lørdag 3. mai 2014

Ramblings: Trust and Security

One of the most interesting aspects of playing EVE is the level at which we interact with other people. Its at a much more advanced relationship than you get in any other games.
As artisticly illustrated by Tim Buckley at Cad-Comic recruitment processes in most corps in eve goes a lot closer than any real life job interview is even allowed to go. In wormhole corporations this is even more so. And for a good reason. With a corp management tool that may finally be fixed (as announced on fanfest 2014) it is not easy to aid your members in keeping their stuff safe. If the corp leadership doesnt know how to deal with roles and titles the entire corp can easily fall prey to a ill intentioned new member. I feel however we got this nailed in ORLY. Got a nice divisional system with several layers of access at each pos. Also specialised titles providing just the right access needed to do i.e. manufacturing in our wormhole aswell. Combine that with a full api check on applicants and you got the most secure setup you can atm for recruitment.

 But I dont feel thats really a good solution. Being a CEO I have a responsability for the culture we build in corp. To create a framework where our members can flourish and build friendships and enjoy the game. In wormholes one of the biggest challenges for any corp is content creation. People solve this diffferently. Some do lots of planned ops while others fill their alliance with hundreds of members where 1-5 drive the content for the rest. However, I wish to enable people to be creative. Living in a c5-c5 has a lot of opportunity for those who care to move beyond the lazyness most gamers are plagued with. But I refuse to hold peoples hand doing it. So how do one stimulate creativity? I think much can be attributed to having just the freedom to do stuff. Aswell as the inspiration of other players being creative. But how does this relate to the topic of this post? It relates to trust. It relates to having room to do mistakes without being taken for a awoxer or a idiot. Want to afk mine in a orca? Np. When you die I'll tell you to fit neuts, drones and xlasb. Maybe next time you afk mine in orca you can kill something before you die :P But I want my members to feel they are trusted to take desicions and make mistakes if they want to. A member who feels he constantly is under monitoring grow afraid to do mistakes and will rather just tag along what someone else is doing. A member who feels trusted have greater freedom to be creative.

Now how to translate this into practice? One of the biggest stumbling blocks I feel is often in the little things. In how leadership or other members react and talk in game. This is one of the reason I really dont like "elite pvpers" as their attitude to anyone not on their level destroy any room for creativity. Also leadership need to be consious about this. And I also think this is why so many corps in wormholes is stressing the "no f*cks given" attitude. To help people be creative and dont fear loosing or making mistakes.

What areas do you feel is important in building a good corp culture? And how do you handle building trust while maintaining security?