eRIPublik?
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by Major Lee Hung
It's been awhile since I wrote an article, so today I'll cover a topic I've touched on in the past...
Are we approaching the end of The New World?
In October 2008 eRepublik was launched as an innovative, fun and unique game playable through a browser, and quickly rose to have a massive active community. During this time, it's received international media coverage. It's been through dozens of 'baby booms' and has created a lot of memorable experiences for a lot of people.
Fast forward 8 years however and we see a very different picture. Despite a recent spate of updates, the number of active citizens has fallen heavily in the last twelve months. Year on year, the number of active players has fallen by almost 10,000. We can safely expect a further fall of about 8,000 in the next twelve months, based on past trends.
Worrying times are ahead for a game that has previously captivated millions.
Can it be saved?
Many of us no doubt hope that the game can be turned around. But the question is no longer "how do we do it?", but rather, "can we do it?".
One key point has been raised many times in the past. There are some fundamental flaws with the game that make it inaccessible to new players, and you can't rely on the veteran players to sustain the game forever.
•Strength - As pointed out many times: The longer you've played the game, the better you are at it - there's no chance to play catch up if you started tomorrow with 0 strength.
•Politics - The political module has been effectively replaced by the dictatorship system. Politics were a huge part of the social experience of the game, and have now been reduced to obscurity.
•Simplicity - When I joined, the game had it all - strategy, challenges, heated election debates and those intense battles you stayed up late to fight in. All of this has either been removed or is severely restricted by changes to the game.
We've also seen a huge disconnect between the community and the developers/admins. We no longer have fun events, we're only very occasionally blessed with a new release (which is often just a couple of new looking buttons) and 'Plato' (a blanket name for those managing the community) doesn't engage with the community anymore. This compounds the ghost-town feeling and makes the game feel almost abandoned.
What does the future hold?
Some of the recent updates have been a step in the right direction and have diversified the experience somewhat. On the other hand, this simply feels like a case of too little too late. We've seen for years the game be stripped back and simplified to the point where a toddler would be able to play the core game with no problems, and this isn't what the game's audience wanted.
Thanks for reading...
I'm interested to hear what people's thoughts are. In your opinion, can the game be saved? What are the leading causes of its decline?
To quote a popular saying, which I think sums today's eRepublik up perfectly:
"A mile wide but an inch deep"
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Comments
Interesting 🙂
I can't see this decline ending with the current people in charge of the game, but even with different people it will be hard to draw lots of people to a game like this. They could possibly make an app, and add a few more features which allow you to play for just a few minutes a day and not every day without being significantly behind other people (except for actual skill related things where practicing means you are obviously going to be better). That's where popular games seem to be heading.
That being said, this game will continue to exist more years as the core community remains and hundreds of players continue to spend lots of money on a regular basis.
Doubt it , VR is out soon this game is pre historic, only cave men will be left grunting at a pc screen
Lots of people will be getting VR in the next few years but I'd give it at least (minimum) 10 years before it becomes so mainstream that most people have one in their homes. eRepublik will exist until that happens.
I mean VR wont stop people playing eRepublik until that point.
I think the core players will stay for years, but the eRep team will need to be scaled back even further if they're going to rely on that. They've been churning out apps over the last 18 months but none of them seem to have had the viral success like eRep had. Marketing of eRep has almost vanished as they seem to focus on those other games, yet I don't think any of them will provide a sufficient return.
Virtual Reality will be mainstream soon, then who will want to play Spectrum type games like this staring at a white screen , typing , the game never progressed. shame. Hopefully someone will make a game like this in VR world.
I know a guy who's working with Facebook to really push VR capabilities. The only problem with it though is that some people seem naturally susceptible to 'VR sickness'. There's a weird statistic somewhere about people of east-Asian origin being more susceptible for example, which is a huge barrier to growth.