The Death of our Community

Day 1,162, 04:48 • Published in USA USA • by Joe DaSmoe

eRepublik is a game that many of us enjoy. No matter how many changes to the game the admin seem to randomly implement, those of us who are avid players of the game stick it out. We bitch and moan, complain for weeks, then simply continue to play. We persevere and stay as a community of eCitizens. Why? The vast majority of us will simply state, "its the people here who keep me playing"

The social aspect of the game is the reason we never really leave.
Except now, we are killing that aspect.

There was a time in eRepublik when new players and new ideas were encouraged and welcomed. Over time, perhaps due to our own bitterness about being addicted to such a foolishly unpredictably changing game, we as a community have become sour. Myself included. I have tried to quit many times and lost my temper many more than that. Yet I remain. I have a few old friends who keep me coming back, as well as an interest in the evolution of the game. It has become far to common and is fact simply the way things go now, for established players to continually shout down new ideas and new players. The community labels them as "two-clickers", ridicules them for being ill informed, or outright trolls them into walking away from the game. And those are the people who even managed to stick around long enough to even bother to comment on an article or gain enough of a spark of interest or curiosity to try and get involved. Imagine what people who log in and read an article for the first time think. No wonder many, hell most, of them never log in again. They see people calling each other "fgts" and posting pics of chicks. Not exactly appealing to a broad spectrum of people.

We spend so much of of time complaining about the admins of this game that we have forgotten the core ideal of the very game we bitch about. eRepublik relies almost solely on the social aspect to keep it going and growing. As the game evolves and changes, many of us feel defeated and have simply stopped caring about a community that WE have developed. It is not the goal of the eRepublik admin to grow the social ingredient of this game, it is OUR goal. The game simply provides the framework for our eSoceity. We are the ones who must grow it.

With that in mind, I have recently begun to try and recruit citizens to the game. I have never had success with it in the past, but I figured I would give it a shot and I have spent the last week or so spamming my referral link all over the place. The result? Not very good. I have managed to get 13 total people to join and all 13 logged in once and never came back. Only one of them responded to my in game message. His response? "I have no idea what to do" I linked him to guides and tried to explain things, no response.

This is a very common occurrence and it represents the basic problem with retention. eRepublik looks SO boring when you first find it. The only thing we can do to help this as a community is focus our efforts on the media module. We have the ability (for the time being) to org vote selected articles to the top slot of the media so at least something interesting and helpful is staring each new citizen in the face the moment they log in. The very first moments a new player log in are crucial to retention and the less confused and more welcomed the new players feels in the beginning is key to our growth as a virtual society.

Articles such as this well written new citizen guide authored by the Department of Education's Blank Keating need to be in the top media spot every single day. Even if it has to be reprinted over and over. Players such as Blank should be rewarded by our government for articles such as this, by allowing him to publish these guides in his personal paper, then paying to org vote it. I get the idea behind doing our tutorials from the DoE org, but the author gains nothing personally by publishing through an org paper. We would be far better served to vote on a weekly "best guide" and and have it sitting in the top slot everyday. We all know how difficult it can be to get the media mogul medal honest, and the competition for the pre selected number one spot for new citizen guides could and should produce better and better guides for our newborns as players compete amongst each other for the spot in hopes of getting the ever elusive media mogul medal. Plus, why not give Congress something constructive to do.

We also have to stop rigging congressional elections. Its a shame that basically every election is essentially decided before it even takes place. Basically, you have little to no chance of getting into Congress unless you are part of these social circles that exist outside of the actual eRepublik game interface. I get that, its the way things are. We just need to approach it differently.



POLITICAL PARTIES MUST ACTUALLY STAND FOR SOMETHING. They have to differ on policy issues, they must have clear agendas and messages. As it is now, they all basically represent the same thing, a little social circle who confers with other little social circles and agree on who to elect where. NO ONE STANDS FOR ANYTHING AS A PARTY. Many will argue that our politics must be handled this way in order to protect us from political take over attempts, and they are right, but we have taken this stuff way to far. If we can retain more people that problem takes care of itself by simply voting for those who not trying to pto us. Problem is we can barely get enough people to actually care enough to vote in the first place. My god, it has gotten so bad that I have actually seen people basically pre-selecting out Presidents.

This stuff has to stop. We have to welcome people, not exclude them. We have to have political parties that stand for things, we have to have domestic debate and should welcome it, not shout it down as idiocy. eRepublik is a game that revolves heavily on strength in numbers. We just keep beating the same old tired ideas over peoples head and wonder why no one sticks around. Lets make eRepublik a true virtual society, full of differing opinions. We will be better off in the end if we do.

End of rant, we need to focus on growing the social aspect, not force it to conform to one voice.
Joe DaSmoe


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