904
The Economist ~ Why the admins need to learn to listen
Social interactions and entertainment 
Dear friends,
Think if you will of your favourite pub, bar, shop, coffee house. If they’re a big brand then you probably see their adverts several times a day. They have special offers, loyalty schemes, a big menu/variety of products and probably make changes to keep the place feeling new and fresh. As new ideas are thought up, the company goes through a lengthy process to implement them.
First of all the new idea is submitted as a business case to the board of directors, who will probably review it and if it seems like a good idea approve it. Then a more detailed plan is drawn up, and a long period of market research and consultation is begun. Most ideas spend between 2-3 years at this stage, especially if it’s a significant change. You wouldn’t want to (for example) put loads of neon signage in Starbucks without consulting your clientele, in case they all just stopped coming and your business died.
At this stage (the consultation) they often have a rollout plan, so it is trialled in a few stores or shops to see if people like it. In online shops or enterprises (like Facebook) this is usually an opt-in beta test. The company measures customer satisfaction, takes on board ideas, and then changes the plan. By the time the business proposal becomes a business plan and hits the board of directors for a second time, it’s a polished product.
The next stage of a successful business plan is to make the announcement. Usually this is a big press conference, especially with a bigger company. If it’s a little local company, it’ll probably have a series of interviews on local radio and TV, and maybe an article or two in the newspaper. If it’s a big company and a big change, thousands of pounds are spent on advertising the proposed changes. Then the changes are rolled out slowly, so that any problems missed in initial trials can be picked up and fixed.
This might sound like a lengthy process, but it is one every good business undergoes. Often there are several going at once. When your local Starbucks starts selling a pistachio Frappuccino that is the result of the process above. In big companies, they recognise that even a small change can massively change the revenue the company earns, the atmosphere of its store and the kind of customer it attracts. All these things need to be carefully measured. If the company just made arbitrary decisions based on some guys idea about how to make some money quickly, it’s likely it would die (and that person would be shot by the shareholders).
Today I got a message from Plato. It was about 10 lines long and seemed to suggest that the “work as manager” feature would be deleted. I have heard from people on the admin team that this isn’t the case, but that doesn’t even matter at this point. Let’s look at this.
NO business proposal
NO consultation
NO trial
NO beta testing
NO analysis/business plan
NO announcement
Even a kid studying business at school knows better. It’s a terrible way to mistreat your customers. What is worse, the owners (I’m not going to refer to them as admins any longer, they are the business OWNERS and you should remember this) have stopped all forms of communication between themselves and you. You can receive one way “emails” from Plato ingame, and that is it. Poorly worded, poorly explained messages from someone you can’t reply to is all we have to go by when it comes to the future of the game. The few bits of consultation that happen (erep surveys) are never published, so we have no idea what people really feel about the game. Unofficial surveys tend to show extreme dissatisfaction with communication and with the economy, media and politics modules.
It’s got to stop. I accept that eRep is a business, and I am one of the “investors” who keeps the company going by investing real money so the rest of you can play for free. But if it is a business it needs to act like one. No real business would survive with such hostile clientele. Relying on the community to make profit only works so far. I am very disappointed with the terrible level of communication between players and admins, the policy of ignoring anything that doesn’t directly generate revenue, and the ongoing unconsulted changes.
Imagine if Starbucks was just a coffee machine on two empty barrels in a warehouse. It wouldn’t get any visitors. The product would be the same, but the atmosphere, community, feeling, music- in other words the ambience - wouldn’t be there. People wouldn’t go. The military module is the coffee, but the ambience is provided by the community. You need to develop that aspect otherwise people won’t play. People aren’t going to join the game and then proceed to throw money at battles for no reason. You need to make them feel engaged with the game, and make the battles actually matter. For that you need a good ambience.
=> Reinstate the eRepublik official forums
=> Re-open the eRepublik insider newspaper
=> Give detailed and regular updates about future plans
=> Open consultation on any new changes, and listen to your customers
=> Develop the game ambience and people will join
Iain
Ps. If I was the owner of eRepublik.com I would have contacted the owners of eRep advanced and egov4you and offered them staff positions. As it is people will grow bored eventually and great tools are lost because of laziness/money saving. Those sites/ideas enrich the eRep experience and you should sponsor them not punish them for working for free.
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vote
2-3 years of market research? Are you serious, at that point the data collected in year one is worthless.
This is a recipe for R&D, not for small changes or relaunching of products, decorative changes, refreshment of brands and so on. Also it is about cost, when you have a small business as erep, adding cost means making the new product even more expensive, something they did in the past and hopefully have learned from, though it hasn't shown yet.
Support.. and hope not being perma banned
vote
totally agree
"MONEY TALKS BİTHES" this game is all about this motto.
great article.
The time scale isn't as important on a game with a few thousand users as it is in a company with a billion customers a year eDarkAngel, so the timescale isn't so extreme. But I'd expect a few months of work at least going into planning and consultation. I think a lot of the time they implement changes without even making plans or doing basic calculations- the economic crash at the end of V1 being the perfect example. Rather than fix the maths they just made a bot to buy stuff. It's the perfect example of why this game is very much a botched job.
V
Voted!
vote
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
GOLD-->EUROS
They just have ^^ in mind, no time to think in anything else
you miss the basic point, this game has arrived the stage of milking cow as hard as you can, so start your analysis based on that fact, and you will get the real direction this game is heading....
BR
Great One
Awesome!
They have an established product, millions of euros spent on this. They will barely break even (I actually think they'll lose quite a lot of money) closing it down now. It isn't going to close unless it has to close because everyone leaves. They need to start acting like a business if they want to actually make money.
@Ian
They have no way to create a self sustaining economical system when you have linear accumulation of stats and wealth. So the bot was their answer to it, however it does not solve the long term inherent problems to games like this it only takes them to another level and delays them but makes the cycle shorter.
The cycle being the moment accumulation has outpaced the economic model. Basically you need a certain amount of deficit for any economy to function, with accumulation in a linear game like this, the economy moves from deficit to overproduction eventually, in eRep that cycle is quite short now and the only way to manage it is to devalue the accumulated or expand the scale.
Devaluation has gone as far as it can, so the only thing left is the expansion of scale.
As for the rest they do not need months of testing and so, they just need 1-2 people that can collect and analyze statistical data properly. Obviously they do not have such people.
As "a kid studying business at school" I have long ago given up hope for owners of Erepublik acting like sane business men. They seem to want to capitalize on the nature of web-games which is gain-leverage-by-gold - principle. Unlike in Starbucks, web-games have a minority of paying customers who make running the business profitable, and the majority of players play either for free or with low payments. In Starbucks everyone pays for service.
Theoretically speaking it is somewhat a miracle that Erepublik is still alive considering that they have worsened their customer service, increased prices and decreased the customer value / spent euro/dollar. Their current business plan is most likely very short-term. I have not bougth the financial data of erelabs (they are there, about 4 euros each), but I assume that they are making heavy lossess. Thatäs why they are scraping together whatever they can get from paying customers before imminent bust. When bust comes, they hope to have as much capital as possible so they would lose as little own money as possible.
Can the direction be changed? I doubt so. They must be facing pretty bad debts and interests (remember the french guy investing 6 million as VENTURE CAPITAL?) by now, so sudden rise in revenue would not help them.
For as customers it is probably the best to stop feeding the furnace. It will make the end come sooner, but also decrease our own loss. Unless we think that being able to play this game is our value, then we should instead start spending irl money like madmen in hope of extended playtime.
About the cut-off services like insider and forums..it all implies decreases in workforce. They must've done cuts in their expenses, and those were not generating (seemingly) more revenue. It does, however, decrease future cash flows, but as they know that they will be out of business maybe in 1-2 years, they accept it.
Good article, but you probably knew this what I said already.
=> Reinstate the eRepublik official forums
=> Re-open the eRepublik insider newspaper
=> Give detailed and regular updates about future plans
=> Open consultation on any new changes, and listen to your customers
=> Develop the game ambience and people will join
awesome article as always , thank you
i disagree, erepublik is clearly in a downward slope position, admins only want to get best incoming benefits with the lowest investment
there is so much to say and so easy solution for some problematic, but i'm too lazy or to tired to talk about the same thing again and again
WHAT A GREAT ARTCILE..
long to read but deserves to readd...
voted...
signed..nowadays erep is like to make busines in ıraq.
This game is not milking cows it is mincing them for beef.
v
good job
=> Reinstate the eRepublik official forums
=> Re-open the eRepublik insider newspaper
=> Give detailed and regular updates about future plans
=> Open consultation on any new changes, and listen to your customers
=> Develop the game ambience and people will join
+1
someone just post this on one of my shout and we've got here kinda sort of answer ^^ it is about one year ago ..... one long year !!
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/alexis-answer-to-a-banned-cp-we-do-listen-we-just-don-t-always-do-what-you-want-1703529/2/20
Great Article!
my support!
Common Business Sense
Thank You
Romanians won't hear you. They know this stuff already. If they did not, they would not have put it in the first place.
my support !
voted
voted and subbed but do you think they care??
Thousands of articles have been published but nothing happened.
It's worthless. This game is in the wrong hands. It truly has the potencial, but than again... romanians.
v
They won't listen unless you hit them hard, have a strike for a day or two and see what happens? No one buy gold for X amount of days etc, when they realise they're not breaking even to have uptime on the servers, they will listen.
Great Article!
When they introduced work as manager, everyone complained about it. Now that they are supposedly removing it, everyone complains again. One constant thing in this game is that no matter what the change is, people first complain, then think about it and then continue playing the game adopting to the change.
to the point!
They don't want any advice from us. Only they do and we play..
http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Rules_Addendum
proposing addition of new in game territories/countries;
negative attitude toward any eRepublik official account (e.g. Plato) or any eRepublik employee;
negative attitude toward any action(s) or lack of action(s) from the part of the eRepublik team;
negative attitude toward any game mechanics update(s).
When they introduced work as manager, everyone complained about it. Now that they are supposedly removing it, everyone complains again.
_____
If they removed it right after introducing, no one would have complained. Now when everyone get used to it, such plans confuse everybody because players have bought/built dozens of firms which will become useless if working as manager will be removed.
I'm more Costa than Starbucks
v,we don't even know what changes they'll do.
Nice article !
When they introduced work as manager, everyone complained about it. Now that they are supposedly removing it, everyone complains again.
_____
If they removed it right after introducing, no one would have complained. Now when everyone get used to it, such plans confuse everybody because players have bought/built dozens of firms which will become useless if working as manager will be removed.
_____
True. After introducing the change, people had no other choice but to adapt. Now whole Military Units/Countries economies are based on the Work as manager feature and removing it would cause an economic mayhem that would last for mounths until things settle and people develop new strategies to get accustomed to the changes.
Romper, people complained because the change affected their investment in the game. When WAM was introduced we could only heal 300 health a day. So I invested over 500g into rubber and deer and worked 30 times. Then they made it so you couldn't make a profit hiring people in those businesses. My investment was worthless except to produce 30% more goods. So now I invest ~1m currency in land+Q4 raw materials companies, and they threaten to remove it. So my investment is lost. This cycle is years old, and every time they change it they make all my hard work worthless.
That is why people complain. It's easy enough if you have millions of euros IRL to spend, but most of us aren't in that situation, or at least aren't willing to spend that much.
Romper:
What you say is not true though, is it? The number of players have been constantly dropping for several years now. Meanwhile this game has gotten several key features removed, the competition from other developers has increased severely.
Today you can get a LOT of game for the kind of money we're supposed to be spending on buying gold every month. I'm not expecting you to agree with Iain, as the two of you obviously differ in how you value eRepublik as a gaming experience, but certainly you can not ignore the fact that the current business model (i.e. game version) has resulted in a major loss of customers. Both paying and non-paying.
to the point!
Ian is right Romper. They should listen to what customers say.
Great article
Great article written with common sense.
Who cares about people on an Internet company ?
You are just an IP (or few more) address.
An IP address and a fair amount of money.
For as many of these ideas that are great, we all know the eRep admins and eRep's major investor think they know better than the rest of the world how to market this game. Through all the changes and their inactions, they have destroyed a great community. They took a game that worked 99% of the time and was simple enough to learn that new players thought they had a chance and destroyed it. V2's Beta taught them nothing. They did NOT listen when 99% of the testers said "This is full of bugs and inferior".
They pushed it into place and didnt even thank the testers for their time. Then they started losing people by the hundreds each day. Eventually it hit a critically low point and so they reverted a most of the broken features but left the other only partially functional aspects in play. More people quit, even major baby booms couldnt keep up with the atrophy. Nations across the world decided they had enough and quit fighting in disapprovial of eRep's management. This caused a panic for eRep and its head Alexis Bonte. To combat world peace the Admins tossed out new missions that required fighting. It failed to work fully. Yes war returned but many people quit in disgust again because the Admins didnt listen.
I could go on and on but the point is Alexis Bonte, CEO of eRep labs (and holder of a 2mil euro debt) wont change this game, wont make it what it once was. They closed the forums so they could erase the last place people could complain and make them look bad. They wont re-open that. They wont bring back the insider because it could be viewed by game reviewers with out an account. This game will NOT change, its owners are content to run it into the ground so long as a hand full of people buy game rules immunity and a ton of gold.
True, true and more true.
You couldn't be righter.
The admins rely on players commitments (addictions) and real life nationalism in order to generate revenue. They dont see the benefits or doing those proceudures and porbably see it as a waste of time hence there Machiavellian stance. Erepublik isnt a game, its a trap, it used to be a game with potential but the admins destroyed it and attempted to cut off in-game player communication through their complication of the media module (categories, no-publishing abroad, no adds etc..) its all an effort to keep us quiet and continue making erepublik a source of income. Most admins in this game probably do this as a second job for a few extra pennies and all the updates have been designed into doing such a thing. They know our requests are demanding such as Civil war mods, improved and diverse political mods, improved geography and resources and further communication, all of which cost the admins time and hence Money. They dont care about us, to them we are just the money plant at the end of the day...
Excellent article as usual,
Don't listen to Romper, he fails to see that the game is designed to suck his credit card dry.
voted
Super Vote & sub.......
v327 s2984
http://www.erepublik.com/en/newspaper/arena-bull-265744/1
MM medal please sub mine too
You need to make them feel engaged with the game, and make the battles actually matter. x2
v
v+s
True that, voted.
v
If you were owner of erepublik.com , this game would be way way better than what it is now
no doubt in that
Good article
nice
subscription number 3000!!!!!! I deserve a hug!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
great article, indeed this are the bases for any enterprise to achieve success, listen to your costumers!
damm you plato
V
minz says : "CHANGE is GOLD"
=> Reinstate the eRepublik official forums
=> Re-open the eRepublik insider newspaper
=> Give detailed and regular updates about future plans
=> Open consultation on any new changes, and listen to your customers
=> Develop the game ambience and people will join
everlasting respect ! Iain is of the few thinking people around here ! Vote !
p.s. erep staff should offer him a job...
eRep is one line in a list of their investment projects. They are uninterested in the detail.
Make money? Great. Lose money? Fine, offset against other profit.
There is no interest in the players feedback, or the product spec, or the team skillset.
Never has been, never will be.
But hey, we're all still here, arent we? 'nuff said.
[ Father, I'm a recovering eRep addict. It's been more than 18mnths since my last CC transaction...]
Voted!
Voted with a lot of Respect
BIG VOTE!!!
they should learn "customer oriented" phrase
Voted!
voted!!
@catbea
you miss the basic point, this game has arrived the stage of milking cow as hard as you can, so start your analysis based on that fact, and you will get the real direction this game is heading.... x2
BBBBOTED!
Great article! A well structured and pertinent analysis of the game. I really hate the non-feedback from the game admins. They should already know that this game isn't going far if it keeps walking the road in this direction.
I dont agree with the article, big companies are big normally because of the ideas of 1 guy. Like facebook, microsoft, apple etc..
I think erepublik is getting more interesting with more thing to do and I like all the updates that occur. Make me feel that the game is alive and developing. It develops faster than any other game I have seen.
I only play for 9 months but I like the game.
People are afraid of change, that is the human nature. Often I listen to people crying to go back to version 1 of erepublik. But is because of brave people like the erepublik team that humanity evolves and discovers new things and make life more fun.
Anyway voted the article.
For sure one of the best articles/analysis I've read in years and I'm not only referring to in game articles but to RL also! Just fabulous; I couldn't have said it better. I am one of those who plays for free but it already had crossed my mind to pay some and upgrade a bit and help develop the community. After that (kind of) announcement from Plato (who is the guy? Probably some bot) etc. I am most sure that I WILL NOT spend a penny here. What will I get in return? Nothing I guess..
vote
First, glad I just came back and saw this article.
@Romper
You need therapy preferably from a professional. (It probably will cost less than your eRep spendings)
People keep playing this game because
a - They spent (you read wasted) time here
b - This is a terrible coffee but competitors offer mud instead.
@eDarkAngel
Well, if you fast rewind a persistant browser game without lack of newcomers and provide such economic model solely relying on war, it becomes inevitable to use artifical measures to stabilize game.
"Romper, people complained because the change affected their investment in the game. When WAM was introduced we could only heal 300 health a day. So I invested over 500g into rubber and deer and worked 30 times. Then they made it so you couldn't make a profit hiring people in those businesses. My investment was worthless except to produce 30% more goods. So now I invest ~1m currency in land+Q4 raw materials companies, and they threaten to remove it. So my investment is lost. This cycle is years old, and every time they change it they make all my hard work worthless"
Maybe you should just stop investing in something you know is going to made worthless by a major change a few months down the line. If there is one sure thing in erep it is that the admins will fuck your shit up on a regular basis. You're not much of an "Economist" in the erep sense of the word if you've invested a lot in something so liable to changes as this game. These changes that have required people to invest have actually made money for them, so they don't care.
The game is shit, a million of these articles will never change that. No matter the change, people will carry on playing(you included) and in a few days time this article will be forgotten about just like every other article like it. The people running this game are actually very clever that they were ever able to get any of us to part with rl money for this piece of shit.
totally agree.. really good article.
Congratu-effing-lations ... You win an internet for being right o/!
decline stage,second option
http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/product/lifecycle/
although i would love to see a third option
just sell the damn thing
@Romper
People just dont like when rules are changed during game... especially when they had buisness plans what to do with gold, investition for 3month+, and admins fu!@#ed them in !@#$... but it isn't your problem at all:P
I like how the forum link is still at the buttom of every page, yet the forum is now completely removed - not even just having some technical problems
Also completely agree - as a paying customer, I too am extremely dissatisfied with the business model. The problem is all the erepublik clones and spinoffs are WAY WORSE (mostly because they are developed for free by people doing it in their sparetime), so there is no real competition.
indeed !
agreed!
v
voted..
agree with you ian..
\/
da da da!
"and I am one of the “investors” who keeps the company going by investing real money so the rest of you can play for free."
ahahahahahahahah