How to revive a community: explaining and curing inactivity

Day 2,883, 06:32 • Published in Netherlands Netherlands • by Mattio

Note: In line with my argumentation, all endorsements to this article will be donated ahead to the state. Show your involvement through a small endorsement.


Dearest reader,

Now that you’ve already clicked at this article, I beg you to read at least the Core argument/summary. My point goes out to all Dutch citizens who have the hope and good faith that we can build a great future for our country. I am optimistic about our current course, but we need to be aware of where we are heading and what is expected of us. This article is relatively long for an eRep publication, but I encourage you to give it a try. You can always stop halfway. 😛

Call to all: Did you recently start playing eRepublik and/or do you feel inspired by this article/the core argument to become active? Don’t hesitate! Join the national forum (and receive 100NLG) and take part in the discussions there. It’s a fun and welcoming place and you’ll discover that you can quickly achieve great things in our small community. We are waiting for you!


Core argument/summary of this article:
The core point of this article is that in every community, there needs to be a struggle. This can either be an internal (national) struggle or an external (international) one. In general, small communities benefit from external struggles, they need a common purpose, whereas large communities can benefit from internal struggles which filter out the strongest leaders.

For a long time though, the struggle of the small Dutch community has been an internal one, in the form of party politics. I argue that with the death of party politics, our community had lost its struggle and therefore started to gradually become less active, but this can be turned into a positive movement if we act wisely. We are given the opportunity to focus on an external struggle and form a tighter and more active community with a single goal. We could give our community a long-term boost if we apply the right, constructive policy, as well as strengthen our international position.


Introduction: the decrescendo of activity
Our current Country President had a hard time forming his government, even after bringing it back to the “core four” Home/Foreign Affairs, Defense and Finances. Many experienced players brought their activity down to a minimum or just stopped playing without notice. This happens, and it is believed to have something to do with the time of the year (summer is over, schools started again), but the number of people suddenly quitting is alarming. It can also be seen in our congress, where almost every month, we are barely having enough people running to fill the 40 seats (which our congress often doesn’t do):



I do not believe this is a time of the year thing though. Voting activity is a reliable indicator to activity, and if we take a look at last years line, we can see that (country president) voting activity has been steadily declining, with a recent sudden drop:



Inactivity explaine😛 should we bring back party politics?
There could be many explanations for the drop in activity. The most obvious one would be that it’s all about the game. We all love nagging about eRep’s game mechanics and them being the reason we stop playing, but if we’re honest to ourselves, we admit that this could not possibly have anything to do with it. No matter how much I too like the complaining, I know just as well as anybody that eRepublik in itself is a structurally well made game. Together with external platforms (the forum and IRC) it provides an interesting second-world reality with a political, military and economic module. It has its issues, but it’s a good game overall.

I believe the reason for the drop in activity has everything to do with what kept us busy before the drop, which was mainly ourselves. The Dutch community is a small one and small communities thrive in unity and a common goal, a purpose that is most likely something on the international stage. But instead of looking abroad, we kept ourselves busy with small party politics. I know the most intuitive answer to this would be to say that I’m speaking nonsense, but I will try to explain it carefully.

I myself have seen some eDeaths. I believe I came back from three coma’s in total, the longest one being the most recent, but this has also possibly been my longest revival since the first coma. As a result, it is safe to say that I have witnessed some random surveys (steekproeven) of the Dutch society. What struck me most at my latest revival - I wrote about it earlier - was that I revived in a community that was extremely divided into two camps that can roughly be called (by the names they gave each other) the “Elitists” and the “ReLnichten” (English: “drama queen”, or perhaps most affiliated to the internet troll phenomenon). It gave us some hideous arguments on the forum, but hey: it kept us busy, and it made Congress Elections something worth campaigning for. It couldn’t bring us anywhere internationally, of course, and it was very counter-productive, but it did keep our activity alive - for as long as it could.
Large nations can thrive in internal struggle. It gives a buzz and it filters out the best leaders at the expense of the weaker ones, making the country stronger internationally at its turn. Small nations, like the Dutch community, can’t afford losing players. Players in small nations should cling together tightly and help eachother. The elitism debates were open wounds that were slowly infecting us.

In May this year, I became Party President of the party that I love very much. From the moment I expressed my interest in the job, I stressed that I wanted a stronger connection with the other parties as I believed in co-operation rather than dispute within such a small community. Our country’s largest party happily answered my proposal, leading to a better co-operation that lasts until today.
Did party politics end with that? Not really, it had already died of course since everybody knew we were too small of a nation to be so divided. The discussion about elitism, however, pretty much stopped back then (though it never really died out, it is still trying to divide us and eventually tear us apart), when the largest party with many young members who were told they were trolls started working together with the party delivering the most experienced government members.

So: was it Mattio who killed our activity, by killing the internal struggle between old and young players? No, of course not. As you can see in the first graph, the March congress elections were the worst so far, and I hadn’t even expressed my discontent with the situation at the time. Also, 90% of our community knew what I knew: that the division was pointless and counter-productive, that’s why so many players signed the manifesto against political elitism back then.
The closer co-operation between DemNL and ReL was a change in the political landscape, because suddenly over half of our political population was in a “coalition”, but it was at the same time exactly in line with a development that was already going on: the inevitable development of an internal struggle dieing out in a community that is too small for it to exist in.


Looking ahea😛 the needs and needn’ts of the Netherlands
Our community became a lot less interesting without the internal dispute. Things became a daily routine, not per se affecting the most active players but certainly the less active ones who did no longer see anything happen ingame. It took some time to “incubate”, but I believe this may very well have caused the sudden drop in activity from June to July. 2014 saw a similar drop (120-75), but then there was only one candidate, just like we did in September ‘15, and it was restored in August (106) unlike our drop. 2013 saw a slightly significant drop (129-109 from June to July) but that was restored as well (126 in August).

However, I believe we can turn this problem into a short term one, and simultaneously into a long term solution. And I also believe that we are on a good road with the current policies we are striving to. More than ever, with the consistent coalition that we now have, our government is getting things done. If we fully take the opportunities we are now getting to turn our internal view outwards and focus on an external struggle (having wars, fighting for and with our allies, becoming a member of an alliance, getting better bonus regions - all suggestions that have been made before), we can simultaneously make the gameplay more interesting for our citizens, improving our activity and enlargening our community.

So what do we need?
1) First of all, we need to address the new, young players and the players whom are currently not active and invite them to join the forums, join IRC (it really takes 5 minutes to install that darling), write articles - basically be active. This article is written on my personal account, I don’t speak for the government, but I do want to say that I will personally do my best for this as Minister of Home Affairs and a new project is already being prepared.
2) We need to address young players with the right tone. Rather than “educate”, we should coach, inform and welcome. No one wants to play a game in which he is talked to in a childish way. He wants to know that he can make a difference and make career, which he can. That’s what caught us in this game, didn’t it? Not the educational programs we all so “obediently followed”.
3) We should avoid complex strategies that boost activity. I very much admire Walhallah’s Wheel and I think it is wonderfully and eloquently explained, but it’s a Moloch of a strategy to cling on when you have only a handful of active people around. Getting obsessed with a certain tactic would inevitably mean you lose sight of what we really want to achieve: a community in which we are having fun with each other and are striving towards a common goal. It’s not a game if it’s not fun.
4) Fourth and most of all, we need a common goal, a purpose to which we can collectively strive. Just a few months ago, we had 0 MPP’s - we were caught up in our own affairs and saw no use for it. Because we were an easy target (and got wiped), we signed 2 MPP’s. Now, at the moment of writing, we have 11 that we are actively holding up and that are giving us great possibilities to fight alongside new allies. They have given us a much better perspective internationally and it is shifting the internal view outwards, where it should be.
5) Last, but essentially for the most important goal, we need to improve our economy. Our new position comes at a literal cost. Our country’s tax income simply is way, way too low to keep these MPP’s up, so we rely heavily on personal spending, most of which come from our current Country President. Not only is this kind of ridiculous, it is also doomed to fail eventually. Donations to the state are good (you can make a small one now through endorsing), but they should not be our primary source of income.


Conclusion: now is the time!
I warmly thank you if you have taken the time to read all of this article and come to this point. I hope I have clearly elaborated on what I believe are our chances and the opportunity that is being given to us. We can finally rid ourselves of internal dispute and fight for a common goal as one community.

Our society has changed, our views have changed, now it’s time to change our future.


Thank you,
I salute,

Proud and hopeful citizen of the Netherlands