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Est. 2010
Twenty-first Edition: Wednesday, December 28, 2011


Preamble/Pre-ramble

I haven’t been very active lately and so I’m going to take a shot at my first article in a long while. I’ll be honest, a lot of the reason that I’ve been inactive has to do with the death of politics in eRepublik. I’ve never aspired to be CP, nor am I really transfixed by the idea of being elected to congress or receiving a title – but I enjoy taking part in politics, and for me that has always been an important and engagingly unique aspect of this game (consider how many warfare related games exist out there).

This article is going to discuss eRepublik politics in Ireland on a macro level. As I write this, I’m quite aware that this will end up one of those TLDR articles. I’ll try to break it up and make it as readable as possible (or don’t read it – that will hurt my feelings but I’ll get over it).


WHAT HAPPENED TO POLITICS?

There may be some who haven’t noticed what I refer to as the death of politics in Ireland. But if you compare the political scene of today to the the scenes that have existed in eIreland's long and winding history, you'll see that politics and political parties in Ireland really have declined and become irrelevant. And this phenomena isn’t limited to Ireland as I’ve discovered by talking to contacts abroad. It all has to do with changes that have taken place on eRepublik in the game’s mechanics. There are a few key changes that I believe have drastically affected this aspect of the game.


TV Killed the Radio and Group PMs Killed the Forum

In the last several months eRepublik has really stepped up its in game communications. Think about how many in game methods now exist in order to communicate. We’ve always had private messaging and articles (the news feed), but now we also have Group PMs, and the shout feed. How has this changed politics you might ask?

In the old days eRepublik was played much more on forums and IRC (a web chat program), while those mediums are still used today there is little doubt that their use has decreased drastically. Our national forums are relatively dead and IRC isn’t what it used to be either. There have been attempts to create new forums etc, but they can never be truly offical, are always subject to certain players and their whims, and the creation of many new “official” platforms confuses and divides users.

The reason for this decrease is that new in-game communication methods have really eliminated or limited our need to use forums and IRC (outside communications). Group PMs allow us to share information in a similar fashion to a private forum and without the dangers of user operated platforms or impostors. The shout feed roughly facilitates the same community social activity and discussion that the IRC was once at the center of (I’ve never been an avid IRC user so I’m making some inferences here). Military groups also contribute to the obsolescence of forums, by enabling military units to organize in game more effectively than possible before. The developers have taken clear steps away from politics into the military aspects of the game, starting back as far as when party advertising was removed and never heard from again.

So how does this all effect politics? Its difficult to explain exactly, but I believe that forums really breed a certain kind of political activity. Forums (especially those that are for political parties) are natural places for people to make plans, organize movements, and discuss issues with other like-minded individuals. It basically allows you to write an article for a less public audience and to collaborate on a sub national level. The same goes for IRC channels. Political parties don’t have the mechanical communication tools that Military Units have, but political parties on their own, may not be enough to encourage people to participate in offsite communications.

Is this a problem? In my opinion moving away from offsite communications and centering operations in-game has more advantages than disadvantages. Its more inclusive, safer, and less corruptible. That said, political parties do suffer from the absence of party focused communications.


Welcome to the War Machine

Military units have replaced political parties as the sub-cultures and sub national-organizations of eRepublik. Once again this reflects the developers choice to focus on the military aspects and remove depth from the political module (and economic module which I’ll come to next). Military units are all about groups of people who have a very clear and… objective… objectives (ie. to do damage on behalf of your nation)… There isn’t much room to differentiate between units - it comes down to supply, image, organization, where your friends are, and personal preference. This move to military units has degraded the strength of political communities by moving the social activity to a less political arena.


Where the Left and Right Diverge: Economics

Politics in eRepublik has a great deal to do with economic policies. Given the game mechanics, the whole Left vs. Right stage is basically organized around different ways of administrating economic issues like tax, communes, and “social aid” (supply and give aways). However, the economic module has also been compromised in favour of work done to the military side of the game.

A lot of simplification of the way economics works, the use of auto mechanisms, and the tendency of the games new development to favour gold buyers rather than business focused players, has basically eliminated a lot of the political discussion that might have existed on the issue of economics. Other aspects of our nations administration just don't touch on the issues that run parallel to the real life basis of Left vs. Right politics.


Real Life Issues. Yep.

This one is more of a shot in the dark, but I’m fairly sure that this issue has had a negative impact of political activity. It seems as if the admin has added some controversial nations to our map, causing a lot of real life issues to come to the surface (as they often do anyway as they are bound to when we use real life nations and a real life map).

When people are wrapped up in RL issues, it destroys the possibility for political discussion to occur because RL issues and game play issues just aren’t parallel. These real life issues take focus and people will argue with each other, but not about things that are debatable like game strategy. They end up prone to discuss issues that don’t/shouldn’t actually have an impact on the game and our in game community.


More Political Articles to Come

This is the first of a possible series of articles about our eNations political scene. Stay tuned for more on where eIrish politics and eRepublik politics are at, Where we’re heading, and what we can do to take control.

P.S. In absence of an actually useful/interesting political scene, Ireland has been doing fine by playing the mechanics and being a great community of top-notch people and great gamers. Trust that my goal isn’t to fix things that don’t need fixing, but just to have a look at what’s up with the political scene and see if we can put politics to some practical use – and also have some fun with it.

Ian E Coleman - The Coleman Global



Forum: eireaonair.userboard.net
Wiki Page: Eire Aonair @ the wiki
eRep Page:Eire Aonair
Video:Eire Aonair @ YouTube

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