Keeping Boomers - Our Untapped Potential

Day 455, 12:15 • Published in Canada Canada • by Dade Pendwyn
This article has been nominated for Best Article

Further from the Bugle's previous article, eCanada's population is severely disproportionate to the economic, military and political sway we hold among the world powers. We have a large population with very, very low average stats (namely experience and strength). The most logical alleviation of these anomalies is through the proper treatment of Boomers. For the sake of universality, I will hereafter refer to any new player as a "Boomer", regardless of whether they were born during the "Boom" or not.

Let's not kid ourselves: eRepublik is a slow place for new players. Admins would do well to find better ways of keeping new players than just working and training once a day for 3 weeks. Ideally their intent is to get new players to delve into buying gold to bypass this monotonous period, but in all likelyhood this simply turns potential customers away from the game.

It falls on us then to fertilize our young players: a look at my previous article or any of Canada's rankings will sufficiently showcase our conspicuous ineptness in this regard over the past months. How might we reverse this abortive trend among Canada's youthful populace? As a Boomer just now entering the levels where true participation is available, I have a couple ideas.

1. Create a brief and informative explanation of the basics of the game through a demonstrative video. It should visually display the basic points to understand with the eRepublik interface. Ideally it could be narrated and point succinctly to the eCanada forums as well as explain the basic notions of the game. A government honorarium in gold to the creators of the video might help ensure the quality of the film, and would increase the authenticity of the video. (something like this may exist already - I'm not sure, though I think an official government video would be advantageous either way)

2. Set up a detailed FAQ that deals solely with the ins and outs of Canada in eRepublik. I had to ask an annoyingly barbaric amount of questions on the forums before I truly understood the game. A survey of commonly asked questions on the forums could result in a fantastic FAQ that would really help clear some of the ambiguities clouding our Boomers' understandings of the mechanics of eRepublik. Ideally, this too should be paid for by the government.

As a new player, having these things readily available would have been incredibly advantageous for my integration into eCanadian society. Perhaps something along these lines already exist. If this is the case, we need update them and afterwards directly link to them in a welcoming message to all new players. I don't feel anyone should be obligated to develop these tools, though I do feel its the responsibility of the government to attract the full attention of new players to prevent them from becoming another empty citizen. This is why I suggest that any initiatives in this regard should have government compensation to both ensure the quality of the tools and to encourage a lot of thought to go in to them.

If we can keep more of our new players, we're one large step along the path of obtaining our rightful place among world powers; for this reason proper integration of Boomers should be a priority in eCanadian parliament.

If you have any further suggestions, please comment them and I'll mention them in a future article.

Thank you for reading.