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Here is an interview of Iain Keers

Feel free to read my previous interview with the following people

erey [FR]
arkanis [FR]
PP of march 2010( Le Grecologue , X-le-variable , Tirsett ) [FR]
Pomponette [FR]
amun nefer [EN/FR]
blabla36 [FR]
Grimstone [EN/FR]
Tifididl [FR]
Nanotik [FR]
fox blotch [FR]
Jamesw [FR/EN]
Mufc92 Irish MOD [EN]

Could you please introduce yourself ?


I am Iain Keers, I'm not sure if there is anything more to say.

What has Iain Keers done during his elife ?


Well I'm sure you could read the wiki, I'm not going to spend an hour blowing my own trumpet. I've been in (almost) every UK government since April 2009, as well as a few foreign ones. In alliance HQ (PEACE->PHX->ONE) since about Sept. 09. Quite a bit really.

How do you see the eworld ? Do you believe that there is a wrong side and a right one ?


No of course not. Applying moral terms like that to two sides in any conflict is impossible, here or IRL. Individuals can act in a morally grey way, whole sides can't. Even when leaders act badly, that doesn't filter down to every last citizen on their side.

Many people think this game is not as good as it could be some even say that it's shit.Then how do you explain that some people are willing to spend hundreads of euros in this game ? And how do you see those people and why ?


Well I don't know whether you've ever played blackjack. We used to play it a lot, with no money of course. It's a simple game, but in casinos people spend hundreds of euros playing it. It's the same thing really- it's addictive and compelling. It inflates your ego. There's a big difference between being an unnoticeable speck and an all-powerful god of war. The truth is that even 20m damage in one round is only a % of the total, but it's the % people notice. If we were going to be rational, it makes far more sense to invest in companies, which create a constant supply of weapons and money for damage. One 39g pack for example can buy some 1500 Q6 guns. But it's not rational, it's just ego. I sometimes tank, usually in battles I think we are going to lose, and I rarely fight where I'm likely to win a battle hero. I try to keep ego out of it, because I really spend too much money on rubbish already.

And how do you see them ? Are they helping the game ? Killing it ?


I don't judge people for how they choose to spend their money. If we limited gold spending on energy bars it would probably make the game more playable for ordinary players. It would also likely cause more bots to be created. It would also result in the end of the game financially speaking, because without an alternative funding system it wouldn't be financially viable.

When EDEN started winning ONE blamed in on Alliens ( aka admins ).What is your opinion on that ?


One side winning all the time makes for a boring game, and not much money being spent. Look at the tanking the last few days from ONE and EDEN- more than for months now.

I guess what made things suspicious with the rise of EDEN was the speed. ONE was all-powerful. Poland was utterly unchallenged in Europe, Serbia totally dominant, Macedonia occupying the middle east. It fell apart in under two weeks. No amount of damage made any difference. Now we perhaps see either the withdrawal of aliens or a change of allegiance. Some of it can be explained by the loss of Bulgarian and Turkish damage. But not all methinks.

How do you see EDEN's futur ? Will it colapse ?


I'm not a prophet 😛 I think that the core of EDEN is Romania-Croatia, and that won't collapse. As for the others- Greece, Turkey, the Terra countries- where would they go? We don't want them in ONE. Eventually they might go neutral, reform into another alliance or take on some sort of extra front. But ultimately EDEN will exist in some form, just as ONE and its predecessors will.

Another alliance for Terra countries ? Do you mean a neutral one or just another like TERRA ( who is basically fighting all the time with EDEN ? )


Well if you look at the global geopolitics in terms of ACTUAL alliances not just "official" ones, you see certain countries sticking together. Serbia, Hungary, Macedonia for example, or Croatia and Romania. So when Bulgaria left, they divided EDEN, with Ireland, Russia and a couple other sub-national groups siding with Bulgaria and the rest with Turkey. Bulgaria fights EDEN every day- so it is basically proONE.

That means that Ireland and Russia will eventually end up as basically proONE too if they keep supporting Bulgaria. Because EDEN won't appreciate having to fight its own members all the time. Similarly the purpose of Terra is kind of disintegrating a bit. If Russia leaves, the USA loses its resources and so forth, it could cause major problems. I guess the idea of a partial merge between old TEDEN countries into a new "EDEN" alliance is possible, as is the formation of a fourth major alliance led by Bulgaria and fighting with ONE. At the minute it's hard to say how it will turn out since all our info about the situation is second hand from people involved.

The important thing is that the game forces us to have alliances. So long as we have antagonists, we will have alliances. The mutual enmity between countries like Serbia and Croatia force the blocs to take a certain shape. The only room for movement are between countries which aren't directly linked by necessity.


Your paper is called the economist ... Tell us more about your vision of the economy ?

Lol what do you want me to say? The economy module in its original state was designed with a major flaw- skill progression. This meant that the amount of produced goods went up constantly over time with no proportional increase in demand. This led to a major market crash just before V2 of the game was released.

When the system was changed to introduce Work As Manager, production simply became entirely disconnected from demand. Workers became almost irrelevant to most business owners. Admins introduced a script (commonly called "the bot" or "aliens") to buy products to keep demand artificially high. This basically introduces a minimum price on each market. The only real variables on the market now are wages and the bot price. So there is no real economy.

Originally the goal was simply to keep buying more and more raw materials companies, but the admins are now lowering the bot price. It used to be 0.33, then 0.32, then 0.3. This effectively reduces the value of every company in existence.

Since I started rebuilding my company base in late V1 I have been constantly working just to keep my income up to the high level I need to fulfil my role. I am constantly upgrading and buying, and still it is just to keep me in the 1%. There is no "plateau" of income, because the individual value of products and companies is always dropping, especially relative to gold.


Let's say you get a message from plato giving the full power for 24h what would you do ?

It's not a problem which can be fixed in 24 hours but I know what you mean. Personally what I'd do is set 2-3 of the "community officers" ie low level admins supervising mods/checking bugs, and get the entire rest of the team to basically redesign the entire game in parallel. At the minute the game is so simple there is nothing to it- that's why the missions are always the same variants. Try and think of a mission or feature that could be added- and you can't. That's because the superstructure isn't there. The whole game needs redesigning completely. It would be possible to migrate our strength/rank into the new game, but everything else would be redesigned. The problem is there is actually no goal anymore, no real purpose. It needs redesigning with a better funding (ie. subscription) model, less incentives to make bots and more focus on strategy (ie quality over quantity). Lot's of ways to do this. Check out my paper's back issues for detailed thoughts.


Cookies or cheesecake ? Red or blue ?

Cookies (I hate cake, biscuits are marginally less bad)

Red (even though I am blue ingame... I am a red IRL 😉 )