The One Citizen Project (OCP)

Day 943, 18:02 • Published in USA USA • by Harrison Richardson

It's been a while since I wrote to you all about.. well.. anything. I'm enjoying the post-presidency Secret Service detail and the cushy pension, so I'm thinking on penning a book in the near future just to round all of the usual bases.

I did want to maintain some semblance of a media presence, though, and this was the thing on my "to do" list that I have wanted to write about for a while. It's called the One Citizen Project, or OCP. The general gist of the idea is to take the mentoring program, water it down, and tailor it to every experienced player we have.

I was a mentor for a while. I did it for a few months, between my spurts of political activity, and did my best to help new players. I transfered to the Training Corps to continue helping new players. I figure that if I'm going to continue to waste time on this god forsaken site, I might as well spend it well. So that's what I've been doing for a while, but results are never terribly impressive. We have probably tried almost everything to improve retention. Going all in on v2 and hoping that will be our saving grace is as foolish as it is.. well.. foolish.

My goal is to provide financial incentive to older players to keep younger players around. However, contrary to the mentoring system, we're going to scale it down. Each older player takes one newer player around. It is your duty to make sure they stay active, that they learn the game, and that you do everything in their power to help them succeed. For as long as it takes, they are your egg, and just like the idiotic Junior High experiment, you must look after it for as long as it takes for it to mature.

It is my hope that this extreme attention to detail and one-on-one mentoring will lead to much greater retention rates for us as a country. I know I got a lot of help from a few old timers when I started out (Dishmcds [puke] and Benn Dover) and it is the reason I am where I am today, still playing over two years later. It makes a difference, even if you think it doesn't. Therefore, I propose that the United States, or some wealthy private citizen, start a program where each mentor who keeps a player around and active for X days gets a small financial reward, like 20 USD. It should be your goal to help the country succeed by all means, so the mentoring should be a part of your patriotic duty, but giving a little financial incentive never hurt anyone.

I've scaled my game play back to bare bones, so I am not the person to manage it. It is my hope that someone here picks up this idea, runs with it, and makes it successful. Post it on the forums, discuss it on irc, kick around the idea in PM with your friends. We need new and innovative ways to combat our retention problems, so let's start here.



HR