar's 'Apology'

A Letter to the Followers of EVE

Last night the CEO of CCP unleashed a political masterstroke and a heartfelt plea to the EVE community all at once. The politics of business: making a stand as a man, with the gesture of an apology, but without the recognition of root causes and concerns. Commendable and smart in many ways, but is the mere gesture sufficient?

A Letter to the Followers of EVE

I've been very vocal about my support of this letter both on the forums and on Twitter. It reminds me of why I dropped everything in my life back in 2006 to go to work for CCP. This sounds like nothing else that has come out of CCP in a looooong time. I'm very impressed with the candor and tone of this letter. Hilmar has done something that few CEO's do in public which is outright admit he was wrong and say so effusively and sincerely.  For that, the man has my thanks and has re-kindled my hope that EVE might one day reclaim the wonder that caused players like me to crusade for new subscribers and even end up working at CCP.

Almost exactly a month ago, I released what I considered to be my 'last straw' blog.  Reality Check was my attempt to get across a message that summed up everything I felt about where EVE is and the black hole it seemed to be spiraling into. Over this past weekend, the Reality Check blog surpassed 15,000 reads making it the most viewed article I've written so far. While I received comments from several CCP employees about it, which were unanimously positive, I have no idea if Hilmar read it but his letter did address several points I made and that's a good thing.

I believe Hilmar's letter represents the first tangible step required to take for CCP and the player base that has spent most of the last 18 months in a state of disbelief with regard to the direction CCP seemed to be taking their product. The reactions to the letter are very warm, with players welcoming the sentiment of the letter.  The most telling of those reactions are those of CCP employees on the forums, Twitter and Facebook roaring their approval for this admission of wrong thinking and change of course. Hilmar spoke of not paying attention to people in the company "raising red flags"; it really makes you wonder just how much the internal communications of CCP need to be improved so things do not get to this point again.

Regardless of what happens in the future, things are never going to be as they were again. Many in the playerbase have compared Hilmar's letter to the old Peanuts cartoon, where Charlie Brown trusts Lucy to hold the football for him to kick and she always pulls it away at the last second, sending Charlie crashing to the ground. Over and over, she promises to not do it and over and over she does it anyway. It's an apt analogy because EVE players have seen ~words~ and heard promises before. This time it is going to take more.

This reminds of of something I saw a while back and I'm going to include a link to it here:

Remember how we got growth?

There's a lot of wisdom in this chart that should be heeded.

The next CSM summit in Iceland is going to go a long way toward my (and other CSM's) continued investment in it all. I know a lot of folks don't want to give us any credit but the CSM has spent a shitload of time these past few weeks hammering away at every mis-step and reminding CCP of where their mistakes are / how to fix them. I am satisfied at the moment that we, as a community, have successfully managed to get our message across. I have a much different outlook going forward than I did a few weeks ago but I won't stop pushing for iterative gameplay that allows players at all levels of EVE to enjoy the game again.