Interview with Tusko Hopkins, CSM member

Published on 27. Oct, 2008 ... written by Smak, Tags: Articles, Latest

Questions by Smakalicious from EVE-Mag.com, answered by Tusko Hopkins who is a member of the Council of Stellar Management

EVE-Mag.com: Hello Tusko. Welcome to this interview and thank you for your time. Please introduce yourself for our readers.

Tusko Hopkins: Hello, my name is Marcell, I am known as Tusko Hopkins in New Eden. I am a newly appointed representative in the Council of Stellar Management, recently taken the position of a resigned member. As for ingame, I am the CEO of HUN Corp.

EVE-Mag.com: You have resigned? Would you like to tell us about it?

Tusko Hopkins: Not exactly, I have only recently bcame a full member of the council. On the previous elections I have ended up in the 10th position, becoming the first alternate. I have been attending to most of the meetings of the CSM, and usually substituting someone, as there was always at least one rep who could not make it to the meeting, but I have been in an alternate position until early October, when a fully elected council member resigned because of real life reasons.

EVE-Mag.com: What has been your impression so far, as a member of the CSM?

Tusko Hopkins: I am mostly pleased with the performance of CSM so far. There have been a lot of problems to tackle, as we are the first council elected. The methodolgy of the CSM was not in place when we started, we had to work it out ourselves. I think the CSM itself went through a lot of improvement during this cycle. It is not perfect yet, and there are a lot of places requiring futher improvement, but I see a lot of progress and I am sure that these weaknesses will be solved in the near future and the community will see a council that is getting better and better.

EVE-Mag.com: What was the hardest topic to struggle with, from your point of view and where can the CSM perform better in the future, in your opinion?

Tusko Hopkins: At the start of the cycle there were disagreements inside the council regarding the interpretation of the founding documents. We had discussions about how the council is supposed to be run, how the meetings are supposed to happen. What the obligations and responsibilities of the charimen and the alternates are. These were though times, but they are over. We have aggreed in every little disagreement and the meetings and other CSM processes run flawlessly now. We have also laid out the framework of communication with CCP, standardized our communication in that direction. Right now, I think the area that needs the most improvement is our communication towards the playerbase. I often have the feeling that they do not know what we are doing in general.

EVE-Mag.com: So, you think the ‘marketing’ of the CSM needs improvement?

Tusko Hopkins: It is not easy for them to see the result of our work. There is one, it is just not properly communicated yet. Yes, I think the marketing definitely needs improvement. People need to see that we are actually doing something, not only tearing each others hair I think we have to set up some guidelines for ourselves regarding communication, but right now there is also a lack of tools we have for communicating to the community. Right now the only medium we have available for communication is the forum, and it is not the best for doing announcements, as only a few people read it regurarily, and it
becomes chaotic way too easily.

EVE-Mag.com: Yes, and you have people flaming and trolling a lot there as well. In your opinion, what was the greatest achievement of the CSM so far?

Tusko Hopkins: Well, in my opinion the main goal of the first CSM was simple ‘not to fail badly’. We had to prove that this council has merit, that it makes sense to keep it. We had to prove it to CCP and we had to prove it to the community, too. I see we did good with the ‘communication with CCP’ part. We managed to get us taken seriously, we managed to squeeze out proper responses from them to most of the subjects that were raised. We managed to pass over 75 suggestions to them, all coming from the player base. A lot of these suggestions were received positively from CCP, they passed them on their appropriate departments.

EVE-Mag.com: What was CCPs response to the player based suggestions?

Tusko Hopkins: As CCP is planning ahead, they usually can’t fit new improvements into their next patch, so I think you will see the result of the first CSM in the patch following Quantum Rise, sometime during the second CSM cycle. But I would not be surprised to see one or two of our suggestions being implemented in ‘Quantum Rise’ itself. As for the CCP response, my feelings are mixed. Some issues were shaken off by them too easily and we needed to push them a bit to get a proper response. I cannot evaulate the effectiveness of our effectiveness properly, as I haven’t seen many items in the patch notes that have been the effect of CSM…. so I will have to wait to see how serious the promises we got from CCP were after all.

EVE-Mag.com: You mentioned ‘Quantum Rise’. Your personal thoughts on this, please.

Tusko Hopkins: Well, we do not know too much about Quantum Rise so far. It is like a black box, we dont know what’s inside. It looks very much like a mix of fixes and feature enhancements and content, but most of the things I learned so far were not things that would affect me personally so much.

EVE-Mag.com: Ok, let’s talk about the new 21-year-rule applied to the CSM. Your thoughts about this?

Tusko Hopkins: I am no lawyer. I do not see any reason for a 21-year-limit, but I am also not familiar with the Icelandic laws. In my country, and most countries I know, people are considered completley adult by the age of 18. A certain age limit is definitely required for the CSM members, as there is an NDA to be signed. If Icelandic laws require 21 years of age to sign a legal document, I can understand the 21 year rule… otherwise I can’t.

EVE-Mag.com: What was the most enjoying thing, and what was something you’d rather like to forget about? Something rememberable in general within your time with the CSM.

Tusko Hopkins: Difficult question, we have quite a long cycle behind us … *laughs*

EVE-Mag.com: Think about what really caught your heart and soul or made you feeld sad.

Tusko Hopkins: The best moments are when something is achieved. When ‘you win’. You have to understand, I have not been to Iceland on the first CSM-CCP meeting, as I have only been an alternate back then. However, when the colleagues returned, they were extremely happy with the outcome. And in that moment I shared their joy. But I am sure they will be able to explain this a lot better than I can, as they have been there.

EVE-Mag.com: Ok, and What was the worst moment?

Tusko Hopkins: As for the worst moments … well, there were some awful meetings in the beginning. Completely failed ones, which completely undermined our reputation in the eyes of the community. These were some of the initial meetings, when some of the CSM members were still not very befriended with each other, when the roles of the members and the chairman and the alternates were not clear yet.

EVE-Mag.com: How did you cope with the situation?

Tusko Hopkins: Well, there was not much to be done there, just stop pointing fingers at each other and resume working properly, and refine the rules so that there are no more different interpretation of existing rules. Actually, at that point of time, I was a bit happy not to be involved too much. But the guys got it sorted.

EVE-Mag.com: Thank you, if you don’t mind, we’ll go away a little from the CSM in the next questions. What do you personally think of the recent changes in the game mechanics, in particular ‘Ghost Training’ disabled? Does it affect you in any ways?

Tusko Hopkins: It does not affect me personally, but it affects my corp. A lot of my members have been selling their alts, especially those, who are not playing much any more. However, I can also understand CCPs intents with this change, as this feature, or ‘bug’ brought a little bit of unfairness into the game, and I am sensitive about things like that. So in general I support the idea of removing ghost training, however I think some kind of solution should be implemented to make it possible to train inactive accounts. Maybe a new kind of subscription or so.

EVE-Mag.com: How could this “subscription” look like?

Tusko Hopkins: I could imagine a long term, training-only subscription. Which enables you to train your character but not enable to play with it. For those poor guys getting cut off the net for a long time.

EVE-Mag.com: Sounds like a possible solution. Ok, there’s one more thing I’d like to talk about with you. You have won the Alliance Tournament with your team in 2007, right? Now, a year later, how do you look back on that special day?

Tusko Hopkins: Oh … the Alliance Tourney! Highlight of my carreer. How could I ever forget a day like that *laughs* Especially after the total desperation when lost our first match. I wasn’t even sure that we can get 10 pilots online by the time of the second one.

EVE-Mag.com: But then you fought yourself all to the top!

Tusko Hopkins: Yeah … the other teams did not find the counter to that setup back then. But it was beaten many times on the fifth tourney, so that shows how tactics evolve without the game changing too much.

EVE-Mag.com: Will you be participating in the next AT?

Tusko Hopkins: Of course! We need that trophy back.

EVE-Mag.com: Ok, That’s a statement *laughs* One last question: If your voters would like to contact you. Do you have a blog or forum thread for the people to get in touch with you?

Tusko Hopkins: Most of my voters were from Hungary. Actually, they asked me to run in CSM, because they wanted to be represented in the CSM, and their English skills were usually insufficient for the discussions on eve-online.com. We have a Hungarian EVE portal running on eve-online.hu, I am a well known person there, that is where they usually contact me with CSM related issues, and i also have dedicated forum threads there, but not yet on eve-online.com. However, I will be running for the next cycle as well. There is an announcement thread about it in Jita Park Speakers Corner. Anyone having questins to me can use that thread or evemail for contacting me.

EVE-Mag.com: Very nice!! Ok, you’ve got the last word in this interview. Anything you’d like to tell your voters outthere?

Tusko Hopkins: Well, actually I would like to address all voters, not just my ones. I would like to see more people participating on the elections. I want them to come and vote. Preferably me, of course, but the point is, that despite all their doubts about the success of the CSM, I can ensure them that this council was actually a good idea, and I believe that it will make a change in the world of EVE. And the more support from the players, the stronger the council it is. And community support can best be expressed by the number of people participating in the election. So people, please come and vote as soon as the voting booths are open!

EVE-Mag.com: Ok then, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed doing this interview!

Tusko Hopkins: Thanks to you too.