The Economist ~ A goodbye

Day 2,537, 10:36 Published in Poland United Kingdom by Spite313


Dear friends,

Some years ago a major change happened to the game. Called V2 by most people, it was an attempt by the game founders and their new round of investors to rebrand and grow the eRepublik experience to a new audience. The idea was to make the game more professional, expand the graphical interface and the complexity of the game, and possibly even lay the foundations for incorporating it into social media sites such as Facebook.

Unfortunately the changes were poorly implemented, with little to no community consultation. The reaction from the existing community was overwhelmingly negative, and in panic the game administrators reverted to a half-cut measure where they kept some of the V2 structures, but reverted a lot of the user interface and skill trees to the V1 model. In doing this, they abandoned the potential new market for the sake of their existing client base.

This failure cost eRepublik a whole lot of money, as well as months of investment time. It also damaged the reputation of the Bucharest office with investors. As a result, every Office Manager (Plato) since then has been very conservative and incremental in their changes to the game. No big reorganisation of the economy, political sphere or military module is really possible due to this fear of another V2.

Because the original revenue stream plans for V2 were scuppered, the team turned to a system which relied on several big “whale” spenders who funded the rest of the game. They added a lot of “parity” dilemmas to the game- mostly strength related. In other words, to maintain parity with players of the same age, you must buy gold to build strength training grounds. By this method they managed to pay the bills, though eRepublik has never been particularly profitable.

However this change was poisonous, in that it gradually disaffected the vast majority of players without the financial capacity or desire to buy gold. As time went on, this disaffected and disillusioned group saw more and more non-paying aspects of the game dwindle as the admins focused on the military module, and it’s money-making potential. This became a bit of a death spiral, as the admins added more and more ways to milk money from the paying players, and the non-paying players quit in ever larger numbers.

Now in the modern game, we find ourselves in a situation where we barely have enough players left to function. Many countries, including the UK, have declined to the point where they are no longer recognisable coherent communities. There are no rivalries or real party differences to keep things active. Even bigger countries- even alliances- have seen a decline in activity as the number of players available to shoulder roles has collapsed down to a small handful.



In my eLife I’ve served many positions in many governments. Of late however, even my activity has begun to rapidly decline as the game becomes less and less appealing. The last two failures- that of the housing industry, and that of the epic tournament- simply reinforced this feeling in me.

The housing industry truly had the potential to be a game changer. It moved away from the passive industry that Work as Manager (WAM) introduced, towards a more market-driven economy reminiscent of V1&V2. It opened up the potential for shortages in labour, housing and weapons which would have made the economy module interesting again. Instead it has been left as a half-baked project used to shift the advantages of housing from a mission reward to something you have to pay for.

The epic tournament was anything but. I remember in the days after the epic badge was added to the battle monitor screens, many battles would go epic daily. In this competition, there was perhaps only one battle at a time epic, after an hour, because everyone was fighting to make it epic. Considering that player strength has increased by a more than 50% over that time period, this really shows how weak the game has become.

For me the warning signs about the game’s imminent collapse have been there for a long time: A gradual reduction in team numbers in Bucharest, the reduction of the customer service team to a minimum, increasing pressure on unpaid moderators to take up the slack. With the game population in continuous decline, it’s inevitable that at some point the game will become not only non-profitable (which it is already), but also unsustainable. With full effort going into the production of new games at the Madrid office, we have to ask ourselves how much longer this can go on.

Without a radical change, the answer is not much longer. Within a few months to a year, the decline will become obvious to investors to the point where winding up the team and cutting their losses will be the best option. Whether that involves selling the eRepublik franchise to another game company, or simply closing the servers down, I’m not sure. For me, the only way to change that is to take the key elements of eRepublik beta- rival RL countries, a strong community aspect and a realistic political/economy sim- and rebuild the game from the ground up, migrating players across with reduced stats and bonuses for older players who hung around.

For me, I think such an outcome is unlikely, and in any case I am eOld and I’ve played the game for nearly six years. I don’t feel like there’s anything left for me to do here. I’m not going to make a dramatic quit, or list all of my achievements, but I will be fading away. Over the last three months I’ve gradually shifted responsibility for international and local politics to others, and my sixth birthday on 18th December will be my last day active in the game. I might pop in now and then to see what’s happening, and I'll be round the meta-game forums and IRC now and then. But my time active in politics and journalism will be over.

I'll follow in the footsteps of great players of the game who have already gone. The list is too long for me to mention names, but you have made this game great for me. To my five thousand-odd subscribers, thank you, you made writing all these words enjoyable. To all the countries which have invested their faith in me over the years, I hope I measured up to expectations. To all those who hated me, I enjoyed your whining incompetence more than all the battlefield victories of TWO.

It’s been a blast o/

Iain



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