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You are reading an article written by a citizen of eRepublik, an immersive multiplayer strategy game based on real life countries. Create your own character and help your country achieve its glory while establishing yourself as a war hero, renowned publisher or finance guru.

[Expedition Arcadia~Present]: The Big Chill, feat. Addy Costner

Day 1,554, 12:42 • Published in Canada Canada

• by Plugson

§▲§Present: The Big Chill, feat. Addy Costner§▲§

Break in case of political firestorm...or emergency munchies:

Preamble Music: Someone’s killing off our patriots & heroes...
Who’s Behind the Nite Owl Killings?
~ apologies for the falsetto vocals

This interview first started back in early January as “Jacobibusters,” a 3 part series “Past/Present/Future” to run before the previous CP election, yet as we are learning, you can’t always get what you want in eCanada (especially those ‘nice things’ people keep talking of). Addy went into hibernation after a major (and understandable) blow up over the MOO forums, among other pressures. Anyway, let’s just say those plans were put on ice as the fire spread through eCan.

The Big Chill has also been the “emotional core” of eCanada, as I have perceived it this past year or so, another reason for the subtitle: “The Big Chill is about a cooling-off process that takes place for every generation, where self-interest slowly starts to take precedence over the interest of society."

You can listen to or read more of it here, in a excellent CBC broadcast:
http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/season-1/2012/02/12/big-chill-marketing/
(1:15 is where we get to 'Addy' who happens to have been one the best marketing geniuses in eCanada)

Enough preamble for now.
Here
we
go…

~§▲§~1:00 Tell us about your first ventures into eRepublik. Many people find their niche in the military, the business side of eRep (or used to), the media (or used to), the social aspect(IRCing or forumizing), or in the political sphere of eRep. Where did you start and proceed through in that list of roles?

I experimented when I first joined eRep, I was too ebroke to do anything. On my first day in the game I bumped into Christian Doe, I think he was my first friend. He recommended me to the eCan forum. I’m not that tech savvy in RL so it took me days to figure out how to create an account in eCan, what a mask was, how to request a mask, and to find anything relevant on the eCan forum.

While I was learning forum basics, I tried my hand in political membership. I joined CSD first and nothing exciting happened in three days so I left. I then joined CPP, nothing excited happened, so I left.
I was really “idling” at the time, given how young my citizen was, and the biggest influence was the news. I bought a news paper with my first HW gold so I could get in on the action, my paper didn’t have much of a purpose so it idled, it paled in comparison to a lot of the other things going on in the media. The dominant stories in the media were Canada’s war with PEACE as we were being slowly taken over by Hungary. I was interested in helping out with the war effort so I responded to one of the CAF ads in the media for recruits.

Back then, the CAF had a strength requirement and I was way below it. It would take about two months straight of training to meet the requirement. Also, the Rangers didn’t exist back then so new players were pretty much left out in the cold. If you weren’t in CAF, you were a civilian fighter; that was it. I found this very frustrating. eCanada was getting killed, here I was, a willing guy, but my country’s army didn’t want me. I fought bare fisted as a baby in the Battle of Ontario when eCanada was wiped.

Back then, all of your country’s political parties were eliminated in a wipe so there was no CPP or CSD left, or any other party for that matter. This was quite a low time for eCanada and myself. I was considering joining another country when I was tapped on the shoulder by Rylde. He was combing through occupied Canada looking for active players. Ironically, there were a large pool of players below the CAF cut-off line, like me, that didn’t have support and were trapped; we were at the mercy of volunteers or social programs. Rylde offered me a lifeline, some moving tickets in exchange for a commitment to join this guy Bruck. Bruck was forming a militia that would work in Greece and Spain in iron and gun factories to stockpile weapons. We would bide our time, gather our strength, and attack Hungary to reclaim Canada when the time was right. This intrigued me so I accepted the offer.

~§▲§~1:30 (Episode IV - A New Hope):
This was my first “moment of purpose” in eRep. I joined Bruck’s militia, which became Bruck’s Canucks, and I started working for slave wages building up an armoury in expectation that Canada would be reclaimed. I started to find my groove, fighting with Bruck’s Canucks in the reclamation of Canada, buying my first company with HW gold medals, and joining the Canadian Progressive Front on a reference from only_atoms who was in my platoon at the time.

Around this time, I started writing a lot of articles on the economy. Market price reports, tax surveys, monetary policy discussions. This was largely a neglected area in the media and I really struck gold here, demographic-wise. There was a lot of casual interest in the topic but nobody was really putting out any meaningful material. My subscriber base quickly grew and I was getting all kinds of offers for finance related positions. On the strength of the content in my articles, Bruck’s Canucks offered me Director of Finance in their Executive while Canadian Progressive Front did as well. Bruck stepped down as Commander in Chief and they gave the position to a guy named Domino Gray. Domino moved some companies around and $1,000 CAD went missing, which was 30 gold at the time, and I called him on it, locking him out of the orgs. He freaked, big time, and rage quit. Bruck and Ralph de Ver liked how I handled the situation so they offered me the role of Commander in Chief of Bruck’s Canucks, which I accepted.

Concurrently, things were going well in CPF. I was Director of Finance there and we were building up some party companies, in food/grain and tickets/oil, to support our strategic voting effort. Back then you needed tickets to move and CPF provided each member of its SVT with two tickets; one to get to the region that needed the vote and the other to get back to a region with a Q5 hospital. Things were going great, the party was gaining in popularity under the founder, Tyler F Durden, and as the number two party in eCanada we were developing quite the rivalry with eCanada’s behemoth, the Democratic Action League.

All of my worlds came colliding together on the eve of congressional elections in the Fall of 2009. I was about to win my first congress medal. I went to log into the org for Bruck’s Canucks, and I was locked out. Turns out that some people in my cabinet at Bruck’s Canucks did not like how I was operating things. First, my attention was divided between CFP and BC. Second, winning a congress seat was going to divide that once more. Third, I had been supplying myself more often than everyone else, and even though it was a petty amount, it was wrong. Rylde was in my executive and he was the one who lowered the boom, suggesting that I resign and pick politics over military, and I did. In retrospect, I had already picked politics over military; I just hadn’t admitted it to myself.
The rest is moreless high profile enough to be public knowledge. Thirteen terms in congress, nine Party Presidencies, four Country Presidencies, founding a political party and a militia.

~§▲§~2:00 So far as I can recall, the Canadian Progressive Front was your first major political endeavour. It seems that some of the methods used by the CPF were employed instructuring MOO (list of party goals, PP polls for PTO prevention, a large hoofedmascot). What political chops did you earn in the CPF and how did those experiences carry forward?

The CPF appealed to me because it stood for something. I passed through CSD and CPP because they were heavy on fluff and light on substance, they were just there. CPF stood for something. They were a policy party. This is the number one thing I learned about party politics in CPF.

The CPF forum had some elements that were quite divisive. We had a debate each month whether or not we would run our own CP candidate and if we opted not to, we then debated which outside candidate to support. Every time a member wanted to run for CP and we elected NOT to run our own candidate, we lost that member permanently. Not only that, the demographic supporting that member was jaded. After a series of elections, we ended up with a jaded group. I wanted to avoid this in MOO so we had open CP elections every time, sometimes with multiple members facing off against a third party.

Jbdivinus won PP of CPF in a surprise move, having not been a member of the party leading up to PP Election Day. That month did not go well. Neither did any of the three months where PimpDollaz inherited the Party Presidency and took deliberate actions to run the party into the ground. To guard against this, I developed a by-law where the forum determined an official candidate and we supported that candidate in-game. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t chasing me. This is an effective policy provided you have an active forum. The risk of this policy is that your forum demographic becomes a minority relative to your in-game demographic, which happened in MOO.

The CPF was a brand, the Blue Moose still means something today. I wanted my party of have that sort of brand. Around the time I started MOO, the Ministry of Industries had been dissolved and the “Ministry of” phrase was negative. I wanted to turn that around, and appeal to the sense of hope and future outlook in people so I went with “Opportunity”. Ministry of Opportunity translated into MOO which implied “cow” which had plenty of marketing potential vis-à-vis bovine metaphors (milk, beef, burger, herd, teets) so I ran with it.

~§▲§~2:30 : Where’s the beef? aka ~ is the grass really greener in the other pasture?

The grass is never greener on the other side. That said I will not be going back to graze the grasses of MOO. I’ve done all that I can do with MOO and now my presence there only holds it back. MOO will be a cult of my personality so long as I am there and active. nCPF is my home in eCanada.

My original plans for when my CP run ended were to focus on non-partisan things, like Attorney General and Court Justice. I was looking forward to being involved with a non-top five party, or no party at all, as I fulfilled these roles.

This changed with my MOO forum experience. I don’t want to get involved in forum activity anymore and stuff like AG and Court Justice just don’t align with how I intend to play the game from here on out.

~§▲§~3:00 Taking a wild guess here, but were you born under the sign of a Taurus? If not, then why the predilection for ungulates (Moose, Cow, Bull)? Have you considered goats, sheep, or tapirs yet? There did/does exist a Rhino party that might be of interest to you.

Well, everyone who has ever said I’m two-faced will be pleased to know that I’m a Pisces in RL. The two fish in the sign speak to the duality of the person, almost the chameleon of all zodiac signs. People of this sign are characterized by selflessness and spirituality yet very focused on their inner journey and acting strongly on their intuition.

I like the moose because it is distinctly Canadian, and the colour blue connotes a conservatism that appeals to my personal politics.

I like the cow because of the metaphor potential, it’s a huge spectrum. On one end there is the reverence associated with the sacred cow, and on the other there is the irreverence associated with the slaughterhouse. Somewhere in between lies the truth.

As for goats, sheep, tapirs and rhinos, these are all just faces on the cutting room floor now, there will be no new mascot for me nor any new parties for me. Things will end at CPF and MOO, MOO was more like a child or offspring of CPF, a lot of strong ties and a lot of key differences.

Being a US citizen now, I have a tough time picking a party to join. None of them really appeal to me and I am avoiding forums so I doubt I will gain any further insight into which one to join. The only reason I’m a party member now is to fulfill admin’s Valentine’s mission

~§▲§~3:30 Kevin Costner is discovered to be a very terrible person, so horrible you can’t bear to use him as your avatar anymore. What would be your alternative avy? Any ideas why manly actors seem to have been a favourite for the political-types?

Costner was not my idea. only_atoms cast “Mr. Brooks” as Addy Lawrence in some CPF promotional material that he published for congress elections. Each candidate was represented by an actor or figure from pop culture, and I drew Kevin Costner’s “Mr. Brooks”. I liked it immediately because of the all of the pictures available on the net of Costner, this provided a lot of “material” to work with in articles. Prior to me adopting Costner, I was using a pic of the Joker and a pic of “The Rhino”, a villain in the Spiderman series.

Little known fact: The early ice-age precursor to MOO and the Opportunity line ~ The Chemmy Boy Rhino

So if I had to switch from Costner, I’d likely switch to another guy with a lot of images on the net to work with but who isn’t overdone in eRep, like Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. I’d probably go for Cary Grant (original and classicly dapper guy) or Jack Nicholson (edgy and elderly). Likely Nicholson.

I surmise that manly avatars are a favourite for political types because they get away from the gratuitous sex stereotypes and the lulzy image stereotypes which cloud the image you want to project with serious politics. Who can take a politician seriously when a pair of double D’s with four inches of cleavage are staring at them? Dr.Pain suffers from that IMO. He’d be a stronger politician with a male avatar, although I can’t complain about the nurse in his CAF border. Sex is too prevalent and obvious, so hot chicks are overdone. A Che Guevera stylized avatar works well, so do name politicians and actors who’ve played political roles.

~§▲§~4:00 Captains of Industry ~ seemed like a good idea when it started but now feels more like another MU among many. Are there still unique characteristics to distinguish the growing number of MUs out there or is such colourful rivalry relegated now to the heydays of CAF vs Crimson? Shorter question: Are MUs losing their roleplay flair?

Ironically, COI paved the way for other MUs and established the prototype by which many MUs operate today. That said, COI is largely template on TCO’s model. The company portfolio that I shared with COI was not unlike TCO, however I owned the company’s for COI as opposed to the group owning them like TCO. COI openly supported lower ranked members in expanding their self-supply network, way before the construction program came into play. COI was very progressive, doing “what made sense” before it became “common sense” and applied throughout the country. The streamlining of the economy module and the Construction Program and sanded down the competitive advantages of COI so there is merit to the “just another MU” comment. That said, I don’t recall there being a single scandal or anything within COI and that impresses me because we grew based on trust, loaning each other money for companies, and share what we had without expectation of profit. It’s a good group.

~§▲§~4:30 The flair?

Are MU’s losing their roleplay flair? To a certain extent. I don’t see much differentiation between them, like our political parties. It’s tough to develop a “policy MU”, but someone will sooner or later

~§▲§~5:00 Moment of greatest success/achievement in eCanadian history or maybe a Top 3? How about a Top 3 personal achievements? (besides uploading that hunkly avatar pic)

When I managed to get congress on-side to switch from income tax-centric taxation to VAT-centric taxation, that was special. This was a paradigm shift and the change represented two big things; first, that congress was willing to listen and decide based on the facts and second, that I was willing to be patient and explain rather than state and expect people to listen and do. eCanada was one of the early adopters to VAT-centric taxation in the buy-bot era. It immediately paid huge dividends and it still does. This was such a contentious issue that Dean22 came out of retirement to assume the role of my nemesis!!! It was incredible how much the game had changed since Dean’s time.

Dean was a titan of economics in 2008 and early 2009 and I read a lot of his work, admired it actually, because he was the first guy to institute a genuine tax policy in eCanada. It was difficult to debate with him because of the respect he had earned in the community, however, he did not stay current with the mechanics of the economics module and he eroded his credibility with each round of debate. Had I debated the way I did in 2009 and 2010 I would not have been able to succeed, it was because I had softened my approach that I was able to pull it off and Canada benefited from it.

Completely blocking the ATO effort in my first term was a good moment. Ignoring the fact that a certain level of democracy was stripped away, it was impressive to get all four parties on the same page and working toward a common goal. Having Rolo in my pocket all the while was also rather satisfying, he did his part and deceived the Romulans to ensure victory.

I guess the third item would be expanding my reputation in eRep to include some military competence. Prior to eCanada’s military successes during my four terms, Acacia and Aeriala had the best accolades. Acacia pounded the attack button in V2 and experienced many victories in a single term, and battles in that PvP module were much more emotional, making the victories more profound. Aeriala was the first CP to take London, which was likely the most notable single act in eCanada military history to this day. But blocking Sweden while it was still a ONE powerhouse, and removing Poland from North America and France, and wiping UK, all as chapters in an extended military novel written during these four terms, that had gone far in breaking my image as “a finance guy”.

~§▲§~5:30 Could you summarize the history of eCanada in 7 words or less? And what smell would it be?

Bruck, wipe, Jacobi, wipe, Rolo, swipe, Addy.
Nothing like the smell of enapalm in the morning.

~§▲§~6:00 Are you really getting burnt out or was that some kind of pre-election rumour? Care to tell us how many hours it takes to manage the CP role each day (on average) and if that cuts into funtime with D’Addy and D’Mommy?

I think I was beginning to get burnt out, but not by the duties of the office, rather the childishness of the trolls. I couldn’t believe how silly some people would be, assuming I was trying to destroy the country or stage PTO’s for the benefit of certain parties, or deliberately excluding certain military units.

I would say that the CP role took up about 4 to 8 hours a day and it did cut into RL time with family. My wife knew that I was running for CP and that this was a project and that I was seeking multiple terms. Ironically, my family started showing more of an interest in the game when I was CP. I had to warn my son not to open an account while I was CP or I could get banned for multi.

~§▲§~6:30 Troleplay: Is it a necessity for eCanada or can people actually play the game without making asses of themselves and/or others? Some say it has been too big a part of eCanada, yet I suspect it’s also true for other teams in the game. In my opinion, eCanada has developed too much red-tape in its procedures, which ironically gives legal/political leverage to the trolls who regularly breech civil conduct. Care to agree or disagree onthat?

Troleplay is necessary. There is no real law in eRep, just the hand of god that is admin. Admin only makes its presence known to smite an account. Anything below the radar of admin is fair game and this is quite an expansive area. eRep is like the old west, no law in town except for the practices that the community tolerates. Trolling can be used for good and for evil and in eCanada the balance is constantly tilting back and forth.
I have seen people get crucified by trolling and it is not right. I have seen many Canadians stand up for the victim in these cases and it’s nice to see. This is where your true knights in the community shine. The genuine trolls move on with enough pressure from the community, the key is to be patient.

eCanada does have red-tape and it does provide leverage to trolls. I think CAF has learned this. They hold themselves to a high standard, which is admirable, and set themselves up for trolling when the few bad apples in their bunch fail to live up to the standard or deliberately fail at it. Other red tape, like the myriad of community commitments we have made on eCan forums, set us up for exactly the same thing, like the Bond Program, the Justice System, the Congress Motion Debate rules, and so on. It is too easy to breech any of these role-play doctrines and the trolls love to see the administrators back-pedal and explain, troll fodder indeed

Halfway break and a message from "The Big Chill" itself: Rationalizations

Support a hero and patriot, click the Monkey above to honour our Silent Guardians and current simian overlord.

~§▲§~7:00 What’s the deal with Wally, Norsefire, and Rolo? I have no idea who’s wagging the beaver tail. Care to explain why this issue just never goes away or is it now simply part of eCan’s legacy of jackassery.

It’s part of eCan’s legacy.

At this point, I believe that Wally and Rolo are not the same person. Rolo wags the beaver tail as he has way more clout than Wally. IMO, Wally is dependent upon Rolo.

Wally is definitely more sinister than Rolo. I empathize with Rolo but I couldn’t care less about Wally.

~§▲§~7:30 CSFovets and Ethel ~ what are your thoughts on these eCan workhorses and how has it been working in close quarters with the duo?

Both are top notch. I didn’t really know them that well prior to being CP. Both were in COI and were great contributors there. They followed Maelock, or whatever SAWC’s name was at the time, to another MU and they got “taken” by him, eventually moving on to CSD. They are like me, task oriented and forthright, they are decisive and get things done. They are proud of their work. They appreciate people who share this approach. I’d go to the ends of the earth for them.

~§▲§~8:00 3 tips for the next CP?

First tip, be your own messenger. Words are very important in this game, frame your messages yourself and communicate them in your paper. So many people provide opinions and infer things based on what you say and do, its best for you to manage the message yourself.

Second tip, use group pms. I got way more accomplished, even with our alliances, and in much less time, by using group pms. Once I knew who the relevant parties were to a discussion or deicison, I’d start a group PM and everyone got the same message. No need to meet on IRC at an ungodly hour to appease Irish or French time-zones. Also, so long as the thread was active, you had a record of the discussion and decision for 14 days. The key to using this successfully is having relevant and informative subject lines in your pms.

Third tip, keep your cabinet small. There really isn’t a lot of sphere of influence in the Executive Branch. Keep the decision making in a small group and empower that group. In retrospect, Ethel, CFovetS, Etemenanki and I could have pulled it off ourselves. The balance of cabinet contributed, and some of them (Mafanikio, PDP, Gary Hubert) in an outstanding fashion in moments of brilliance, but the day-in, day-out grind was dealt with by the core group.

~§▲§~8:30 And, 3 things you would have wanted to know before first becoming CP?

The first thing I would have wanted to know was that game mechanics permit you to declare an attack on a region that already has a RW in play. This sucks. If you want to attack right away, you must confirm that there is not already a RW in play, otherwise, your attack it put in queue and waits for the RW to resolve. You may end up in a scenario where your attack “fizzles”. I learned this the hard way.

The second thing I would have wanted to know was how Executive Orders work. Every time I issued one I discovered a new interpretation and forum rule that affected what I was doing. By the time I finished, it was determined that Executive Orders don’t even exist anymore.

The third thing I would have wanted to know was where the links were to the “declare war” menu. When I first started, the wars that your country was in didn’t always show in the first page of the list of wars. It was hit and miss to find those pages and it was difficult to locate them. During my terms admin improved this feature so that the wars your country were involved in were listed at the top which made it easier to find and go to the “declare attack” screen.

~§▲§~8:30 You started with a constitutional angle in your platform but much of that has dropped off, especially after the Dept. of Homeland Security’s ATO efforts went bust. What was a major adjustment or learning experience from this venture?

I campaigned in term one on Justice reforms, and this was incredibly difficult to achieve and I ended up doing my 50% without changing anything at all. The elesson here was that CP’s cannot deliver on promises for things that lie outside their sphere of influence. It is very important to understand where the CP’s sphere of influence begins and ends and where congress’s sphere of influence begins and ends and where they overlap. Congress has the final say on justice reforms.

~§▲§~9:00 Why after 3 years of playing this game do I still not have any understanding of how the military module functions? Am I just plain stupid, lazy, or does it take a certain talent to care enough to find out how it all works? I’m hoping you’ve gained some insight into how to make the game itself (not the community or politics) more of a hook for new citizens. We can’t all be citizen strategists yet I’m thinking there’s a good middle ground to be found between “in the dark” and “pushing the button.”

The military module is really only used by the CP’s. Even the MU Commanders and MoD’s don’t use the military module. These guys get a better seat in the audience with the CP but the CP calls the shots on which military module buttons get pushed at which times.

It’s kind of scary really, the CP has a lot of responsibility to execute the military strategy in-game and some of those wonky game mechanics have you doubting yourself. Did the attack go through? Is the mini-battle over? Can I change the CotD now?

Up until I was in that chair, I didn’t know much about the module, but after two week, I was more conversant in it than most MU leaders and I was actually CORRECTING people on IRC about stuff. Given that only one citizen in each country actually presses a button in the military module, it is easy to explain why there are such limited pools of expertise amongst the citizens.

I believe in a “war room” where you can have a dialogue with your military strategists, citizen or otherwise, to go through scenarios and considerations. I often did this via group PM before pressing that button and more often than not in affected my decision.

Once you press that button though, the key is to get the message out and get the masses moving in that direction. Battle orders, shouts, and articles, whatever. Mobilizing forces is the key to delivering on a battle strategy

~§▲§~9:30 Take a guess at the next major game update. What surprise will next come out of the admin’s bag of tricks?

Complete guess: national newspapers. Each country will have a national newspaper and only the CP will be able to publish articles and congress will have to vote on whether it is “released” or not.

2. Here’s a couple of prognostications to think over in lieu of your own:
a) Moar Buttonz: Three new buttons appear in the CP options menu. One says: “Remove player from country ~ permanent effect” The next says: “Let them eat cake ~ free food for the masses up to max fights.” Another says: “Nuclear strike ~ one region ~ permanently disable productivity bonus” You only get to press one; which is it?

If you remove a player, they can come back as a multi so scrap the opportunity to remove Wally or saltydog from eCanada. If you disable a region bonus, it could have no effect due to redundancy, like fish or deer in eCanada, so skip that. That leaves free food for the masses which is a pretty good marketing effort at the same time, Who’s your daddy? The D’Addy that feeds you.

~§▲§~10:00 [/b] Full complement of regional bonuses: Fact or Fiction? Just a master butt or real fantasy?

Fact. It is essential for success in eRep. If you don’t have 100/100 you are losing the long-term game of attrition. Look at how eCanada’s dollar has slowly weakened and look at how the 100/100 countries are slowly increasing in population. If you really play this game, you need that full bonus. You get more stuff so you can get more currency and gold and advance your citizen. You can role play anywhere, but you game-play at its highest level in 100/100 countries. Region swapping is possible, Canada’s deal with France was great until Alfy flexed his muscle. Conquest is possible, just look at our UK oil. It requires focus and a co-operative partner. US is not co-operative despite the message from the top brass. The people must be willing.

~§▲§~1😇 [/b]
I deleted that question. Instead, here’s something completely different to entertain you.

yup, “Jacobibusters Past, Present and Future” woulda been an awesome series, and an even more awesome February on a 5th term. Ah well, so it goes.

~§▲§~11:00 eCanada’s strategic outlook: Is it possible for a middling power (at best) to actually change its position in-game or does this mainly depend on befriending the right payPal?

It is possible for a middling power to change is position in-game. The key is loyalty and some VISA power, and there is enough of that in eCanada although not on the Alfagrem scale. If the powers that be can count on Canada to execute, then we provide value. Just like a multi provides a citizen with another vote or a source of currency/gold, a middling power can provide a superpower with another attack button. Also, with so many MPPs in play, a middling nation can count on the support of several allies if a battle gets the right “marketing” in the media, shouts and your alliance. If a country has no loyalty and can’t be trusted, see UK, then there is little value to being a middling nation.

~§▲§~11:30 So like, how are we going to win? Or better yet, what is a realistic set of objectives that shows players in a game like this that there is forward progress? eCanada won’t conquer the world yet it must have some targets that can be met to offer a sense of accomplishment.

You can’t “win”, it’s like Pac-man, there is always another maze with faster ghosts. You can only be leading or trailing and this is only relative to the goals you set for yourself. eCanada is leading in the image it has with its allies (loyal, tough, organized). eCanada is losing in the game of attrition (60/60
In the final analysis, this is a game first, and the community will thrive so long as we are leading in the game. To preserve its long-term viability, eCanada needs to secure 100/100. I tried to do this all four terms and could only get to 80/40 or 60/60 for sustained periods, and 100/40 and 80/80 for short period. All of these are better than the 60/40 default in eCanada but this is not good enough.

~§▲§~12:00 Do you see an “end of the road” for Addy? Would you have to complete certain goals? Would the game have to change too much or not enough? Would it take an RLintervention? Could there be such a thing as a lifer?

I see an end of the road for Addy. Just this past weekend I was in an out of town hockey tournament, didn't log into eRep in three days, and it didn't bother me at all. I don't think I'm as a close to the end as I once thought I was but I am definitely closer to the end than the start.

I don't have any goals left to achieve, I've completed my ebucket list. I had some specific goals I wanted to achieve as a CP. I wanted to survive an impeachment and I did that three times. I wanted to survive a crisis, and I survived the PTO crisis. I wanted to score a military victory that people would remember me by, and Poland and UK will do that for me. This was all accomplished in my first two terms (UK was in term 3). The thing keeping me going for the balance of the time was driving for five. Four will be plenty good enough for me, five has been filed away.

The only thing of interest to me at this point is replicating some of the success I had in eCanada in another country. Right now I'm trying to become a big fish in eUS working strictly within the game environment. Staying away from forums and IRC will limit me, we'll see how it goes. Changes by admin to the game would help keep me around in this regard.

I do believe in the concept of a lifer. I would mention about 20 eCanadians that I think make eRep a big part of their lives, but I'd rather they step forward in the comments section and declare it for everyone. I consider myself a lifer.