Interviewing Plato: The Future of eRepublik

Day 1,626, 09:21 • Published in USA Colombia • by W.A.R


Hello everybody!
Seems I’m getting a little rusty on the Comics so today I’ve decided to bring you a special interview with nobody else, but Plato. It’s a long one, but if you’re curious about the game’s future, read it, vote & subscribe and don’t forget to shout!

Hello Plato. I mean, hello, the_mihai.
I wish we can light up a little the future of our beloved game, so I’ve prepared a series of questions for you. I hope you won’t answer them all with “classified information”, so let’s begin:

1. You joined the game in Apr 01, 2008, 4 years ago! You were successful as one of the first Romanian Country Presidents, being a skilled politician and clever writer. After a while, you “switched sides”. Tell us about how and why you decided to join the eRepublik Staff and what’s your current position?

M: Indeed, I am a very passionate eRepublik citizen! I used to spend between 8 and 20 hours in eRepublik, not to mention waking up at 5 o’clock in the morning to fight in epic battles.

The “switch” you are talking about took place 2 years ago, when the eRepublik team asked me to join and help them coordinate the community department. Although I used to have a strong career in mass media, by being a marketing manager, I decided to accept the offer and try to influence the eRepublik concept in order to keep it as close as possible to what we used to like about this game.

Today I’m the executive director of eRepublik.com, since the moment George left the company, and I have the same mission: to try to keep eRepublik as close as possible to its original values. And now I am more optimistic than ever that we will succeed in this challenge, especially because, like we’ve stated a few weeks ago, we actually managed to make a take over in the eRepublik team (more than 50% from the team are eRepublik citizens!).

2. How many employees does eRepublik have worldwide? And how many volunteer moderators? How many tickets are submitted each day and what’s the average number of resolved tickets per day?

M: The entire company has around 60 employees and 75 game moderators.
We’re getting almost 1,000 tickets per day and we’re answering around 90-95% of them in less than 24 hours!

And here I really need to say something! Our average response time is 18 hours, which is maybe the best response time in the entire industry. I don’t want to brag, I just want to let the community know that we know very well how important is to get an answer as soon as possible and we’re very focused on this one. If we are not able to answer in less than 24 hours it means that the issue we’re facing is not that easy. Other than that, this is our target, to answer in less than 24 hours. 😉

3. One of the biggest concerns among players is the lack of communication between them and the staff aka Plato. You could reactivate the forum; restart publishing Insiders, make surveys via PM regarding future changes, etc. Do you have any such intentions?

M: While I was a regular player, I used to believe that eRepublik is the only game with multiple communication channels: media, forum, tickets, insider, blog, facebook, twitter, private messages and shouts (the current feeds). And back then I used to ask myself how can other players complain about lack of communication? When I joined the staff I realized that although eRepublik has a lot of channels, the quality of communication may not be that great. As a result, we decided to lower the number of channels and focus more on the quality.

Due to the fact that communication improved a lot (at least for us, by being able to actually read feedback from the community - in the contact form), we decided a while ago to get back media on the homepage. About future intentions I can share with you that we’ll come up soon with a survey and we’ll add a link where we’ll publish releases about current or future changes. As for the forum, we really believe that media is something unique in gaming industry and we should concentrate to improve this concept that to split our efforts between media module and a forum.

Last but not least, since two months ago we’re very active on our facebook page by publishing news, reading comments and even answer questions.

A new survey sounds good and it will be great if you will share afterwards the results.

4. In the media there are lots of articles full of interesting suggestions for improving the game. Is anybody from the staff reading them? Are those ideas from players ever debated? Do we need to send them via tickets?

M: By sending a ticket you can be sure, like I stated before, that 90-95% of them will be read with attention. Mistakes can appear and I am sorry for this, we’ll try to lower the percentage in the near future. But we’re reading media as well, lots of great ideas are present on our plans, ideas that we’re getting from the community. For example, I am reading between 3 and 10 feedback articles daily. But keep in mind, if you want to get votes, you can use media. If you want to get attention from the team, the contact form is the best choice.

If you want examples of ideas inspired from tickets or even media... take for instance the true patriot medal, party feed, bring back media on homepage, military units, upgrade training grounds (yes, this was highly requested in hundreds of tickets)...

5. I think a big improvement for eRepublik would be a mobile version. In your last 2 surveys there was a question regarding which platform do we prefer, but still nothing. Are you working on this? If yes, do you have an estimated launch date?

M: Yes, we’re working on this. And we have a pretty short deadline for this version to be live. But let’s say that I’ve learned that in this industry lots of unexpected issues may appear and I would prefer not to take a public commitment for this one. But we’re pushing hard to have a nice eRepublik mobile web page soon, for IOS and Android devices.

6. This picture was taken 2 days ago, in front of eRepublik HQ.



Obviously, you’re running on profit. Which countries are the biggest buyers? Can you tell us some numbers, like average gold purchase per day, or the all-time top purchase by a player? (Don’t have to give a name; we’ll never know if it’s Romper or Argrob)

M: Hahaha... good one! But in order for you to be accurate, please try to place me nearby this car:
.
This is what I’m driving day by day, an older model of our national car. 🙂

You can imagine I cannot share too much numbers because it will be like I’ll share your salary with your colleagues. It is not fair at all.

About profitability, indeed, eRepublik is a profitable product. But, although the board will not be happy when they'll read this, I can share with you that the profits you’re talking about are low because we’re investing the majority of the money in servers. I really need to remind you that eRepublik is maybe the only game that holds one single world, in real time, without any world/server reset which means enormous load and giant database. And we want to keep it this way, even if this means huge costs day after day, because, like I stated before, I really believe this is eRepublik. Of course, this also means that from time to time issues may appear, because we need to add new servers every time the population increases or we’re facing an epic battle.

The solution other games are using is to split their players in several worlds. If you ask me... for eRepublik this is a joke, it means you’ll have different experiences depending on the server you’re registered in. This also means that you can have a different world map on every server, different presidents on every server and so on. I really hope the community will realize that this is a big plus for eRepublik, even if we’re facing unpleasant moments from time to time.

7. The players have tons of suggestions and complaints. But what do you wish from the players (besides buying more gold)? If you could change one thing about eRepublik just by snapping your fingers, what would it be?

M: Since you were a bit unfair with your bracket, I think I should remind you that 2 years ago you were able to fight for free once per day for about one minute. Today, by eating food and coming back in the game we’re able to put some real damage in the battles. eRepublik is really not about gold but about having fun, the gold is created only if you want to have more fun right in this very moment and not later.

And I would like to have a magic wand to make the game more balanced in terms of battles and economy and to create the mobile version just by snapping my fingers.

8. We see a tren😛 more and more upgrades around the military module and almost none regarding the other ones. Many even consider the latest changes in Economy / Monetary Market a downgrade. Will this trend continue? Will the game became exclusively a military simulator? You consider the current Economy module good and we won’t see major changes in the near future?

M: No, I do not consider the economy module to be good. Actually, we have a lot to improve also in politics or media. And this is not just a military simulator and you can count on some changes for other modules as well. Since the military module is the ones that involves the higher number of citizens, it’s normal from our side to try to bring him in a final form. And hopefully, in a balanced form. Right after that we’ll get back on fixing the economy and politics.

9. A common question is if you intend to upgrade the bazookas (to 15 000 per hit)? Are we going to see bazooka parts & energy bars factories soon? Asklepije suggested that we could find energy bars part while working (something like butter, cocoa, milk, flour and wrapping). Doesn’t it sound delicious?

M: We’re analyzing several options. But if you want my personal opinion, I wouldn’t like to see a bazooka or an energy bar industry. For this we have weapons industry and food industry. And as you’ve stated before, the economy is not perfect and this will not help economy to get better.

About Asklepije idea... it’s interesting! I’m gonna put this idea on our board, could be something really nice. 🙂

10. Are we going to see soon new countries? Examples as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Senegal, Vietnam, Cuba, and Jamaica would definitely spice up the New World. Are there requests from the community concerning this matter?

M: I really can’t answer this one, this depends entirely on traffic. Plus, we’ve learned that not every country that has traffic will be a strong community (we can easily find a few examples), so my temptation is to cool down a bit the tendency to add new countries. But in the same time I cannot say this is a statement, if we’re gonna face a baby boom from Georgia or Jamaica, for instance, for sure we’re gonna take into consideration adding those countries.

11. Rumor has it that there is no real Romper (mainly because he doesn’t use chat). In fact, they say, it’s the admin account used to balance battles for TEDEN. This conspiracy theory claims Romper stands for Romanian Persuader, as he ‘persuades’ the wall to move. Can you deny this?

M: Of course I can deny this. 🙂 Not just because I can, but because Romper is not only an important eRepublik player but also a really cool guy! Still, every player has the right to decide if he wants to go public with his identity or not. Probably Romper prefers to stay in the shadow. Still, from what we know, he has this habit to help a lot of players in different ways so a lot of them can testify, for sure, that he exists. 🙂 If he is a persuader, this is because he wants to and for sure he’s not Romanian.

12. Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese? George R.R. Martin or J.R.R. Tolkien? Metallica or AC-DC?

M: Martin Scorsese - Shutter Island was a perfect movie!
J.R.R. Tolkien - I saw Lord of the Rings 15 times!
Between Metallica and AC/DC is impossible to choose. I’m listening Metallica every day and my ring tone is by AC/DC. Plus, I’ve had the chance to see both bands live and again it’s almost impossible to choose. But if you really force me, I’d say Metallica, by having the influence bar at 50,01%! 😃

Thank you for your time & patience and have fun at counting money!
If you want to send a message to my readers, shoot!

M: I’ll have fun when I’ll be able to count more and more happy player, like I used to be when I was playing eRepublik like crazy. The money are counted by the guys hosting our servers... 🙂

And for your readers, I would like to remind them that eRepublik is a phenomenon beyond Plato or gold or whatever. eRepublik is also about friendship, fun and even about learning. 3 years ago I have learned important communication lessons and even management lessons by playing eRepublik.

And to close this interview with a funny fact, I’ll tell you that while I used to be President in eRepublik I was promoted in real life because my superiors thought that my management skills improved, I started to be a better listener in my department and I managed to delegate tasks better. So... play eRepublik and you may get a promotion! 😁

Thank you for reading and special thanks to Mihai for making time for answering all this question at midnight! Hope it was useful for everybody! If so, please vote and shout the article!
For shout:
Where is eRepublik going? Plato is answering.
Huge interview -a must read
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/plato-the-future-of-erepublik-2026125/1/20

We would like to re-invite you all to the 2nd eRepublik International Meeting, here in Romania! Click the banner for more details.


Greedy for new subs,

Vive la Résistance!