MMOGamer recently posted the results of an interview with CCP Games' Petur Oskarsson, Valerie Massey, and Ned Coker. The developers discussed the effectiveness of the Council of Stellar Management for EVE Online. Made up of players who serve to voice the concerns of the game community to the developers, eve isk the council is entirely elected by the game's player base.

The MMO Gamer: When you first told me about the Council of Stellar Management last year, I was picturing either the game turning into a banana republic, with a new president every week, or a dictatorship where one guy goes on eBay and buys ten billion credits to bribe everyone.
How has it been working out?

Petur Oskarsson: It actually has been working out quite well. And buying ten billion to bribe people, sure, you can do that, but there is no guarantee that they will actually vote for you. They might accept the money and just cast a vote for someone else.

Valerie Massey: Have you ever seen anyone do something like that?

Petur Oskarsson: Well, yes. One guy was actually asking me if he could do that. And we said, sure, go ahead. But there¡¯s no guarantee that they will actually vote for you. So, you can spend your money on that, but it might be for nothing.

The MMO Gamer: Morbid curiosity, which (council requests) were denied? Free ponies and rainbows for everyone?

Petur Oskarsson: Nobody actually thought of asking for that.
The denials were mostly because the players simply didn¡¯t understand the technology behind certain things.
So, they were simply were asking for features that either were technically impossible or extremely difficult to implement. I mean, we could do anything. eve isk But do we want to spend a year of development time changing the entire sub-structure of EVE just to get that done?
What became apparent in the elections and the candidates running was that people seem to vote based on play style, not based upon group allegiance in-game.