Join the new world

Hi everyone!

This article emulates this post on the forums, go post there if you have a long response.

Lately I have been doing some thinking on the issue of our population, the effects of recruitment and retention, methods used in the past and the results of these methods and the way forward for us as a nation with high external competition in video games, political stigma in international association and an array of distractions which hamper our population in number (but not in quality).

In the past:
Old methods of recruitment are no longer as valid as they were. When before we could advertise on external websites for this politically-driven, social browser-based game and actually get results in a substantial increase in population with very few people initiating these recruitment techniques, these methods are no longer as effective as they used to be.

A main killing point for eRepublik in a technology-driven nation such as the UK, is the enthralling factor of direct competition. When asking those I had attempted to recruit to eRep, the responses to "Why didn't you stay with the game?" all revolved around "It's boring compared to facebook games, which require less time and effort". This alone is a valid, constant argument and will not change, and so some people who do want a browser-based game will purely not stick with eRepublik. This is echoed in our dea😛living citizen ratio.

What we've trie😛
Personally I was brought to this game by googling "diplomacy games" and clicking around while bored one afternoon. However, I have since personally tried spreading word-of-mouth, spamming facebook and using facebook advertisements to increase our population. While these methods may attract some people, they have constantly and without fail led to a massive downturn when these people recruited through non-personal means get bored and cease to play.

Advertising on competitive websites, communities and such is also non-productive and will be shot down quickly by those wishing to retain their own playerbase, as would anyone trying to recruit for their game on eRepublik or our forums.

There has been moderate success with some campaigns in the past, but ultimately these recruitment campaigns fall back down to natural-growth relative numbers and, as the resulting population implies, are a waste of time without long-term and soul-sapping input.

Misgivings:
"The government is responsible for player recruitment and retention." = False, the government are players, too. We can have people accepting the responsibility of recruitment if they so wish to try campaigning but ultimately it is purely and in it's essence a player responsibility.
"War will increase our population dramatically." = False. War is temporary, most new players are, as our population suggests, temporary. Pushing a recruitment drive due to war is as equally productive to long-term population growth as pushing for a recruitment drive during a time of peace - when the war ends the new players will probably disappear again, UK is not the same as other countries around the world and cannot hope to follow in their example.

My plan:
I have come to the conclusion that the most effective, long-term and wholely achievable goal is to recruit one person.

We all have friends, family or associates who may or may not be aware that you reading this are a member of an online community. Recruiting in masses has failed us. Setting goals for recruitment that a few people are required to meet or be punished (as has been suggested lately) is grossly unfair.

And so, here is Cromwell's "Every Single One" Plan (yeah, yeah, get over it): Recruit one person. Be patient with them, encourage them to play, link them to articles they might enjoy, show them a funny forum post they might like, answer their questions and keep them in the game. Make them your buddy, be their mentor!

We have seen how successful mentoring has been in our government roles lately, expand it to someone you choose in your life to join our community.

Ambitions lately have been for % growth over time. With this method, if 50% of our active population recruited 1 person, that is a 50% population growth with little effort, no costs, no drawbacks and as you already have selected one great person you know, 50% more awesome for our nation! Hell, if even 20% of our active people recruited one person, we'd potentially have 20% more firepower and in time could continue this to ever-expand onwards every month or two!

So, go forth and look for people around you that you could bring to us, tell them you want them to join you, tell them you enjoy this any-participation-counts browser game and want them as a part of it too, give them a reason to continue playing and don't let them tell you they have better games to play! I have selected my person for this month, and wholeheartedly expect to make that person enjoy our community with me!

Let me know what you think!

And above all else...

Be cool, stay cool!

LLC