Same As it Ever Was...

Day 2,479, 23:46 • Published in USA USA • by J.A. Lake


Hello, Comrades:

After a brief back-and-forth with one of the CP hopefuls, the question came up:

What do you want to see that is different?

What a good question. Is there a clear answer?

There is a lot of talk about eschewing what the people want in favor of what is good for the "country" these days. If one tried, they could find several such statements from everyone from the PotUS down to Congressmen.

Notice, though, that the ones not saying that are the people themselves. Clearly the people don't want to be ignored in favor of the government.

Who elects the government, though? The people do.

So when we try to trace the source of the problem of our system down, we find that it's a circle. The Government thinks it has the right to trample the people in the interest of the state, however they only think they have that right because the people elect them, thus giving them some semblance of the people's approval.

This leads one to a sort of hopeless malaise. How can a problem everyone contributes to be solved?

Truth be told, it cannot be solved by anything short of society-wide action. There must be a true action of the people to stop what we have created.

What exactly can we change, though? The game gives us a very bare-bones model of a country to work with. We're given a marketplace, a world map, a fight button, a congress, a president, military units, political parties, and votes every month.

Everything else, we add. The eUS Government as we know it is all our creation, given credence by our voting to maintain it monthly. We acknowledge the metagame as a necessary evil to "keep the game interesting." Interesting for who, really? A lot of people don't frequent the forums. It's a silly place, anyway. The same thirty or forty people go there to laugh at each others' jokes and practice groupthink.

Perhaps the metagame is important, but it raises a valid question. Why would anyone play a game that so closely mirrors the mundane bureaucracy of life in the United States? What insane person likes playing make-believe pencil pusher to escape being a real-life pencil pusher?


Scott, I filled out those TPS reports you wanted for the eDepartment of State. The real ones are forthcoming.

Maybe that's why the eUSA is declining like it is. People are disillusioned that this game provides no escape from reality. Games are supposed to do that, you know. In Monopoly you get to play a rich property baron-- how many times do you think Donald Trump plays that? In LIFE you get to do a lot of things, but how many times are actual doctors overjoyed to be the doctor? What escape does playing a game that mirrors reality provide?

The best quote to pull out of this discussion is as follows:

"I think the problem is 'progress' in the eUSA is solely defined by treading water."

Pompous as it may be to quote oneself, mull that statement over.


If only a virtual recreation of the US Government could be so exciting.

Keep in mind this article is not written with a political purpose. The person I conversed with said (and this is a paraphrase): "I'll keep our bonuses. I'll maintain our standing. I'll keep our Departments running smoothly."

What is that but treading water, disguised with the rhetoric of a progressive title?

Again, it should be stressed that no one person, especially not who I talked to, is at fault for this. This is the clearest symptom of the problems plaguing the game at large and the eUSA in particular. The only solution can be a radical change enacted by everyone.

In the final analysis, we shouldn't be confused or concerned that role-playing a body as exclusionary as the US Government should yield anything short of an exclusionary e-government. Furthermore, we should also not be surprised that our population is in decline. In a game where the metagame is centered around governing and the government is exclusionary, why wouldn't people leave in droves? We're taking the game away from them.


You're not good enough to be in our pretend Government!

Reality has several advantages over the game: first, there are other things to do. You can go ride a bike or throw horseshoes or go fishing in reality. In short, the government is not all you have in reality. You've got life to distract you.

Here you only have the government, your party, and your MU. When the whole game is trying to be exclusive, there's no bike riding or fishing to distract you. There is literally no point in playing.

That is why our population shrinks. We role-play reality because it's all we know. We've got to stop to save ourselves from returning to reality because eRepublik goes defunct.

Think outside the box. Think on a way to improve upon reality, not to better copy it. We don't need a mini US Government metagame, that's stupid. We need something better.

Consider this part 1 of a series. Part two is going to be about "Something Better", at least as well as it can be defined by one person, theoretically.