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From Casual to Roleplaying – eRepublik of the Players


Introduction

This article is the first of the series ‘From Casual to Roleplaying – eRepublik of the Players’. The series is an exploratory research about what kind of different types of players eRepublik has. In this first article I will start with analyze of my own type of gaming. In the future parts I will attempt to define the main categories: Casual, Roleplaying and Powergaming. During the series these categories might change and new ones might emerge, but they will remain as the framework. Motivation for the article series is that in my opinion eRepublik in general, or at least the players, are heading to more casual-type of playing. One goal for the series is thus to find the reason for this tendency: is it the game, or the players who mainly drive the change?

About the author

I have been playing eRepublik since 2009, and I have seen party presidencies, minister positions, presidency and supreme commandership of an alliance. I am also a mentor in eFinland. I think myself as very traditional power-gamer, who gives very little weight on non-practical aspects of politics. I have had many clashes with other similar players, but even more with casual and roleplaying players, who are driven by totally different goals than I have been. For these reasons and others, I have left eFinland and chose eDenmark for its seemingly clear power-gaming philosophy.

Zacharia Raven as eRepublik player

When I started eRepublik in 2009, I wasn’t active in the community. I was purely a two-clicker, who worked, trained and sometimes fought. I read the finnish media sometimes, and wrote some fan-fiction of my own, loosely related to events in the game. I was part of the silent mass that is the majority of the players. Back in 2010 things however changed. eFinland had embarked on a quest to build a judicial system: they had created a constitutional law and they had established a court. This happened at a time when I was studying law and administration myself, so it immediately woke my interest in the community of eFinland.

The game itself was very simple back then, too. But suddenly there was completely new world to discover: The Community. The judicial system of eFinland was, on hindsight, very role-playish. It didn’t interest many people, and those who were interested were maybe bit too interested. As I hadn’t been part of the community, I didn’t know this, so I assumed that eFinlad had very sophisticated community which understood the ideas and concepts of judicial system. It was maybe detrimental that I was not interested in roleplaying, but solely on powergaming. I didn’t want to “play” laws and judges, but to make them efficient, functional and most of all useful. As I didn’t know anybody or anything, I was totally blind to the fact that I was alone with my ideas.

Being hard-working and independent takes you a long way in community. That’s what happened to me, too. Very soon I found myself as the Minister of Justice, and writing laws for example on debts unpaid. We created a penalty system independent of the game; if you didn’t pay your debts to other player, you would be excluded from the forums and from the IRC-channel for varying periods of time. The letter of the law aimed at being specific. The constitution held the general guidelines, like that a law contradicting or changing the constitution must be accepted by two consecutive congresses.

In a very short period of time it became clear to me, that I had been “tricked”. The judicial system was a sport of very small group of players, who wanted to bring more role-playing elements to the game. Later I read the discussions about the system, and their reasoning for creating the court and other systems were, in my opinion, flawed. Considering the complexity of the system to a regular congressman it was stated that “This is a test of a kind of the congressmen.” This meant that instead of creating a system that people need, understand and want they were creating something that only they understand, and would complicate the governing of the country for everybody else.

Back in 2010 eFinland did, however, have a very strong power-gaming core of players. They had created the community, and they were basically responsible for creation of EDEN (avec etc). These players saw everything from the practical side, that can only be achieved with strong experience. As I lacked that experience and genuinely thought that eFinland wants and needs a judicial system, I – ironically enough – clashed heavily with the old power-gamers. They claimed that the system was unnecessary, complicated and caused only confusion and headache for everybody. They were also worried about excluding players from community because someone “sued” someone, and that case was judged based on complex laws. They were of course right, but I argued that a functional society needs to have a judicial system, and that it didn’t require everybody understanding as it was our duty to make it work regardless of the knowledge of normal people.

In the end I saw that the judges we had were corrupted and not interested in the functionality of the system. They made rulings based on personal relationships and probably were corrupted too. This was very concerning notion, not the least because the Finnish society relied on them, but because the judges happened to be now-(thank god)-ex- game moderators. Seeing the system in practice made me realize that I had been fooled. Not by the community, but by my own expectations. Having supported and helping to create a roleplaying system was somewhat devastating realization for a powergamer. I understood that I had burned my bridges with the group that I was supposed to be playing with, and in the end also with the roleplayers. So, for a while it seemed like I might go back to casual-gaming.

In the later years I found my place from the government. In the government it was mainly foreign politics that interested me. It lacked the depressing roleplaying-related struggle over irrelevant matters. From foreign politics I, working hard every day, eventually was able to some level redeem my mistakes with the judicial system and gather enough support to become the President of eFinland. It was not of course without turbulence.
In 2011 eFinland changed suddenly. We had a baby-boom that originated from local 4chan. This meant thousands of casual players suddenly rushing to power- and roleplaying society. The clash between old players and new players was gigantic. It changed how “the majority” viewed the game. Instead of long-term pragmatic politics more “in the moment” style of politics was wanted. In 2012 when I was the president, this kind of thinking had gotten the upper hand, and eFinland left EDEN. I struggled with the old powergamers against this change with rigorous attempts, but in the end, we failed.

But, as a powergamer I did not resign, nor did I start rebellion. I accepted the congress’s decision, and began to build Asgard with Swedes and Norwegians. Back in the day Sweden was clearly more idealistic, role-playing oriented than I was. Under pressure we still were able to make necessary compromises and got the alliance running during our term. With some later tough love Asgard is at the time of writing the oldest alliance in the game. EDEN fell, ONE and TWO fell, CoT fell. Asgard stays. We didn’t believe it would be possible, but I think that combining the powergaming and roleplaying elements actually resulted in a better outcome that either of them could have resulted in alone. Asgard offered “fun” and “excitement” but was also strictly local, planned MPP’s carefully and decided to have small HQ. Military force was co-ordinated and flow of information was made fluent between governments.

Ending note

This was my brief history from the point of different gaming styles: Power-gaming, casual gaming and roleplaying. In the next part I will try to define these categories in more depths.

Stay tuned.