[Lokikirja-Haastattelut] Ruben Lagus, the Finnish General!

Day 2,248, 13:48 • Published in Finland USA • by Johannes Valkkynen


Hei Suomi!

I bring to you an interview in English with a Finnish player.
Today my guest is Ruben Lagus.

Former finnish CP, the current PP of Kauppaliitto and the current Minister of Information.

Let's start our interview.




- Well, who is Ruben Lagus and the way you are in RL is different from the way you are in the game?


Ruben Lagus was born mostly because of a coincidence and I have never used this nick before. The first time I saw eRepublik.com I noticed that it has something to do with tanks and decided to name myself Ruben Lagus after a famous Finnish General who commanded the Finnish Armoured division during the second World War.


In the beginning Ruben Lagus became known as a journalist but later also as a politician and nowadays Ruben has seen the most what the game has to offer for a eFinn.


I think my character in the game is in many way similar to myself in RL and I have never played consciously any strong “role” for Ruben. Obviously from time to time Ruben can have stronger views and opinions than would be possible for real life me.



- You play eRepublik since 2011 (3 years), how would you describe your journey through these years in the game?


eFinland has changed a lot during my playing career and I have changed also. I played many months quite passively. The first big step was when I started my own journal and immediately got good feedback. With articles I started to make myself part of the community. Second big part of my early days was joining the Army. Those days Finland had government funded army with reasonable level of supplies and high activity on IRC. Joining the Army also meant that I needed to start using IRC and I started to integrate to that part of eFinland’s community which uses IRC and forums. During those times this way of playing was common.


As a third part of my career I want to mention politics. Joining the government for the first time as a undersecretary of Minister of Information started a new era for me. I started to be very active in government and also in party politics. This culminated about a year ago when I was elected as the president of eFinland.


2013 has been a year for MU activity and for private sector. We created Mossad MU as a merc unit and made huge profit in the beginning of 2013 until the Combat Order was introduced to game which made mercenary business obsolete. Recent months I have enjoyed being active in media and Kauppalliitto party but the fact that eRepublik is increasingly changing to more combat oriented style is making the niche for my kind of players smaller and smaller which is a pity in my opinion.

All in all I have enjoyed different project and phases of my career. eRepublik has given me a lot of fun and many interesting moments.




- You are a well known player of the community and you've been in several government positions. You are the current MoI of eFinland and you are the current PP of Kauppaliitto.

How do you see politics?


The political field in Finland has certain broad categories which makes the situation interesting. Our biggest party is Wanhat Parrat which and because of their size they are in key position in all decisions in Finland. Then we have group of players who play the game actively using also IRC and forum as a ways to contact with each other. This is often associated with the older players and those who used to hold the political power in eFinland. However, this style of playing is getting more rare and the number of this group is not sufficient to do any decisions in Finland on it’s own. The third category is the players who seem to concentrate on fighting and casual playing without any true political ideas. They seem to be satisfied as long as they get their regular tanks from the government. Also inside this group there are some famous populist who do politics simply by criticising the current leaders without really offering any solution of their own.


For example in the last CP election the marginal was really small and the Finland seemed really divided. The attitude towards eRep and the style people are playing is very different in the group that supported TheJuliusCaesar compared with the people voting Kendo Yanar. It might be difficult to find the balance that would please everybody.




- Recently was signing a NAP with Estonia. In the past, there was an agreement that was broken prematurely. What's your opinion about the NAP? Do you think it will reach the end?


Indeed our history with Estonia hasn’t seen many days of peace. I don’t think that there is any big hatred between us, but the fact is that we both need war and we don’t have many options because of the geography. I have already seen people complaining about the lack of TP damage. However, I think the NAP will last at least until the end of this CP term. A strong majority of the congress was pro NAP and the government highly recommended it. The NAP is supposed to last until 10.2. It’s likely that ther will be deabet about the NAP during the next CP elections and probably some of the candidates will promise to start war with Estonia if elected. It’s difficult to predict how it all will turn out. Also Estonia has betrayed us in the past.




- You were CP once, is part of your plans return to run for the presidential elections?


I had my go as the CP exactly one year ago. After that I made a real effort to return in summer when I challenged WP Attak. At the moment I have no plans to run for the president. It is not realistic for me to win CP elections in Finland because there is a significant group of players who play the game very differently from me. I think I have nothing to offer to them at this time, so it would be difficult to get their votes or at least I would need to make many compromises to my views.




- Who are your favourite players in the game? And what are the best moments that you have in the game?


My favorite player is definitely Zacharia Raven. I have always admired his passion about the game and the way he plays it. For example in politics he has his own opinions which he is willing to defend. He is always true to his word. He is also one of the few eRep players I have met in RL.


Another player I’m huge fan of is Cendorr. He has been by far the most active player in eFinland during my gaming career and he has made things a lot more interesting. Even if I don’t agree with most of the things he is doing, I think that eFinland wouldn’t be the same without him. At the moment he is openly playing eRep with three accounts at the same time. Who other could do it but him?


Best moments I have had must have been Mossad merc MU operations. We sold a huge amount of damage and operations were sometimes very big with more than 20 participants. Making those deals and coordinating our attacks were great fun and the best part was our MU’s active community during those time.



- A message to the Finnish community...

I hope the Finnish community will find this year in eRep enjoyble and hopefully our community will find better balance in the months to come.



Thank you very much Ruben, for this amazing interview!

I hope you enjoyed!

Terveisin,