Interview With George The Admin

Day 1,102, 17:35 • Published in New Zealand New Zealand • by WahooBob


Dear readers,
After several weeks of trying all the possible ways I could think of, I have finally managed to get an interview from Admin George Lemnaru. I had hoped that we would actually be able to speak, either by skype or live on my podcast, but this was not to be. I have published below the entirety of my email interview with him, followed by my own comments and analysis. I hope you enjoy it. ~ Wahoo

P.S. - It would be a huge favor to me if you would shout this article's link after voting it. I'd love to be able to point out to George that there are lots of people interested in hearing what he has to say - then maybe he will speak more often.

Words of Wisdom:
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves. -- J. Garcia



Weekend Update: It really is incredible to have a chance to sit down and talk with one of the founding members of the eRepublik team. Where did you get the initial idea for eRepublik?

George Lemnaru: Hard to say. I like history, politics and economy and I felt that the internet is the best medium to offer a product based on these concepts. Maybe the fact that I played a lot Civilization influenced me too. Who knows?


Update: What exactly is your role at eRepublik?

George: As a Cofounder I played many roles in the company depending on its needs. At this moment, starting September 2010, I focus much more on the eRepublik concept development.


Update: How many other people work for eRepublik, and what do they do?

George: We are almost 30 people right now focused on design, testing, development, community management, playing fussball and other cool things. 🙂

Update: I have read that after the V1 phase of the game came out, Alexis told a reporter that your team had learned several lessons. The first was that, since the game is still always in development as you expand it, calling the update "V1" was a mistake. Secondly, he said that the players wanted to give more input and did not appreciate the "surprises" that were included. Yet, it seems like most of this was forgotten over the summer when "V2" was announced. Why is that?

George: [Did not answer this question.]

Update: What lessons has the team learned from “V2/eRepublik Rising”?

George: Well, you would be surprised to know that Rising was based a lot on Community suggestions. We've listened a lot our community with Rising but it takes something more to translate this info into features that offer fun for the Citizens. There are some mistakes that we did with Rising - first of all taking too much time to put it live and making too many changes at the same time. As a results we are trying to improve the game on a weekly basis so that we can analyze the results and the feedback from the community and act very fast if there are problems.

Update: Perhaps the most unpopular recent change was the conversion of four military skills down to one “strength.” What went wrong – why were so many people so upset?

George: We expected that there will be problems as the conversion formula was more complex and harder to explain. And if we are talking about explaining I think communication was a problem as we haven't expressed quite well all the other advantages that people got from that change.

Update: On the topic of communication between the staff and the players, what is the average length of time between when a support ticket is sent in and when it is answered?

George: Depends on the complexity of the ticket and depends when it is sent. There are tickets that are responded within an hour and others that are much harder and take more than a week. Our goal is to respond to tickets in less than 24 hours.





Update: Over the past month or so, the official forums have seen a drastic reduction and the national chatrooms have gone away as well without any warning or announcement from your team. We have also seen the addition of the “my battles” list on the front page and personal “missions.” Why has your team chosen not to announce some of these changes?

George: Some of the changes require a prior notice sent to the community, others don't need it. For example official chat rooms had almost 0 usage before taking it out. Also, implementing My battles on the Homepage was a test for improving usability so that Citizens have an easier way to access the battles. It worked, we kept it.

Update: Recently, your team stopped publishing the official newspaper eRepublik Insider and began contacting players about select game updates via personal message. What was the reason behind this change?

George: It's much better to communicate directly to the people interested on that matter. First of all you don't give unnecessary info to people that have no connection with that subject, second of all the message has an almost 100% efficiency rate as we are sure that almost everybody that we want to read that, will read it. Plus that media module belongs to our Citizens and it is a Citizen to Citizen communication tool.

Update: Also on the subject of newspapers, your team recently limited newspapers to publish only in the country of the editor's citizenship. The idea behind this change was to reduce spam, however many citizens complained that it limited their ability to communicate with other players. Have you seen a significant decline in reports of spam since that change? Are there any plans in the works to allow citizens to publish in foreign places again?

George: We are still analyzing this issue and if we see that this brings more problems than benefits we remove the rule.



Update: Continuing with the media module, it seems that many features available in V1 – such as different sized text – are no longer around. Is there any plan to increase the functionality of newspapers in the near future?

George: Yes, it is 🙂

Update: Would your team ever consider publishing the list of codes that currently work for the media module, personal messages, and new citizen message?

George: [Did not answer this question.]

Update: Your team recently overhauled the “eRepublik Laws” in favor of three simple laws along with three simple punishments. Many citizens have questioned the antiquated and vague way in which they are written. What was the reason for this change?

George: See the signature in my email: "Simple rules lead to complex behavior. Complex rules lead to stupid behavior." 🙂
It is a coincidence to have this signature but for sure expresses quite well the mentality of this change.

Update: What sort of changes and updates are coming in the near future that you can tell us about?

George: Well, there are quite a few big strategic changes in eRepublik in the following days, first one is concerning resources. Also Military in terms of strategy will be changed. Quite a lot of stuff will happen to be honest.

Update: Is there anything else you would like to say to the readers of Weekend Update?

George: I am available for any suggestion, idea or complain. Do not hesitate to send me a pm or write on the forum. Thanks a lot.

Update: Thank you so much for your time and your answers. The invitation to speak on my podcast is an open one; if you are ever interested please just let me know.

Picture😛 The next “really good idea” for the eRepublik transportation module.

I am really grateful that George was willing to answer most of my questions. I think, however, that some of the answers were simply cut-and-paste from the company line and not entirely accurate. A good example of this is where George says that certain decisions (such as the changes to the media module) were “still being analyzed.” Others, such as reasoning for moving official updates from the Insider to personal messages simply did not make any sense. Calling media a citizen-to-citizen communication tool, while PM is apparently not, seems entirely backwards to me.

We now know that the “major upcoming changes” he mentioned will come into effect on Monday, and will include the addition of a dozen new resources (mostly for food and weapons). Additionally, battles will be free to start, and will start automatically if the CP does not press the button within 6 hours of the last battle closing. To me, this seems like a really poor decision because it will be very nearly impossible to hold training wars and execute strategic maneuvers in battle.

Overall, the interview showed to me that the Admin team really still does not understand what the players want. This is highlighted to me in George’s answer about why citizens were so upset about the strength changes. Instead of apologizing or indicating they understood the negative effects of the change; he simply faulted the team for not convincing players the change was good. George stresses that his team is constantly looking for and listening to citizen feedback. Yet, the only real change that he discussed was the removal of the chat rooms – and he said that the decision was not based on citizen input but simply that nobody ever used them. This game was founded on the idea that the Admins would create a framework, and citizens would create the majority of the content and that communities would shape the game. It seems more and more that now Admin will create direction for the game, leaving players to either participate or not. As we saw with the V2/Rising over the summer, many have chosen to “not.”



My podcast, The Report Down Under, will resume from our Thanksgiving holiday break on this Wednesday evening. The time will be, as always, 1830 eRepublik Time (9:30 US Eastern). You can listen to the show live at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-report where you can also find all our previous shows archived, including previous seasons dating back to autumn of last year. This week, Bradley Reala and I will talk with presidential hopefuls Fionia (New Zealand) and CRoy (USA). Join us in Rizon IRC #coastline during and after the show.


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