The Economist ~ Community management 101

Day 2,315, 13:10 • Published in Poland United Kingdom • by Spite313



Dear friends,


In the theme of ways to improve the game, today I want to talk about community management. In any MMO game community management is often the secret ingredient that decides whether a game is considered to be good or bad. Fast, clear and honest admin response is essential (especially for major problems) in keeping the community happy. On the other hand, poor slow and dismissive responses from the game owners tends to result in dissatisfaction and an unhappy community.


Now you don’t need to have a degree in business management to see which category eRep currently falls into. Despite having several people whose whole job is community management, there is almost no actual interaction between players and the admin team. Most of you, no matter how high you rise, will never speak to an admin. A lucky few might get a senior mod (3 star mod) who can talk to them on your behalf. There are a few simple but key things the admins need to do if they want to reverse this trend.



1. Ban the admins from playing the game. This has been a problem for me for years now- there’s nothing more annoying than seeing someone who is supposed to be a neutral game manager hitting against your country. There are dozens of MMOs out there, which are available for admins to play. It shouldn’t be the case that admins actively participate in the game. It’s kind of like the referee intercepting the ball in a football match and scoring a goal. Of course in football, nobody would recognise that goal as legitimate. However the game managers do recognise the billions of damage done by their employees.


2. Re-establish points of contact with the community. When I first became CP almost four years ago the admins contacted me ingame and invited me to join a CP room to talk to them. From the quick poll I just did in our alliance, nobody gets invited to such a room any more. The only way to contact the admins is if you either use a ticket (lol) or if you happen to know a senior mod or want to pester them through facebook. Now a room like that with alliance leaders and CPs would allow people to bring issues to the team quickly and efficiently. The point of community managers is to be a bridge between the developers and the community leaders, and that is what they should be doing.


3. End cronyism in the ticket system. I have to admit several times in my game history when I’ve had a problem with the game I’ve contacted an admin directly without using the ticket system to resolve the issue- usually on extremely important national issues rather than my own problems. However this is patently unfair. Just because a certain admin is friends with you, shouldn’t mean you get preferential or faster treatment than any other elected official. This ties in with the previous point, in that an official “out-game” means of contacting Community Managers would prevent the need for using personal friendships to resolve issues.





4. Have on call admins. Sounds ridiculous? eRep has over 40 staff now, and comparable games have twenty four hour customer service. Now I’m not saying people shouldn’t have lives, but I don’t always work social hours and there’s no reason there shouldn’t be skeleton staff in the office at weekends and holidays- not to mention evenings. It’s terrible if something big happens on a friday evening and you have to wait til Monday to have any hope of it being fixed. If it’s something like a million multi accounts rigging an election, you might as well give up because once things are done (battles and elections mainly) they won’t be undone.


5. Finally, use “latest updates” as an official communication device for the admin team. At the moment it’s just used for actual game changes, but it would be good if significant issues that affected gameplay (bugs and so on) were put there too. We don’t just want you to fix things, we want you to tell us that you listened and fixed them. It might not sound like much but it makes a big difference to how people feel about the game. It might be nice if you put it in an article and stickied it to the main page too, but I guess eRep Insider is gone for good.



eRepublik is unique in that it’s recruitment model is almost entirely driven by players. Numbers bring power, and unlike other games where players recruit people to their team/guild from the game itself, in eRep they are required to recruit from IRL people who are not yet playing. In a way it is clever, because the game is supposedly self perpetuating. However this only works if the game’s citizens and admins work together- you get the free labour and we get the opportunity to feedback and request help.


Rebuilding the communication between admins and players that existed in Beta and early V1 is essential if the game itself is going to progress. To be honest it shouldn’t be that hard, since the admin team has grown considerably, yet the number of players hasn’t. Four of the changes suggested here cost no money at all. The last one is good business sense. I really don’t see why these things aren’t already in place, but hopefully they will be one day.



Iain