Congress Elections - A Case In Point
Gnilraps
Children's Story (Mandatory listening)
Day 2551 of the New World
14 November, 2014
A Case In Point
Yesterday I published my thesis that the primary reason for the demise of eRepublik has been the synergy between Plato’s oversimplification of the game and his subsequent insistence on Plato himself becoming the primary storyline. Basically, my point was that as Plato removed social complexity from the game, he replaced it with non-sequitur click-generating pablum like Batzookas, “Ball Kicker” awards, and Cupid. Among the examples I gave of Plato’s devastating game-killers was his utter ruination of the Congressional election process. Today I’d like to offer some detail (especially for newer players who never experienced this game in its better days) on the former congressional election cycle as a case in point.
On September 25 2012, Plato introduced a totally new method for citizens to elect congressmen. Starting with that month’s election, a citizen would vote for a political Party, thus casting a ballot for the entire slate of candidates offered by that Party. The fact that this system is able to be described in a single sentence goes a long way to describe how boring and puerile the whole thing has become.
But it was not always that way.
The former congressional system was not at all complicated, but it was complex enough that newer players had to be educated by experienced players. This, of course, led to many opportunities to publish interesting newspaper articles, develop intricate communication networks both in game and meta, and it extended the length of time Party leaders had to attend to Congressional elections.
In a top-5 Party, the Party President (who would have been freshly elected on the 15th) had to get immediately organized. 9 days was often barely enough to put everything into place, and the excitement and activity would begin to build. Election day itself was an incredible flurry of activity which would climax during the final 15 minutes before reset where a single vote or two could spell the difference between a successful cycle or a devastating loss.
In the old system, a congressional candidate ran for his Party from a particular region. This meant, for instance, that as many as 5 candidates would be running for election in each region held by the country. For eUSA, there were usually 50 congressional races, plus or minus occupied vassal states.
So the Party leadership had to elicit candidates through a vetting process. This led to enormous activity, community building, mentorship, and gave parties awesome mechanisms for identifying future leadership among its ranks. But it was rarely possible for any Party to find 50 top notch candidates, so the use of “blockers” was standard practice.
A blocker was a “candidate” who was not actually running for election. What the Blocker was doing, however, was just as important. He was holding that Party’s place in his designated region so that infiltrators from enemy nations would not be able to place their operatives into Congress. Blockers had to be trusted and known members (it often gave older players who had reduced their game activity a meaningful reason to hang around) who could, if needed, be converted into actual candidates on the 25th. This would happen in cases where one of the Parties had mistakenly allowed an enemy operative onto their ballot, or sometimes when a blocker was close enough and the Party leadership chose to snipe him in with a splash of last minute voters in order to gain an extra seat.
As you can imagine the entire blocker system created tons of activity and numerous story lines developed in newspapers in the days following elections. But the blocker process did not generate the most game activity, far more activity was generated by the actual candidates themselves.
If you really wanted to run for congress, you often started your campaign 6 weeks in advance. After the Party President was elected on the 15th, you would try to get a Party job. There were plenty of good jobs in a top 5 Party (because there were so many more reasons for game activity, Parties needed people to do stuff.) Through the course of a month, you proved yourself reliable, active, and pro-Party. Then, a month later, after Party President elections again had passed and you had at least a month of activity under your belt, you would apply with the Political Director of the Party. This was a different process in each Party, but it always involved multiple people who would develop google docs and form and all kinds of cool stuff.
Usually by the 22nd of the month, the Party had decided who its candidates would be and was scanning for appropriate blockers. The Party then had to decide which candidates to put into which regions. This gave rise to smoky back-room deal-making between top 5 Party leadership. It also led to backstabbing and betrayal, all of which was absolutely fantastic for game activity, newspaper publishing, and IRC gossip. This game was literally buzzing with activity from the 22nd onward.
The reason it was such an interesting and important responsibility for the Party President to determine not only who would be the candidates but also which regions they would run from is because of one extremely important election dynamic. This leads our discussion in the single most activity-generating dynamic of the entire Congressional election process, voting.
In order to vote, a citizen had to determine which candidate he wanted to vote for, then move to the region from which that candidate was running so that he could cast his vote. This gave rise to the most exciting election dynamic of all – mobile voting.
All month long a top 5 Party was gathering a list of people who would be willing to “mobile vote”. Mobile voters were people who were willing to let Party leadership instruct them as to which candidate to vote for (and of course where). During my days with the Federalist Party, there were election cycles where we had upwards of 60 distinct individuals who had signed up for mobile voting. That gave us an enormous tool in dictating which races we wanted to formally support with actual votes. It also meant that we had to be available during the entire 24 hour election day so that we could direct our votes where they were needed most.
Special IRC rooms were dedicated to directing mobile voters. Infiltrators from other Parties would of course attempt to eavesdrop in those rooms… it was great. And throughout the day the vote tallies would begin to accumulate. Tracking 50 races (instead of today’s 1) was a phenomenally exciting task, one that rewarded parties who could device tools to make it easier. I still have excel spreadsheets with extensive web queries and dozens of pages dedicated to providing up-to-the second race data for our Party. If your Party didn’t have such tools, you were at a disadvantage for sure. All of this, of course, generated even more activity and… well you get the point.
And I have yet to mention sniping. Oh, how I pity newer players to eRepublik who never enjoyed the adrenaline rush that was the final hour of a Congressional election day. I would usually take a two-hour nap, then wake up for the final hour of chaos and fun.
Snipers had to be identified prior to election day, and the number of snipers a Party had was always a closely guarded secret. This was where it was especially useful to have an inside informant in the other Party’s IRC warroom. In the Federalist Party, we usually averaged about 25-30 snipers during my months of Presidency and leadership. This meant that as the final 15 minutes of the day approached, we would begin to identify how to best spend those 25 final votes in order to secure as many seats as possible. Of course the other 4 parties were doing the same (well, the better ones were). Spend too few votes on a race, lose by 1, and you had wasted those votes. Spend too many and again you may have cost yourself a win elsewhere. It was a Party President’s peak moment. With 5 or 6 minutes to go, orders would be privately given to snipers, and then in the final 2 minutes the votes would go out. Being in a sniping room on an election day was definitely my #1 favorite thing about eRepublik. Too bad it’s gone.
(Take a look at a newspaper article I published on the evening of a particularly exciting election day – a day I will have to write about in a separate article some day soon. You can still smell the tension and drama: 16 Shells Late Breaking Election Coverage) My God I loved the old game.
All of this and I have not even mentioned all of the activity generated by the candidates themselves as they would publish articles elucidating their “platform” (not that it always amounted to much, but sometimes those articles were fantastically entertaining. Here is one of the better ones.) I also have not mentioned the FEC where the White House would attempt to have its say in the Congressional elections – again more activity. Add in drama surrounding multi votes, PTO candidates, last-minute region losses/gains (in fact, in one election Ajay Bruno – America’s worst-ever excuse for a citizen – was denied a seat in congress because we intentionally gave away his region by losing it in battle prior to reset… glory days indeed.)
I hope my younger readers will see this and understand why so many of us old bastards keep whining about the good old days. More than that, I hope Plato himself will read this and suddenly wake up from his asinine delirium and STOP RUINING THIS GAME. It can likely still be saved… there could be a renaissance… but the game in its current state is not worth saving. Mashing a red FIGHT button is FUNLESS.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking
Comments
PLATO - ONLY YOU CAN SAVE THIS GAME
who is Plato, are you talking about Pinokkio, must be him, cause his nose keeps on growing and growing 😉
why would you want that? It was shitty then too, ya know.
Voted
Vote for Paulie in Minnesota!
(What state did you run in?)
This is the biggest mistake eRep has ever made imho.
I wish it was this way again.
I totally agree. My heartrate is up just remembering these days.
Agreed
You were a hell of a candidate many times rs... almost unbeatable.
Sniping was my favorite though. There were even a few months I drove to the airport at 2:30am to use their free wifi for that last minute rush. (Where I lived at the time the service was shut off at midnight)
I have such clear memories of working IRC all day, catching a quick nap, logging on and proudly seeing all this activity that had been going on while I was sleeping.
Is this happening anywhere anymore?
And if it were, wouldn't you think about inviting a friend or two to play again?
except that one time where erep ate my vote for sunday and everyone thought I failed to vote on purpose and shee lost... but good times
Then there was that time eRep ate my entire congressional slate. That sucked badly. I think it was October 2012
Was that the time I lost to Vlad Alexei, MR? That was great month. His inbox was lit up.
oh and then there was that time when greene sniped me into congress as a blocker just cause and didn't tell me he was going to.
the game political module was great when Ajay was the bad guy
now it's just boring
This is too true. The old system gave our enemies legitimate means of being pains in our asses. THIS IS GOOD FOR THE GAME!
... it realy was, he had fun back then
We used parallel social networks and the meta game was revived during that period, with both sides gathering their acholits, afterwards it lose its fun, each side had a purpose and each side was united and being this politics, social media was a must!
I personally loved the radio shows and hated the mass maillings but was involved, now this suuuuuucks.
I miss Congressional elections. Running elections was the best part of the game in my opinion. It definitely got exciting.
unbelievable stupidity that they changed it.
I wasn't around in those days but it's always sounded a much more preferable system and one which breeds activity and community.
Damn good days, 20 hour IRC stints directing votes like a beast, shady back handers here and there to people, the baw when you got caught back handing, you would have enjoyed it Chaz.
My first ever Congress Medal was won while serving a temp ban... eUK was a vastly different place!
I loved it. campaigning in a single region, writing to every citizen in that region and asking friends to move to that one to vote.. the hot verbal sparring with a top opponent.. the big spreadsheet listing candidates, and the Party Presidents scrambling for "blockers" so there'd be no empty slots for a PTO'er to slip in.
huge "WTF Moment" in Congress election history:
the time Ajay got on the ballot in a US-held region of Spain. the eUS started a Resistance War there and fought for Spain to remove that US region just in time to have it not on the ballot. it was a huge Anti-Takeover (ATO) mobilization and victory for the US.
"vote buying" was actually a hotly contested moral issue, not standard operating procedure as it is today.
a player could find more good media than they could keep up with during the Congress election cycle.
oh, and... buying the Ads which appeared where the Shout feed is now.
big gold sink for Plato, I'm surprised he got rid of it.
I think someone actually hacked the citizen ads.
back then just about everything in the game was being hacked at one time or another. tightening up that bit of security may be the only thing Plato has done right.
that was no hack, dill, that was one EPIC pornquit. RIP CrowdedHouse.
your boyfriend fluffy admitted to having to buy gold to out-tank me. I threw everything I had to flip one of the battles in favor of the US 😉
and it didn't work, and you lost. Because that's what you do.
Cool story. You rule all of a Romanian browser game! Good for you! Don't you have a golden corral to go put out of business?
Seems that you spent a very large portion of your life trying to rule a Romanian browser game. First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Votes were never 'bought'! They were 'incentive's'!
🙁
Good old days when you had the chance of getting sniped when you had 150+ votes. Good old days when there was a PTO threat.
Sorry but time dosen't allow me to do more than skim. Thanks for putting this up though, what I did read was spot on.
For starters you had to be known, both in the party and at large. Then you had to campaign your ass off or you might as well stay at home. If your party was serious about running you they'd put you in a state they thought you could win. (Florida [the fortress state] was Pheifferville and Georgia had resident Congressman Largo. lol) My state was Nevada. I won the first time outta the chute. I actually had people shouting to ask people to move and vote for me at reset. 😃
Nowadays you just have to affix your lips to the PP posterior.
erep this days
www.martybucella.com/A143.gif
All agree😛 once EVERY part of the game included real time strategy.
They removed it almost everywhere.
Good article, voted with big pleasure!
Those were fun days. 6th parties could get seats by guaranteeing a certain number of votes in certain regions. It brought strategy to the political module of this "social strategy"game. There is no strategy in Congress elections now and it sucks.
Under this new system, I've been elected to Congress 3 times now. I reckon that alone proves Gnilraps' point soundly enough.
Sniping people you disliked was a lot of fun. Occasionally we would snipe in someone from another party just to keep out some derp instead of trying to get another seat for our party.
о7
Oh wow, talk about nostalgia. It was totally worth staying up late to watch what would happen during those days. I miss that time.
\o/
even reading it made me excited :>
Man, I remember running under the original process. It was so satisfying to go to bed losing in a state, then wake up finding out your party helped you snipe the win.
Good times.
My highest voted article of all time, and the only one to ever make it into the International Top 10, was a semi-roleplayed account of the February Election of 2011. That one where we were trying to stave off iNCi. It's still one of my proudest writing accomplishments, and reading your article only brings back the nostalgia of that night.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/xcix-an-account-of-the-february-election-of-2011-or-election-day--1692776/1/20
You are 100%: engagement with elections was *the* driving force of meta involvement in the game. Organizing sniper teams, figuring out which candidates to take down and which to let lose, all of the planning and counter-planning that went on made people invested. And now, every month, we get our party platter and vote the lines.
In one foul swoop, it wasn't about the player anymore. And that has been the overriding theme of the changes.
It isn't about the player anymore.
There was a time when the wealthiest candidates didn't win every time, when wealth was only one factor on the battlefield. A time when party association didn't always matter, but who would be the right congressman for the right state. Gradually, we have seen this shift away from Plato treating us as individuals to treating us as whole stock to be used.
But the heart of the game was always on the individual. It was always supposed to be about us: the dream to be CP, the desire to own an economic empire, the will of a solidly working party to dominate the national scene. All of that IS ONLY POSSIBLE through the former model of this game.
The administrators have taken away what once made their game fun and engaging to play. They have sold out their heart in order to just make a cheap buck while the ship sinks. We are living in the shadow of our former joys. And there's nothing we can really do to change it.
I still remember sticking you in Virginia and tell you to campaign with every fiber of your Halfling being.
Good times...
I remember Florida... 😃
250 votes for Pfeiffer every time. It was amazing how all them citizens came to life every month on the 25th just to vote for him. :gasp:
halfie 4 congress again
if the Feds don't recognize your ability, I do. 😘