Sotar Trí Dhath - Interview with George Lemnaru

Day 1,273, 07:57 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Sotar Glas


Hello there o/

^ Once again yet another first sentence problem. Anyway, after a long long break, I will be pleased to publish an article once again. This time as title suggests , I had a chance have an interview with George Lemnaru, you know who he is 🙂 . Although I prepared questions before latest changes in economy module, this change made some obsolete and I had to change some. So it took few days longer.

I want to thank you George Lemnaru once again for accepting and want to say that I admire his ability of giving a reply but not answering question really (for some questions), a nice asset if you are politician. 🙂

As I promised, interview is just below as it is.

First of all, hello George. Thank you for sparing time and answering questions.

Q1 : I will not ask the question you heard 1000 times and well prepared, we all know who George Lemnaru is. What I will ask is "What was and is your role in eRepublik?"

Thank you too. It is a pleasure to answer to your questions.
As an entrepreneur you have many responsibilities. Your main goal is to create a great team and a great product and in order to do that you need to wear many hats. I’ve been Developer, Concept Writer, General Manager, CTO, COO, Game Designer, Product Manager, Studio Manager. Basically whenever I feel that the company needs me more I go there and I do my best.

Q2 : If I am not mistaken, I read that eRepublik was first created 'with 2 friends in 2 months'. Did/do you take part in programming?

This is not quite true. I started to work on eRepublik as a developer, indeed, but once I started the partnership with Alexis we had 2 developers that worked for about 6 months for what we called eRepublik Beta (which was in fact a prototype).

Q3 : We have rough idea about number of workers in company. Could you please inform us about departments and their number of staff? Of course we are most interested in Help department.

One thing we did in the past months was to merge the Product Development team (devs, design, etc) with the Community team. As a product person you really need to be near the user of your product. As a community person, you need to understand the product development too. This was one of the smartest moves we did.

Q4 : I always find eRepublik graphics quite eye-pleasing and professional. Do you outsource it or have a permanent employee for it?

Well, thank you 🙂 We do have two UI designers that are also working on this but in the near future we consider that the graphics needs to be improved.


Q5 : I know that moderation is an expensive and time-consuming process. Yet still, can we expect international publishing back in reasonable future and way? I believe there are many people missing international teasing and 'trolling'.

Certainly trolling is not something that we do want to encourage 🙂

Q6 : As you know, citizen ads were disabled for a while and then removed. Have you considered bringing them back and/or is there anything planned about party golds?

We are analyzing solutions for the party golds but Citizen Ads is not among them.

Q7 : V2 did not turn out as intended, at best. There are some other words like 'disaster', 'fiasco'. What was the main reason of V2 failure, in your opinion?

There are more reasons, maybe the most important ones: a huge update instead of small improvements and features that were too time consuming for many Citizens.

Q8 : Is there any V2 feature you'd want to be still present?

No.

Q9 : Once I read an ingame interview where you stated that you'd want game 'to be simple at least at the beginning'. Why do you want this? Is there a problem about citizens getting gameplay?

Yes, the experience is very difficult for new citizens. This is something that we are currently focusing on.

Q10 : Some people complain about game getting simpler and having less strategy elements. Do you agree? If yes, what is the purpose of this change?

There are some strategy elements that we removed and others that we added. Our purpose is to have the right strategy elements, just enough to allow emerging gameplay and to make eRepublik a good experience for all it’s citizens.

Q11 : I agree that newcomer restrictions are good for fighting against multies but also limits gameplay in the first days. Remembering V1 days that a newcomer can buy food and weapon then be part of game/war, do you have any idea/intention about increasing retention rate?

Yes, indeed, the retention rate especially for new citizens is our main focus right now..

Q12 : What do you think about people known as '2clickers' doing not much more than w+t+f?

I do believe that we don’t give them enough interesting things to do for the moment.

Q13 : Once Plato mentioned that over 60% of citizens are having difficulties using product sliders. (when there was product customization) Does this simplification process (4 industries, 2 final products) have any relation with this?

Yes. The products system is not scalable from any point of view.

Q14 : There was an official thread regarding health kits which is closed later. There are complaints about unlimited usage of them. What do you think about this?

There were many threads regarding health kits. The reasons why we will not touch it are various and are not only connected to the fact that eRepublik is a freemium product (everybody can play for free, and some people buy virtual currency in order to keep the product free for the rest). There are also other more important reasons that come from our past experience (multies encouragement, Battle Hero medals that become available just a very limited number of people, etc).

Q15 : There was a temporary increase of health cap from 300 to 500. There are request it to be permanently 500. What is your opinion on this matter?

I think 300 health limit is too low for a huge amount of people. That’s something that we are working right now.

Q16 : Although now there are new ways to spend currency which may change rates, we witnessed currency rates lower than cost of printing. Do you consider low rates as a problem or a natural result of supply/demand?

Both, this is something that we will look into.

Q17 : What is your future projection about eRepublik? Can we expect a long term 'not changing much' gameplay until bigger picture is implemented?

After May we will be able to focus much more on improving the citizen’s experience and the product’s virality and acquisition.

Q18 : Although not much around and seems not really threatening you, what do you think about your competitors (that I don't want to name)?

Recently a big number of products copying the eRepublik concept appeared. This is something that makes us proud. 🙂

Q19 : Thinking about when you started with the game and how it has progressed to now. Has it gone the way you'd hoped and is there anything else you would have tried?

Before launch eRepublik was only a crazy idea that only me and Alexis believed in so yes, it has gone much better than we hoped. Meanwhile we have learned many things that helped us make the product better and in the past months this started to be visible more than ever.

Q20 : Is there anything that you (as a citizen) really don't like and want to be changed/removed?

Yes, as a citizen I have 2 problems:
- is too hard to progress in eRepublik.
- is not enough collaboration between people in the economy module
Those are things that we will solve in the following 2 months.

Q21 : As the game has evolved, has any aspect of it surprised you?

It’s extraordinary how much passion people put in the game and how much they are helping eRepublik. This makes us feel very proud to work on this project.

Thanks to George Lemnaru once again, I believe he shed some light on few issues.

And for comments, please don't be harsh to me, he said them I didn't. 😛