An Old Soldier never dies...but eRep fades away. Before we go, some thoughts.
Candor
I think we're about out of time.
Maybe 20 of you will read the following, and that’s fine. I have a few reflections on the last 5 years of “playing” eRep I’d like to get out. And in advance, no I’m not “quitting”. But it does seem to me that this game MAY be seeing its last days. I may wake up some time in the next year and you all aren't “here” anymore. The game is off, the Admins let go, the servers sold, the doors locked.
This article is a blur of real life and game thoughts.
eRepublik is a business in real life. A product is produced and sold. You are the buyers. Recently I've argued that they've been “selling” to the wrong audience, that you yourselves should be part of the product, rather than the customers or buyers. As an audience, your market value likely exceeds your consumption value. Why the folks at eRep never sold ad space like every other community medium is beyond me. But they didn't, so I move on.
Each of us gets something out of participating in this community. There’s no way I can recall everyone I've played with or been friends with over the past 5 years. Nor will I try to recall every great moment I’ve had in this game, or the things that I’ve done.
I WILL say that most of the things I’ve “done”, things that would be “measurable”, happened behind the scenes. The further behind the scenes the better. Out in front, in public, I’ve attempted to add where I see national weakness, and slow or deter where I’ve seen the negative.
One more recent, relatively speaking, activity that I will confirm for the record here and now, though without much detail. Colin, Max and I ran a VERY closed Op as part of our ATO activities a couple of years ago. An operation which took many months to plan, and saw much of our planning come to fruition. I’d say from start to close the operation was almost a year long. I could list three very measurable results here and now, but I won’t. These things go to the grave.
In a closed Op, there are very serious “Need To Know” considerations. I will say that the DCIA was aware and briefed as needed, and that the DCIA may or may not have found it necessary to expand that NTK circle. That’s outside my NTK. Directly, we only briefed in two sitting Presidents. It was that deep.
My thanks go out to that DCIA for tightly controlling that circle and that operational knowledge. That DCIA has a lot of character. That Op to this day never leaked, as far as I know. And had it, it wouldn’t have produced the results it did. A take away lesson, for those who care to take away anything I share: Not everything one does needs kudos or ribbons. Some things provide an inner satisfaction that feels even better.
I also want to say that regardless of anyone’s personal feelings wrt Max and Colin, they’re also two people who have always played with a big-picture view of the eWorld and our communities place in it. They loved our community as an organism.
Josh Whitehead ran the most fun radio program to listen to, though I never heard everyone's to be fair. Josh was a crack up. And here I was, for fun and all.
Next, I want to mention a couple of people who are quite different people but also have had quite a lot to do with shaping our community, and do so still.
Rainy Sunday. A person I’ve always trusted to the core. And you know why? She has a lot of character too. Regardless of what you see overtly, she’s a person who has always played an ethical game with the best long term interests of the community at heart. Whether or not she agrees with a person, to my knowledge no one has ever accused her of spilling any secrets shared in confidence. Rainy is a good person.
Pfieffer. He’d be the first to admit he can be an asshole. But he plays for this team, and at times in his career he’s played nearly 24/7. His influence has waned and ebbed over the years, heck his role model was once Cromstar if I recall. So once even he didn’t see himself as the Top Dog. But if we want to say Pfieffer is now, or was once, Top Dog, we should recognize that via button pushing and politicking, he earned that spot. And so within the realm of eWorld, the guy deserves some respect. Thems one helluva a lot of hours and work he put in over the years. This game was a very important part of his life for years. I hope he takes away lessons from his time here and utilizes those skills in the real world to produce a better widget somewhere out there.
And the rest of us can take lessons from how he “won” the game of politics. The things we would have been willing to do to “win”, and maybe the things we wouldn’t have been willing to do. Or if “winning” even matters to us at all. And how DO we each define, “winning”, in a situationally specific context?
Pfieffer long ago won eRep, if there’s a personal “win” to be had politically. No one else fits my own definition to place in that same category.
Either way. Real life things worth thinking about.
I don’t want to make this a long list of names. Although everyone LIKES long lists of names. We all like to see our own name in lights, or those of others we know. But that would go on for hours. So sorry, my friends. Not being included today doesn’t make you unimportant in my personal game experience. Those of you who I love, loved, and trust, trusted over the years, you KNOW who you are. I hope.
I ramble today. Not writing this with any specific outline.
Some random thoughts:
iNCi: They were a significant happening. They died out on their own as a power. We handled that event…poorly, but we managed. Mostly we survived out of luck, since there was no over all long term strategy. It was always in flux, month to month, POTUS to POTUS.
S.E.E.S: If you know nothing about that happening, apologies. Those who were on the inside during its glory days know NOTHING had more effect on the game than S.E.E.S. during the time they were active. No “political party” before or since had the lifespan or the legend of events. If you were to compare it to the USWP in USWP glory days, you’d be entirely missing the point. SEES wasn’t a party, it was a movement, an idea. They PLAYED the game. The whole game. What shocked me in the long term was that no one else picked up on their lessons and ran with them. But I’d argue that today’s “Unified Command”, the effective control of the eUS by basically amiable T5’s today, is a direct result of SEES polar opposite premise of organized exclusivity. The rubber band effect.
Enough about SEES. But if the body politik has a life, SEES was it’s teen years. They were glorious.
Oblige: Oblige plays for our team. But Oblige also plays for Oblige more than most. And from my perspective, at times he’s been lacking in the character department. Not wholly lacking, but willing to do less than honorable things. Because of that, he lost my trust years ago. I never was active enough during the “Oblige Period” to come to understand him entirely, I’ll confess that much. But he’s unlike anyone I’ve ever met, even in real life. He’s a pretty private guy really, wrt real life. But my GUESS has always been that he has some eastern European background, though maybe not immediate. He just has an…unexplainable sense of right and wrong. It’s malleable, and it’s Oblige-centric except when it doesn’t matter to Oblige, then he does the right thing.
Apologies to Oblige for picking on him. If he hadn’t been POTUS a record number of times, he wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But since he has, he’s become institutional to eRep/Amurikan history. So if I’m writing historical thoughts, I can’t exactly leave him unmentioned. If you play politics, you invite commentary. So I don’t expect Oblige will take my thoughts too personally.
EVERYONE who contributed many, many hours over the years to any position in eUS government. Lots of thankless jobs. What would we been as a team without all that effort? I hope those people learned something about sacrifice and commitment. Service. Kudos to all the hundreds of you.
And few of you know this, its not a glory jerb, but the guys who've run the "bank" over the years. How many of you have thought much about how the money comes in or pays out? These guys have done it. Not Congress. A tiny group of peeps. Thank you guys.
Emmerik: Possibly one of the most artistically talented minds I’ve ever known, inside or outside eRepublik. I describe Emmerik-Speak as Urban Poetry. Very intelligent. And like many great minds, personally troubled in many ways. But no one else in this game in my experience can touch or did touch his level of artistry. I didn’t know Dio, maybe some would argue Dio met and exceeded Emerrik’s mind. I hope that guy finds his place in the world. I miss his work, I truly do. Prayers to Brian.
Cromstar: Technocrat extraordinaire. In a positive way.
All those old Libs: Claire and all the gay fellas: Lots of fun, maybe the best small community within the larger community that ever existed. Worth a mention from my perspective.
My NoS friends: Great bunch of people over the years. Nary a one a very serious player, all here for the community. The NoS were and continue to be the anti-thesis to a political movement. As a group, the cohesive element about being a NoS was fun and community. Brotherhood. The light, good-hearted kind. In our heyday, we participated in a very active way in various nefarious and mischievous activities. And they were glorious times.
Today, NoS is a living memorial. An old hometown that progress passed by. But it’s still home.
My very special friend the illustrious, glorious, super goat-herding Super Grand General Cyber Witch. I’m mentioning her specifically because she represents, to me, the eUS Military, and a whole lot of great friends over the years. Folks who enjoy/enjoyed a segment of the game I never got into, but respected THEIR interest. Some folks over the years have even tried to convince me THIS is a war game! Now I’ve played war games. I’ve participated in real life war games, at that. You could never convince me that eRep is a very GOOD war game, but I’ll defer to those vested in the module. I say eRep is a community that often focuses around international PEOPLE relationships which include a facet of a war game like function. Or something like that. But the folks who’ve made an eLife around the war module, I have so much respect for that community.
When the eUS and the eUS Military separated ways, that was a bad day for our community. And no one will ever convince me otherwise. Multiple independent militias has never worked well toward growing our community TOGETHER. It set us up as hundred “us and them” scenarios over the following years. It splits communities. It’s the opposite of community.
CW is a woman of character. Her word is her bond. And we are all as good as our word. Plus, she’s quite funny. And I’ve been here for fun.
Moving on.
Pizza The Hut. Or whatever he goes by now or in the past. AJ Bruno: The guy must have thick skin. But he’s a person. A person lacking a lot of character, certainly. Those of you who participated in throwing jabs though at the guy…and personal jabs at that…you’ve got room for personal growth as well. It was always interesting to watch. Sad, disturbing, train-wreckish. Sometimes the vitriol was scary, as a community. Like a riot, where individuals lose their personal sense of responsibility. It’s ok cuz EVERYONE’s doing it, right?
Beating AJ, as a community goal, was great. Beating AJ on the individual level was often quite horrific. Lord of The Flies stuff. Some of you need…something. A core sense of…hmmm. I’m just going to move on.
Omg this is getting too long.
The new Congressional Mod has always sucked. The way the T5’s have set up Primaries and worked TOGETHER in elections has sucked, and adds to our demise, honestly.
The eUS Forum: Kudo’s to all in that regard. Could it have been run with a kinder modulation? I never decided. I know I would have demanded it were I more involved it that aspect of the game. If that kinder moding would have helped or hindered the nation’s growth, participation and unity, I’ve never solidified an opinion, frankly. All I can say is that character matters, it’s all we ever really own and take with us to the grave. I have had many interesting conversations on that forum, and I thank those who have kept it running. We would definitely be a weaker community had we NOT had a national forum of some sort. A year or so ago I put my money where my convictions lay and contributed $50 to their upkeep. Those who can afford to give something and have spent as many hours as I have there should equally give something. Imho.
Gaylor😛
Miss that fishy/I think NSA employee/old man 😉
Good guy.
ANY PRESIDENT: The HOURS these people put in. Well, most of them, lol. We tend to think of POTUS as the ultimate "award" in eRep. But I'd think many of those folks would say the work wasn't worth the reward. It's a JOB that lasts all month long, 100+ hours a week. So thanks to those who did it. Admiration galore for those who did it well.
Alright screw it I’m gonna wrap it up with two final thoughts.
1) Character matters. And this community has given thousands of people the opportunity to measure and mold their own. To experiment and grow. To learn a lot about people. eRep has been a great community experiment. Sk yourself where you measured up. And ask yourself if you are 100% the same person for your time here, as you were coming in. How much did power mean to you? How much did kudos and recognition mean to you? How did you treat people?
I wasn’t perfect. But I grew, and I paid attention. My time was never truly wasted. I take away real life lessons.
2) Wasn’t it a trip to meet people from all over the real world? Where else in our personal, real lives, do we do that? We’re all just people, in the end. To my Albanian friends, and all the rest, man it was good getting to know you all.
Ok forget it that’s it for now. Maybe this is all I’ll ever share about this kind of thing actually. Real life, and eRep blurred.
eRep should never be looked back upon as a time suck/waste of a period in our lives. It most certainly wasn't, to those who invested lots of time. It’s been a community, an international community, simply given a collective scenario for focus.
Think about what each of us personally can take away from our time here. And don’t think anything of it if you weren't mentioned by name. I was trying to touch on players who I thought had a lot of impact on a grand scale, not friends alone. I barely touched on friends at all, except where the two roles crossed. In my rushed writing without edits or format, btw.
Love you bunches-
Candor
_________________________________________________________________________________
ADDITIONS
_________________________________________________________________________________
CHICKENGUYS/Walter Bishop:
There are a few folks who probably SHOULD be included, forces of nature or influence. I'm willing to give my perspective on them as people mention them.
Chickensguys: You're legend in certain quarters. Primarily, I've found your over-all game play as entertaining, but not "driving" in any significant way. What I might take away wrt you is that through persistence you found your way into the main stream, if always mostly controversial. Remember the days when no one wanted you on the eForums? The right people eventually found you entertaining enough to get past those opinions and let you play in the sandbox. If for entertainment, mostly.
Btw, was the incoherence when you started playing a total character act? I honestly argued you were probably retarded to many at the time and that we ought to have more tolerance. I don't think you recovered from being retarded, so you never were. So was that just an act?? But I've always liked you 🙂
_________________________________________________________________________________
Ghost of Tom Joa😛
A good guy, an ethical guy, a guy interested in learning. An independent mind. Not a person to be found who's known this guy who has found any reason to dislike this guy, I expect. My friend!
Comments
Well Candor you never mentioned me. 😞
I agree the game is dying quicker than I expect. Soon there will be nothingness, and there will be not a soul to shed a tear. But my memories will live on, they will live on in my mind just as they will live in yours. In this respect, while the game may die it will never die within us. The ambitions,the happiness,the sadness,the craziness, the luz, the horror, it was not all in vain. It taught us something, whether we accept it or not.
I gave you an in-article spot/reply 😉
Now I'm in the article.
It has been a a living journey, fare thee well.
Another person of admirable character right here 🙂
Thank you, and right backatcha!
btw: I completely agree with you, and always have, about the no-ads business model. It especially did not make sense about 3-4 years ago, at the height of game popularity when this game had an audience of thousands of 18-30 y/o males across the mostly the US, UK, EU and emerging Asia, the, the most valuable demographic for advertising there is. With advertising capital instead of the reliance on gold beasts, everything would fundamentally been different, perhaps much better.
S.E.E.S. was the force that finally convinced me to stop derping around with the 4chan raid and see what this madness was all about.
Unfortunately, it's all been pretty much downhill from there.
It never got better, 100% agreed.
You know, when you've got something to say, Candor, it always makes for a good read.
Always.
As to the state of the game itself, I remember when there was a lot of fun to be had here, and looking back, I regret quitting for as long as I did only to come back later and see things as struggling figments of their former selves. Honestly, I still think there's a lot of fun to be had here, but I feel like the resources and manpower, the glue we once had to build these communities, are no longer to be found in the quantities we'd like, and things are slowly slipping away and changing. I actually don't think the game itself will be dying soon, but I think we are at the twilight of this phase, and I fear that we won't be able to hold together the monolithic community structure that thrived so long ago for much longer. There's no doubt we're off peak and going downhill. A lot of us left are just hanging on for the memories and maybe a faint hope that there will be another chance to rekindle the fire.
Financially, I just don't see it making it another year without big changes. But it was glorious. And I'll be here till the end all the same.
Thanks for sharing, Candor.
Very nice article with some very good points. Respect sir
I had a blast reading it! I was a newbie back then but you took me back to some good old memories.
First of all there is not much of reason to worry about game closing down in the near future at bare minimum,erep surely will last till end of 2017(admins already paid for site maintance till 2017)
The bigger question will this game still around in 2018?
Although seeing much lesser games which cloned erepublik with barely any player playing them and they are still around I confidently say erep will last.
Not to mention according to business date while players say here V1 was the best,business wise it was very bad for admins and couldnt be maintened any further,although V2 also couldnt produce any result. But this new version saw extreme ammount of profit compored to past.
Thats why I didnt hesitate join because I still see the future of this game.
As for ads,they are annoying and slows down any site,besides most of player would use adblock anyway,there isnt much profit to be had selling ads. So I think its great that admins dont use them
I hope you are right and I am wrong. As to ad profiteering, while annoying to players, agreed, a small price to pay for de-emphasising the money=success deal they've set up now. Technologically, ads built in couldn't BE blocked, no more than I could block the articles module. And more money has been spent on toilet paper by ad companies than has been EARNED by eRep since it's inception. By far. By very, very far.
yeah, death will come soon. I stopped buying gold....but I still come here a couple times a day. I don't think I will be able to quit until the game quits me.
Awesome article.
well i think if admin wanna stopping this game and if he wanna reset or quit this game he or she would have a lots of persons whom call for police
it because people buy gold and take them on their account, so their account has price if he quit the game or stop it, so it mean he steal the accounts which they had price
so he will find a lots of problem.
sorry my English isn't good enough
voted
glad to have played at some point when you also were
Too Long; DID Read.
Thank you for writing this. It's been fun, no matter how long it lasts. I plan on being here til the end.
Over the years I have seen players, both old and new, offer suggestions to revive this game. But Admins, in their infinite wisdom, ignored them. I only stick around for the community now. The game is bleeding out, and a transfusion, at this late date, may not revive it. I will probably stick around until they put it in the ground.
I will also be around, until its flat on ground.
good read, thanks
massive article
o7
Ajay did, and almost certainly still does, some terrible things to people. He is obviously mentally ill, and ordinarily that would be a mitigating factor, but he is relentlessly, consciously malicious. Treating people like that with obvious contempt is a means of reinforcing collective values: you don't stalk people, bully them, lie, cheat, attack their children and spouses, their parenting, their race, their gender, their politics, there physical appearance, their income, their very personhood, as Aja did every day in his glory period, without suffering some severe sanctions. It's also a way of establishing, firmly, in the collective mind of the community that this person is so far beyond the pale that he does not need or deserve to be treated with courtesy or consideration. And it worke😛 Ajay is now a pariah, as he ought to be. You are way off base with your handwringing over how he's been treated. He earned every barb thrown his way, and then some. In fact, he probably worked harder to get those barbs than he's worked on anything else in his entire life.
No one makes anyone do anything. Our actions are our own. As are our individual ethics. You are certainly entitled to mold and posses whatever ethics and character you choose. And to judge MINE. As I'll judge yours.
AJ is words on a screen. Often quite offensive words. But words. As an,"enemy", he presented many team challenges. As an individual, he was nothing more than words.
We responded with actions and words. Many responsive words were as I described above, individually.
I'm not an AJ apologist. I'm noting that others responded in ways which leave room for personal growth. From my perspective, of course. I respect your right to any value and ethical system you choose, for yourself.
If all they are is words on a screen, why do you care about them so? Apparently, they are only words when Ajay uses them. When other people use them towards him, they suddenly become something more than words. I must say, I find your reasoning to be simpleminded, and I can say that, and more if I choose, because they are, after all, only words on a screen, and to be bothered by them is a sign of poorly developed character. As is to say them. In fact, according to your logic, any words at all typed out on the internet are just "words on a screen," which leads to the obvious question: why bother typing them at all? Why this article? Why respond? I mean, they're only "words on a screen," and should have no emotional component or effect at all.
AJ doesn't control my emotional response. Or yours. You did, and do. Or didn't and don't? No point blaming HIM (or anyone) for personal behavior. We chose or own responses and reactions. And we have a big language to choose from.
Showed up just in time for the beginning of the twilight of eRep and I didn't even get a lousy T-shirt.
Tip of the day
Whoever the venture capital guys are for the site deserve a huge amount of blame for not getting rid of current eRep management and insisting on the control necessary to do so for their financing tranches. This game needs to go back to an earlier model of interactive, cooperative economics, military and politics and more should've been done with in-game mechanisms, rather than outside. They relied too heavily on mining the players for gold and thought that oversimplification and almost a single focus on the military aspect was the secret to turning a profit. Numbers of active players are well less than half what they once were, with numerous members of everyone's old friends dropping out and dying off and new friends not lasting more than a month or two.
It was the VC guys who got rid of that model. As soon as they got a stake, the game started changing to being all about inducing people to buy gold. Fun? Forget about that. If people can enjoy the game without buying gold, then who needs them?
Good read, as expected
I played eRep and all I got was this lousy avatar.
You look good in it babes
Miss u bae~
It has and still is a good journy. Through good or bad. Ive loved it all Candor. A lot of people im sure we both know have came and went.
Stopped by to see if anyone was still around from the days I used to play. It's a shame to see the community in such a sorry state.
hai indrae!
Good to see you around rainy 🙂
...was relevant for a minute. did some stuff a long time ago.
Still relevant and still doin stuff there, Custer...
First article I've read in a while.
So long. And thanks for all the fish.
Excellent.
One of the better articles I've read around here in a long time; a piece of eRep history really.
lack of character? lol
says the guy financially supporting the elitist forums
and that one month we wasted running you for CP only proved I was right.
is there no one who has extended a kindness to you that you have not responded to with unmerited vitriol?
i am genuinely sad for you.
lol, a "kindness"....
Trying to ride a fence with your arse firmly planted on the wrong side is hardly kindness