[Series] Visiting eRepublik Labs [Part 02]

Day 3,319, 04:29 • Published in Germany Germany • by Master_rg
Hello fellow citizen,

you are reading a part of my series of articles about my trip to eRepublik Labs from 07th to 10th dec. In order to make it more easier for you to get in touch with every topic, this table of contents can be found on top of every article. It will directly link to the specific topic you click on.




Table of contents

1. Preamble and some rules
2. Clarification about some used terms
3. How did it come to that visit

4. What happened during the days
4.1 Wednesday
4.2 Thursday
4.3 Friday

5. Problems eRepublik is currently facing
5.1 Community
5.2 Economy
5.3 Military
5.4 Politics
5.5 Newspapers

6. Some quotes of players which appear regularly
7. Conclusion


#4 - What happened during these days

#4.1 Wednesday

Wednesday was the day of arrival. I got a ticket from Vienna to Bucharest and travelled by plane. I was picked up at the airport and we directly drove to eRepublik Labs in the city centre of Bucharest. During the drive I already got a great discussion about the history of Romania, its development during the last years and of course: About some local attractions.

We arrived at eRepublik Labs and I was literally welcomed by everyone. It was an awesome experience to get in touch with all of them as we’ve mostly talked via slack / chat - so yeah, it was great to see them from face to face.

Guess who I’ve also seen: Alexis Bonte. He also welcomed me and of course for me it was a real honor to see him as I just barely know him from interviews at Youtube. Just moments later we all (the eR developer team + Alexis) went to lunch where we started to have first discussions about private stuff in order to get to know each other, but also about eRepublik.

Even though you may don’t believe it yet, I already experienced that the team is well informed about the current state of the game. They know the problems, they know what the the players are waiting for and we all had really intense discussions just within minutes.

You may ask yourself, “what questions have you been asked” and “did you try to convince them of your ideas” - and well, basically I was asked what I would change in order to “make erepublik great again” - and of course I already had some thoughts and ideas BUT I also have to admit that I was aware that there won’t be a simple answer.

We spoke about several issues I will try to point out later in this article and of course, possible solutions - but still: We hadn’t found a simple answer yet.

After lunch we went back to the office where I got a first basic introduction to the used technologies within eRepublik while listening to dance and house music coming out of a flat tv. Everything was very modern and they were using state of the art technologies for developing and monitoring everything. Somehow it felt good to see those things as some people got a picture of eRepublik where it’s right before crumbling and just hold together by duct tape.

However, speaking of duct tape, there is of course one thing you can’t really deny: eRepublik still uses some very old code parts which some people have implemented like years ago (some parts date back to 2009, which is ages in dev time). I saw it, it still exists and it isn’t that easy to remove. But, of course: I will come back to this topic later in the article.

Time flies and all out sudden it became late afternoon. I was taken to my awesome apartment, received the keys from a beautiful woman and.. well.. went back to the office. Around 7pm I noticed something interesting: People finished their work (like their coding stuff) but: They stayed at the office and had discussions about the games and of course especially about eRepublik. For me, as the “german guy”, this was an awesome experience. I mean, in Germany it’s basically like: “Well, I worked the whole day in the office, I did my required hours, stuff is finished, see y’all tomorrow” - here it was a huge difference like: We finished it, let’s grab a drink and start some discussions.. (and at least they told me that this was a quite usual thing they do).

So.. yeah.. we discussed a lot: How can we make the game attractive for new players, How to fix the economy, how broken the economy really is, how can we improve the military module, what about the dying political and community module - people, even though I won’t hit any details right now it was just awesome. And again: I really felt like they are aware of the whole situation and that they are actively trying to improve the game for everyone.

You may ask yourself the following question right now: “But why the %”$! don’t they change anything?” - well, to give you a first short answer: Because it isn’t easy as you need to involve all aspects of the game, the myriad of different player types AND you also need to take a look beyond the module you are playing around with.

So.. let’s take a look at the clock: It’s around 23:00 / 23:30 - time to get one last drink and then just head to the apartment to catch up some sleep.