Biomassed: Who are you? Who do you play DUST 514 with, and what style of play do you enjoy?
Cross Atu: As my intro on the podcast tends to run, “I’m Cross Atu, from OSG, I’m a closed beta vet, Features and Ideas denizen and a member of CPM1.”
When it comes to play styles, for me, those aren’t defined by role. I’ve run every role in the game – with various degrees of success or hilarity – but my style of play comes in two flavors, the first is kicking back enjoying some casual play with good company in a squad. The second is focused coordinated play in the more organized environments like PC or FW (though I’ve done less of these since becoming CPM as my time is much more constrained). The baseline of it all, however, is enjoying playing and cooperating with a group of good natured mercs.
Biomassed: Tell us a bit about the “real you”. Who is the man (or woman) behind the merc?
Cross Atu: I elaborate on that in my original CPM1 candidate thread. The short version however is that I’ve been gaming on consoles since Atari released Frogger, on desktops since the Apple 2C and in the arcades prior to either of those. I’ve played DUST since closed beta, EVE prior to that, and various early arc shooters such as Unreal Tournament 2004.
The “real” me is pretty much the me that is presented in game and on the forums, I don’t really role play or adopt a persona within DUST what you see is pretty much what you get. I like information, details, clarity, and value rational discussion over ego. What you don’t see about the real me, is all the time I spend doing out of doors things like camping, hiking, etc. I’m also a cliche in that I’m trying to balance work and classes as I’m finishing my undergrad degree.
Biomassed: Why did you decide to run for the CPM this year?
Cross Atu: Because the game isn’t ported to PC and PS4 yet so my mission is unfinished! There’s actually a lot left to do but my primary motivations really are a desire to see the game ported and having received a few requests from among the community that I continue in my role as CPM.
Biomassed: What are the strengths you think you can bring to the CPM? What is your biggest weakness you’ll need to contend with?
Cross Atu: The proven ability and willingness to gather feedback regardless of my personal sentiments on a subject and the experience to pass that community perception along to CCP Development in an effective manner that fosters their being advised of the community stances (because it is almost always more than one) on a given topic.
For some examples you can look at my CPM input threads:
- CPM input request: Commandos
- CPM input request: Assault Bonuses
- CPM Feedback Request – Myofibril Stimulant
- CPM input request: Logistics & Support
Aside from that I have the one trait that I have learned is vital for any community representative to be effective, that being the ability to disagree, even debate actively, and not take it personally and still be able to interact professionally and effectively with the person afterwards. CPM1 actually had a lot of that in our internal meetings, for the most part people were able to work and discuss with each other even after debates and that’s something I strongly encourage everyone to look for in their possible representatives because a player who lacks that capacity will be marginalized very early in their term and hold little, if any, weight as the year progresses.
Biomassed: What do you feel is the role of the CPM?
Cross Atu: To provide CCP with a player perspective on the development process. That can mean gathering feedback from players, that can be starting threads/raising specific topics, listening to concerns as they are brought to you (I do a fair amount of this on a weekly basis currently, as well as answering basic questions). One of the pivotal aspects of it happens “behind the curtain” of the NDA however where the CPM has to look at the state of the community and provide their best effort to extrapolate that into proper feedback for CCP on topics and aspects that are currently NDA restricted. This last is why I feel it is vital for CPM candidates to be capable of debating without letting their emotions rule them, and also why it is important for each candidate to be frank about their areas of bias. Everyone has bias, that’s not a problem, it is attempting to obfuscate it or deny it that is problematic because that misrepresents you to the community and development team, and an effective CPM won’t really be doing either of those things.
Biomassed: How do you feel about the previous CPM? What was done well, and what could have been done better?
Cross Atu: You remember what I was just saying about bias? Well as a member of the current CPM, I’m certain there’s some bias present on my part when it comes to assessing the merits and pitfalls of myself and my counterparts from CPM1. It is hard to be dismissive of the person behind the persona once you get to know someone and so there may well be a sprinkle of “but he’s a nice guy” in my assessments of how my counterparts on CPM1 did.
That being the case I will try to speak generally rather than specifically as I find it easier to be critical of myself than of others and so maybe those two areas of bias will mitigate each other somewhat.
In general, I think that CPM1 did a very solid job. I would have liked to see stronger internal protocols and structure in place especially early in the term as I feel there was some time lost due to disorganization. As one specific example having more frequent but much shorter CPM meetings would have often been more valuable than sporadic marathon meetings that saw most of the participants looking worn out by the time the meeting ended.
It would also have been a net positive to play to our strengths more often, parsing out the primary community interaction on various subjects via the relative experience CPM1 members had within a given area and then bringing that back for internal consideration and annotation.
But by and large I think that CPM1 did good work and I am glad to have had the opportunity to be a part of that, the biggest down note for me in all of it is that some, perhaps even most, of what I consider our best work as members of CPM 1 occurred behind the NDA and is likely to stay there for an indeterminate amount of time to come. That’s pretty much how working under a NDA is however and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up so it’s not really a regret so much as a daydream.
Biomassed: What are your thoughts on communication between the players and CCP? The CPM and CCP? The CPM and the players?
Cross Atu: I want more of it, but then I always do, it is in my nature to want as open and constructive of a discourse as possible in our outside of gaming.
To be more specific, I would very much like to see more communication coming out of CCP, but I absolutely have to credit CCP Rattati for how much work he’s done in opening up stronger communications between CCP and the player base.
On the players side I would like to see more of a focus on constructive and useful feedback, I’m actually in the process of writing a series of articles for the Biomassed Blog on this very subject, but the TL;DR on it is this: The more constructive you make your feedback and posts the more effective they are at promoting the ideas you’re advocating. It really is as simple as that, so if you really want your input to be effective make sure your presentation is constructive rather than emotive or ‘trolling’.
The communication between the CPM and CCP has been very solid, the only real improvement I would like to have seen during my tenure as CPM1 would have been the election of a Chairman and/or some established protocols for presenting group feedback to CCP. Folks seem to hold the misconception that a Chairman is supposed to “run” the CPM which is just not true, but having someone accept the responsibility to note, format, and transmit, feedback on subjects where the input of the entire CPM is requested, would have proved valuable on various occasions during this year’s term.
Communications between the player base and the CPM could honestly have been better. On the community side there is often a seeming misconception that the CPM is being closed mouthed or withholding information because many subjects are things that remain under NDA until the Dev Blog at which point players have their answers and aren’t looking to the CPM any longer.
It’s not just on the players side however, there’s been – in my view – an undue level of trolling from within the ranks of the CPM during our term, and also there have been certain instances of CPM not being as proactive about engaging with the community as I would prefer. That is up to each CPM’s discretion, but as such I think it’s something that the community should be mindful of when casting their votes for CPM2. How and how often any given CPM talks is largely defined by that CPM at a personal level, so vote for those who talk to you as often as you’d like and in a manner you find useful.
Biomassed: Where do you hope to see the game by the end of your term?
Cross Atu: That’s easy, on the PS4 and PC.
There’s lots of stuff that could be done or that I want of course, but the migration to contemporary hardware and UE4 has pride of place on my list. As long as the game is alive with room to grow we have time to see the rest shine.
Biomassed: If DUST is able to be ported to another platform, which platform would you prefer, and why?
Cross Atu: PC and PS4, and yes it is both not either or for me because ultimately the more players who have the opportunity to play the game the stronger it has the potential to be.
I know some people hold this doomsday notion that “console players” and “PC players” cannot share space but as someone who’s been both throughout my adult life I can say that the differences are much more perceptual than functional. Put simply, the only real reason why there might be a problem having DUST migrate to both platforms is if the player base allows their own misgivings to run away with them.
Biomassed: How can players reach out to you if they have further questions for you?
Cross Atu: I’m on Skype as cross.atu and have a Gmail account crossatu69@ as well as the forums, and of course in game on my main Cross Atu.
