[GBM] Ghost of Paul Proteus Haunts America, Occasionally Opens and Closes Creaky Doors
Paul Proteus
Been a while since I've used this banner
"Humankind cannot stand very much reality."
And thus, here I am again. I'm not back, so to say. I have no interest in what I suppose we still refer to as "politics" at this point. Still, it's worth announcing, as I've been gone a while. Well not gone. If I were feeling more creative, this article might be titled "Ghost of Paul Proteus Haunts America, Occasionally Opens and Closes Creaky Doors" and be a relatively amusing satire. Maybe I'll title it that anyway.
Or something like that, you get my point
I have noticed that there hasn't been much good literature coming out of this game recently. I enjoyed Aramec's article, though I don't agree with his interpretation of the statistics. Still, he wrote something, kudos to that.
Let me start this article simply, there are a few assertions that I feel fairly safe in making.
1) This game is dying
2) Everybody seems to know how to fix it
The former is undeniable. What we take part in now is virtually unrecognizable from even a few years ago. I'm surprised the servers are still up. The latter is both amusing and disheartening. Let me share the conclusion that nearly 6 years of playing this game has come to. There is no solution. We cannot fix this game. This isn't the same game we want it to be, in fact it's barely a game.
Aramec asserts that activity has gone down in relationship to multi-term presidents. He has pretty graphs, and a pretty damn good article saying so. I'd like to believe that's true. It means that we can do something to change our future. If we just set term limits we could revive activity. Or, according to Jude, who has become slightly less elegant in his writing, if we just topple those nasty elites and the metagame, new players won't be turned away, and erepublik will once again become a massively popular panglossian paradise.
My slightly less informative graph. Graphs get votes, right?
I suspect Aramec doesn't really believe the downturn in activity is tied to a lack of term limits. He's smart, and this game's decline tends to be out of our hands. The point he makes is in service of a good idea. At this point, why must our presidents be those who know how to run. Most people don't even think Oblige is particularly better than competent. Term limits would certainly make metapolitics more interesting, and I'm sure it'd help keep a few newer players on the margin interested. But it wouldn't really solve our collective problem, at best it'd be a temporary salve, at worst, it'd be useless legislation accomplishing nothing but irritating our best players who now have to turn to find which puppets they can best employ for their shadow terms.
And like all arguments that begin with a conclusion, the argument itself isn't particularly strong. The narrative that we began having multiterm presidents following Tenshibo and my own mediocre-terrible terms doesn't hold up. They were indeed as bad as Aramec claims, though the blame should rest equally on our shoulders for poor communication, and in my case burnout, as well as two multi-term presidents, even then, particularly Artela, for terrible foreign policy that got us into a stacked, and in that moment, unwinnable war, as well as on Oblige who obstructed SCI money for political gain, namely to be elected and spend it again. Beyond that, Aramec's comparison of arguably the eUS' golden age with a period of significant downturn is not exactly fair, he's not even comparing the rate of turnover Pre-PaulShibo and post, he's comparing a string of our highest activity to that of our lowest.
If I had to hazard a guess as to why votes are stagnating, it's not a lack of excitement in the political process, but rather that the silent majority of lurkers have stopped playing, as the game has deteriorated. They've quit and gone un-replaced, as have our more active players. As a game that used to have multiple classes of players, ranging from two clickers, to mid-tier activity, to only the most active, we now have one, heavy metagamers who have some emotional attachment to this game, or entrenched political power, that overcomes eRepublik's decreasing quality. Any variation in voting during a hotly contested election is likely not due to increased interest from any voter base, but rather mild fraud and friendly accounts being reactivated.
Apparently the Silent Majority are also an incredibly bizarre comic-book property. Look it up
So if Aramec is wrong but with a noble cause, what's Jude? On a personal level, I like Jude enough, but from observation, what once served as an effective question to power has now developed into obsolete obstructionism. Much as the "elites" are a political class; Jude, Wooky Jack etc. are part of a political class I'm going to similarly derogatorily dub "Individualists". Individualist players tend to claim to be playing for egalitarian and democratic ideals. Maybe they are. My argument would be that those ideals, essential to a thriving society, are similarly obsolete and damaging to a dying one. We shouldn't play eRepublik like a political simulator anymore, because it's not. Even if everything were "fair" and the metagame died, what you would have is not a better game, but rather no game. Individualists, however, frequently play with a specific goal in mind in which self comes before party, and certainly before the country. Their view of how the eUS should exist preempts any attempt at community-based organization.
This is essentially what happened in the Feds. Jude and Artela joined the Feds with a specific goal in mind, and it involved using the party. Anyone who says otherwise is categorically wrong. I was Vice Party President at the time, and when Tyler gave them both Leadership access, I was in stark opposition. Jude at least was through a party job, Artela simply leveraged perceived competence and experience. I'm sure they had a noble goal, but as soon as they lost any challenge to the status quo of the party they had joined, they left. The political history of the Feds is far from simple, but the party had long since diverged from the strength in community it had possessed even a few years ago, and it quickly became clear how many members valued their own interests over that of the party.
This is not to say the Feds are a good party, a fair party, or a worthwhile party. It is to say, however, that those who criticize the Feds, the Country, or any lasting institution with hyperbolic populist phrasing, using corruption as an absurdly out of scale crutch, frequently do so because they do not play this game to improve any such institution, but rather to replace the work of others with their own. This is not sustainable, and is ultimately more harmful to the community than anything else.
If it's eRepublik, it's certainly piss
What is surprising to me, is not the pettiness, but rather the static nature of this community. It's clear that those in power have generally not changed in the past few years, but those in opposition have remained equally constant. The same people being derided for obstruction are recognizable no matter how many times one quits and returns. My only question is this: is it fun to continue to act out the same scene, the same caricatures to the audience of an online browser game's death throes? I would imagine not, but perhaps I would be wrong.
In declaring that this game isn't fixable, I don't mean to be over-pessimistic. We'll never have the same community, or the same game as we did when a country the size of Switzerland had a more active player base than the US does now. I'd imagine the solution would be in reimagining this game and in pushing the envelope of what can be accomplished in an ostensibly democratic browser game. I personally think roleplay would be fun. But that would require working together, a task so quixotic and reprehensible to some, that it clearly is a pipe dream. Or as an old friend once said, "Pie in the Sky."
PS: Here's your moment of Zen~
Yours,
Paul
Comments
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"And like all arguments that begin with a conclusion, the argument itself isn't particularly strong."
I hope you have given up on your "real world" academic pursuits and have resigned yourself to being a writer.... because you are exceedingly masterful at it.
I 💕 you. This article has made a deep impression on my inflexible mind.
Your graph sucked, you sound like another old guy longing for the good old days, and your profile belies that. However the cartoon (comic strip?) was great and the writing better than average. At the risk of pissing off you and your higher profile mates, V+ S + 1/2 E = what else you got?
The graph was a joke, I am old and probably not constructive but then again, it seems most people are these days. I appreciate the criticism, maybe next time I'll improve 😉
It was constructive, or you wouldn't have gotten the points for better than average writing. 🙂 I promise I won't critique next time, bring more!
Well nice, have never read an article like this here,on the eRepublik
There used to be more of them...
Well, text me when you see one . I'm not native English speaker, so you probably won't understand our articles,I must asure you,there never were articles like this.
o/
\o it's all with love
The folks in charge of eUSA are serving a prison sentence keeping the status quo and not trying anything new, fun or different. So when a group of us try to shake things up we're considered expendable and called to be blacklisted for having fun.
They're fun killers is what they are.
If I recall my articles and comments tend to agree with that as well.
That was surprisingly insightful. Good one Broteus.
Elegant prose and incisive reasoning. I can't imagine why I hadn't subbed before. That has been corrected.
While I agree that there is a certain tier of players who hold onto power through the meta-game, and that is not optimal, it is not easy to see a clear program from the "opposition" front that guarantees anything but personal gain for the people who want to lead. Indeed, I see a pattern of self>party>country there. What I don't see is a good solution.
may I quote you?
Be my guest. 😉
I wish I had been this concise.
That wouldn't have made much of an article. 🙂
At least you got it.
I love how you pick and choose what I said when all I said was legislative action to set a Term Limit for CPs was not the answer - lol
Game 😕= Community, by the way.
I'm glad I convinced you to write, however. That's a plus.
I really don't mean anything personally, the game would be a poorer place without you Jude.
And of course I pick and choose, this is stream of conscious at best, certainly not journalism
I don't take anything personally, Paul. LOL
Like I said, I'm just glad I was the muse to get you to write again. 🙂
As for the Fed reference, you may want to talk to Tyler and get your facts straight. He was man enough to admit his fault and using me as a scapegoat. Just saying, bro... you are misinformed.
Eh, I'm not Tyler. I was there and have my own gripes with a number of parties involved.
The problem is that people insist on continuing to play the same political game that everybody played for years. It worked with more people, but now, it's too exclusionary, and it's only paring down our already thin playerbase.
Also, for the record, I don't really believe this game is dying or dead or will die anytime soon. I believe that the game has been in a long, slow decline for years, has changed greatly, and no longer is (or will ever again be) what it once was. Personally, I'm still having fun here, and I know people who feel the same way, but I fear that our meta active players who don't adapt to the realities of today's eRep will continue to drift away.
I wish I could put it like this. o/
RG knows what's up.
+++
o/ well said.
So many words. Cool pictures. Pictures=votes. o/
Exactly how did I "obstruct" SCI spending for personal gain? If you meant that I voted no on a request, then I would suggest you list the other SCI members that also voted no or did not vote and explain how they "obstructed" SCI funding as well.
Oblige, I'm far past the point where my writing needs to pass any test or be anything beyond the extents of my crumbling memory. Honestly, surprised you read it, it's clearly a skewed - and unfair - portrait, but it has nothing to do with voting no.
If you want an honest discussion on what happened, I don't imagine anyone will come out looking good. I'm down though.
I'm long past the point where I care about looking good. The entirety of that thread has been released for public consumption a long time ago though.
Aight, we can leave it in your words
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/high-treason-by-national-security-council-chairman-2291364/1/20
Love you~
A true and honest article, and a worth re-read. Glad DMV made the honorable call in the end and resigned.
I love you Paul
Back at you BigC, I'm beyond happy you're still around.
Back around actually. Came back about 2 months ago.
Even better.
Absolutely fantastic writing. I have missed you Paul.
Ctrl+F Leo
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Shit.
Marvelous writing as always.
This is a perfect summary of what's up.
If the name-drops stir a bunch of shit, it will generate some form of activity in this wasteland.