Separation of church and state

Day 831, 03:22 • Published in USA USA • by Necrosis
Alternative title; oh god I’m writing serious articles again, run to the hills

One of the things I’ve noticed, about the USA in the most part, but it can be seen throughout the game, in all major countries, is that things have become too serious. I’m going to work with the example of the USA, the country I’m most familiar with, with regards to this phenomenon, and take it from there.

Before the invasion of North America by the forces of PEACE, before Scrabman, the USA was a country run by people, for the ‘lulz’ (I hate the word lulz, it makes me want to punch babies.). Invasions were launched, failed, and ultimately resulting in the war that raged for three months over the entirety of North America. Portugal, Mexico, you know, things like that (the USA even invaded Canada once). Wars done in pursuit of the pure entertainment value of it, while other countries were strategically advancing their position, moving forward with plans, almost like a game of international chess. Meanwhile, the USA was too busy with internal disagreements, party politics, drama, all of that to manage to do anything of any value, and thus languished there, never improving on the world stage.

Fast forward a year. None of this happens here anymore; if something doesn’t help destroy Hungary, it is seen as wrong, weakening to America, serving no purpose to the greater good.I disagree. More and more it is becoming obvious to me that this has evolved from a game to almost a job to many people; the people who run everything, who create policies that will have effects months down the line. Blinkered by battle statistics, by international politics, by their one goal, to destroy the other side, they have become oblivious to everything around them. I cannot blame them, I myself was once guilty of this, but as with anything, balance needs to be found.

I am not advocating a return to the days where we invade neighbours for the fun of it, and devolve into t state of drama and party politics again; far from it, that would be just as bad to the country, our goals, and all that. Instead I advocate the middle ground in the whole debate; this game was born as a cross between facebook and an RPG, over 2 years ago now. Over time the playerbase has changed it to an RTS game, with people as units on the battlefield, and everything done for strategic reasons. By and large, this is good. The community took what it was given, and ran with it, taking it where it wanted it to go, again, one of the things the game was originally intended to allow. It was also supposed to be bug free, so hey, not everything worked out.


How the game has come to be seen

So, we’re playing what is basically an RTS game with real people instead of units. Right. Not much fun if you’re one of the units, is it? This is where the carefully constructed house of cards begins to falter, and actually becomes something of a hindrance to the progression of a country. The problem begins when you take everything seriously, as stated previously, the game becomes almost a job. 12+ hours a day, waking up at weird times of day and night to press the attack button, to candidate oneself as part of a PTO/ATO operation, all of that. Military units staying awake until 3AM to hit a wall. This is fine, assuming there is a balance between doing things like this, and just having fun.

Before I get into this next section, I would like to make something very, very clear; I do not advocate doing stupid things for fun; far from it, but I also dislike the ‘everything is serious’ approach taken by many. A middle ground needs to be found, for the good of both parties, and the game as a whole. By way of a for instance, the government and it’s people publish articles on serious matters quite often; except they’re often very boring, written without an ounce of humour, mirroring real governments really. How boring is that? Be less serious with these things; write it as if you were trying to entertain people as well; a new player sees a government article in a slightly humorous fashion and a very dry, boring, article, and which will they prefer? Which will keep them logging in day after day?

One of the main things missing from this game, right now is that sense of fun. Older players are getting bored, newer players are signing up, seeing that this is more serious a game than they expected, and not signing back in again. One of the reasons retention has been a problem, in my eyes, is because the game stopped being fun for many people in the USA once PEACE was kicked out of North America; we can say this is due to lack of a national goal, and to an extent that is true. We could say it is because we don’t have Q2 hospitals everywhere, but this is wrong. We could even say that it is due to bugs, and you’d be right there too. However it is the fun factor that people seem to ignore in conversations.

By way of a for instance, elections were once somewhat fun in this game. A strategic game of vote moving chess, if you will. Now many candidates are approved by all parties with only blockers existing. A little mudslinging; not enough to damage the country, but enough to bring at least a little entertainment back into the game would be greatly appreciated. The lack of partisan politics has gone a little too far; while everyone works together, it also tends to result in a lack of fresh ideas; there is less incentive to come up with an election winning idea if elections don’t really matter. Congress has become a rubber stamp in many countries though, so I guess that somewhat invalidates my own point. Presidential elections on the other hand do matter to a degree, and yet nothing ever happens. Not even a friendly rivalry, joke articles ‘slandering’ the other candidate for an obviously made up transgression would go a long way, and they aren’t even much effort.


the kind of mudslinging no one wants

Alright, I’m ending up going into a rambling mess, should probably end it here before you end up being bored, and I become a massive hypocrite.

Ok, what are the main points to consider here? Take things slightly less seriously, but do so without doing things that’ll bite you, and everyone around you in the arse. That somewhat flies in the face of fun; being screwed over by yours and other people’s dumb decisions is not exactly fun now, is it? Moderation of both serious and amusement needs to be achieved; without this moderation we might become the eUK, and no one wants that


Necrosis
Wall of text crits you for 384902384. You die. Your equipped items suffer a durability loss of 10%