[World] Out of character// Micro payments and why we should not hate. UPDATED

Day 753, 04:14 • Published in Finland Denmark • by Zacharia Raven

Today Erepublik made what many think as the greatest mistake in its history. They implemented the first real micro payment system into the game as Personal trainers. They said that it is meant to help the beginners to catch the oldies and thus help all nations.

First the obvioius: That is either a lie or stupidity, I don't disagree with that. If they really wanted to help the newbies, they would have level-capped the personal trainer. As it is now that all can use it, it will of course make older and richer more powerful just because they are richer. That is the only mistake I think developers di😛 1. Never lie to your customers. 2. Never assume your customers can't do math.

Customers, whaa? We are players..aren't we?
Yes, we are, But officially players are also customers. And this is where this goes out of character into deeper things.

Servers aren't free. The more players there is, the more it costs. This is really simple math. If there was only 100 players, who made about 10 articles a day and fought alltogether 150 times a day and worked 70 times , it would require X amount of admins and Y amount of monthly costs to maintain the serverspace.

Then there will be 1000 players and they make 100 articles, fight 1500 times and work 700 times a day. This will need a whole lotta' more of everyhing. Let's say 1,05*X and 1,05*Y.

And now there hundreds of thousands of players doing thousands articles, millions fights etc. You get the picture?

First there was their own pockets. Then some EU-thing, if I recall correctly. Then ads, gold.. And now micro payments. Has the game died? Is this really about fullfilling the never-ending greed of the admins? Well it could be, but then registering into this game would cost 10 euros and every click you make would cost 1 euro. Then they would start making money FOR THEMSELVES.

As customers we can't honestly expect to get good quality for nothing. Just because we don't get any physical item for our money spent on gold it doesn't mean we don't get anything. Let's put it this way: when you call to customers service, you usually pay per minute. Do you get something that you can touch or eat? No, you get service. And services are one of the most important products in the future. In some countries, like Finland, they already are.

"Lol what service I get from erepublik? Do they fix my car?"
A service is something that fullfills a need. A need can be advice, consult, repair, customer service or...an Internet-based game. So when you play a game, you ase using either a product or a service, depending whether you actually bought it and how it was produced.

Erepublic is produced all the time. And production costs. And since this is no hobby, these costs must be met via incomes. Otherwise there is a negative result wich leads to bankrupsy. Yeap, if they can't keep up with the costs, this game will shut down.

I have seen this happen many times. I once played a web game for 5 years. I was even a donator. During that 5 years i donated over 100 euros. And then BAM it went into smithereens. Did they screw me? No, because donation doesn't mean same as paying. The devs didn't really talk about their financial problems, just "please donate to keep Marcoland alive".

All I want to say, that this game is something we want to play. We want to use it to fulfill our need to - maybe socialize, train doing politics, or just to spend our freetime. This game is free for us, but not to those who keep it running. It is only good that they give us possibility to keep this service possible. If you don't like the game and are not ready to "purchase" it by the means of donating a few euros a month for personal trainer, leave. Now, We, the real players, won't me missing you.

- Z,
MBA student,
Oulu, Finland.


UPDATE

It seems devs took down the article which caused unseen rampage of complaints, about the training grounds. I just hope that they don't delete it, but add a level cap to it, like they should have in the first place.

Here are some other articles that show more mature aspect into this than those "YOU HAVE KILLED THE GAME!!!" scribblings:

- Military Training for Fat Cats, Tetradecagon,
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/military-training-for-fat-cats-1082944/1/20