File:Erepscreen.png | |
Type of site | Website, Massively multiplayer online game, Strategy Game, Social Networking, Simulation |
---|---|
Available in | English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese |
Owner | eRepublik |
Created by | CEO Alexis Bonte CTO George Lemnaru |
Revenue | Sale of virtual gold |
URL | www.erepublik.com |
Commercial | yes |
Registration | Required |
eRepublik is a massively multiplayer online game, social networking and strategy web browser game developed by eRepublik Labs which launched on October 21, 2008 and is accessible via the Internet. The game is set in a mirror world (called the New World) where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics, set economic policy, start businesses and wage wars with other countries.[1] It was developed by Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru. eRepublik is programmed in PHP using Symfony framework,[2] and runs in most modern browsers. There are currently 30 members of staff for the website besides the founders.
Funding
eRepublik has raised a total of 2.75 millions euros[3] in three rounds:
- Seed - February 2007 - 200.000 euros
- Angel - June 2008 - 550.000 euros[4]
- Series A - June 2009 - 2.000.000 euros
Overview
eRepublik combines both social networking and strategy into a single massively multiplayer online game where players can participate in a variety of activities. Citizens of the New World can be employees, own businesses, form political parties, vote in elections, become party presidents, members of Congress or country presidents, write newspaper articles and even go to war as citizens of virtual versions of real life countries. The game has very few visual elements and is primarily text-based in nature.
Upon joining, a citizen picks which virtual country he wishes to join. Each of these countries is named after an actual country in the real world, and is located similarly. The citizen then seeks employment at a company within that country, and is allowed the opportunity to train as a soldier for that country. Training, and working at a company is done on a daily basis by a simple click of two buttons. One of the main drawing points of the website is that it takes a mere "14 minutes a day" to participate.[5]
eRepublik Gold is a fictional currency used in the eRepublik World. It is the main reference point for all the local virtual currencies (examples: USD, GBP) and it is used to buy additional features (such as companies) within the New World. It can be obtained freely by reaching certain levels or achievements.
eRepublik Modules (v1)
Economic Module
The economy is based on 12 branches: 5 "raw materials" (grain, diamonds, iron, oil, wood), 4 "manufacturing" (food, gifts, weapons, moving tickets) and 3 "constructions" (houses, hospitals, defense systems). Upon reaching a certain amount of Gold, citizens can purchase or create a company, thus enabling "general manager features": hire other citizens, set their wages, buy raw materials (in case of finished goods companies), set products for sale and buy export licenses (thus being able to sell products in multiple countries).
Politics Module
As simple citizens, players can join a party by reaching a certain level. Once they have joined a party, they can run for party presidency. If they convince their party colleagues to vote for them and they become the leaders, they can choose their party candidates for congress or presidency.
On the fifth of every month eRepublik holds the presidential vote, on the fifteenth the party president and on the twenty-fifth the congress elections. Days before the presidential vote the top five parties will select a person to run for president, and then it is decided by a majority vote by the populace. When running for party president it will cost citizens 2 gold to run; anybody can run, provided they have the level requirements. The congress elections are a bit more complicated than the rest.[6]
The party president selects a person from their party to run in each region against other parties' representatives, after which people living in that region vote. The percentage of people voting for a party determines the number of congressional seats the party gets, a total of 40 for a country if it has at least four regions. Larger countries like USA have more seats because each state will receive at least one congress member no matter how small its population. If someone ties a vote for the last seat eRepublik automatically chooses by referring to experience points.
War Module
To declare war on other countries, the president of the country proposes to the congress the declaration. If the vote passes, the two countries are at war and each region is attacked at the order of the president. In wars, the citizens of the respective countries fight independently, doing damage in order to tear down a 'wall' or build it up, depending if you are fighting or defending. If a certain amount of damage is done to a region within 24 hours, it is occupied by the attacker, though if the attacker fails to do enough damage in 24 hours, the region is secured by the defender who is then allowed to go on the offensive.
Wars are essential to the power of a country in eRepublik because they make citizens of the countries that are apart of them stronger, thus enabling them to do more damage in fights. A nation that has experienced and battle hardened citizens can become a global power.
Alliances
Nations may spend gold on mutual protection pacts with other nations, and from the beginning of eRepublik this has resulted in the growth of alliances: groups of nations that, through similar geographic positioning or ideology, come together and fight common enemies. In eRepublik's beta period, these alliances were mostly regional; the Northern Alliance consisted of northern and eastern Europe including Norwegian-subjugated Russia, the Mediterranean Alliance was an alliance of nations bordering its namesake sea, the Pan American Alliance (called PANAM) featured nations of the Americas, and the Formidable International Security Treaty (FIST) comprised Asia, including Pakistan.
As the beta came to a close, these regional alliances coalesced into two superalliances. ATLANTIS rose from the ashes of PANAM and the Northern Alliance, and the PEACE Global Community[note 1] combined the Mediterranean Alliance and FIST. These two alliances clashed in what became the first World War of eRepublik.[7] PEACE ultimately defeated ATLANTIS, which dissolved in May 2009; following its end an alliance named EDEN was quickly formed including most of the former ATLANTIS members and some previously neutral nations. In August 2009, PEACE became the first alliance in the game's history to last an entire year. That December, PEACE dissolved and two new alliances sprouted, Phoenix and the Entente.
Currently, there are four alliances in the New World, with the two most powerful being EDEN[8] (their top five being Poland, Spain, Croatia, Romania and Greece) and Phoenix[9] (their top five being Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia). The others are the Sol alliance[10] (made up of Bolivia, China, Malaysia, Israel, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines) and the Brolliance[11] (whose members are the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and Ireland).
News Module
Any citizen can create a newspaper in which he can publish articles. Other citizens can read these articles, vote on them, comment on them or even subscribe to the newspapers of other citizens.
Gameplay
The role play of the New World consist of combining the capabilities of the above modules to reach goals and become leader in one or more domains. Citizens must use newspapers to promote themselves, their companies, parties, or even countries. The congress of a country sets taxes to enforce economic policies. To wage successful wars, the economy of a country has to sustain it and citizens have to be motivated.
One controversial game play experience is the usage of political takeovers (called PTOs in-game). A political takeover occurs when a large number of citizens of a powerful country or alliance move temporarily to a smaller nation before the election, they then form a party and attempt to gain majority of the congress to impeach the president, or simply try to win the presidential election. If a foreign president is successfully put in place, the country then only has to declare war on the smaller nation, and the president will then surrender every region in the country to the attacker, or they can simply ruin that nations economy. Due to the unpopularity of this tactic, the administrators implemented a 'virtual citizenship', which limited citizens to participating only in their own countries politics, though under certain circumstances PTO's can still be performed.
Other features
Functionalities include a Twitter-like shoutbox system. By default citizens have a quota of 3 shouts per day. By paying for additional features, citizens can have up to 10 shouts per day, unlimited inbox space, and 50 inventory slots. Gold can also be purchased in limited amounts per week. Game developers, noting the use of IRC channels outside of the main eRepublik site, and the importance of social interaction in the game, released a new module, the Chat Module,[12] allowing users to create their own chat rooms, and interact with other citizens while remaining on the main site.
eRepublik Community
Out of the game, members have set up external forums which are used mainly for discussions concerning the decisions of the in-game Congress and where Ministries, Departments, and citizens are able to debate about current events. One example is the United Kingdom forums or the Canadian forums.[13] The external forums play a major part in the running of countries and the game would be considerably more difficult without them.
Very active citizens have set up IRC channels for their countries as a way to communicate in real time decisions during wars, and know each other better. Also, the recent release of the eRepublik API has sprung up sites with tools, statistics and useful information for the core players.
eRepublik Rising (v2)
eRepublik Rising is the second version of eRepublik and was officially released on July 7, 2010 after more than half year of announcements. Along with v2 came a new look and new economic and war modules. eRepublik Rising (v2) has caused much controversy from game players because it was believed that it would ruin the game[citation needed]. Since its release, there has been a major boycott of the game, a moderator gave important passwords to players[according to whom?] because he was upset with v2 and many long standing and well known players have quit the game. Many new players and casual players are also quitting because v2 implies that a lot time has to be spent maintaining your citizen. The game has also suffered several major hackings, an ever increasing numbers of bugs, and the number of illegal bots has rocketed causing major disruption in the game, and even countries (like eHungary) to cease to exist.
Since eRepublik Rising's release, the game's total member base has dropped by nearly half, peaking in early July at almost 400,000 players, and, by September 12, dropping to around 186,000.[citation needed] The true reason for this decline cannot be known. However, it appears[original research?] that nations with larger numbers of new players have been more affected. Poland, which was once the largest nation in the game, peaking at over 60,000 players, has seen a swift decline, dropping to 15,000 players exactly 2 months after eRepublik Rising's release. It is difficult to conclude that this is due to scarcity of resources, as Poland has occupied the 'Western Siberian Region', one of the most resource rich regions in the game. The impact was lighter on nations with notably poorer populations, however, such as Serbia and Indonesia, which, as of September 7, had only lost around 25% of their player populations.
The cost for living in v2 is higher than in v1, due to larger wellness losses, a new update forcing players to consume food manually (as opposed to eating 1 piece of food every day automatically), and an economic collapse caused by the switching of many profitable companies in v1 being switched by the game upon v2's release into companies which cannot profit due to the good they produce. The switching had caused to admins to alienate the crucial capitalist class of the game which ran the companies and employed workers. Many players accuse the admins of implementing higher costs of living to force players to purchase more gold. An update released on May 25 prior to v2's release removed the contract system which banks depended on, preventing players needing money to support their lives from taking loans.
The demographic and economic instability of the game after v2's release has caused the collapse of many nations as well.[original research?] For example, Russia, often considered one of the most stable and powerful nations at the end of v1 had been partitioned by Poland, the USA, and China in war. Australia, a closely guarded ally of the victorious powers in the partitions of Russia, had been easily conquered by Indonesia, commonly regarded as an aging empire which had lost its rich resource foreign regions months prior to v1's release during an American campaign to conquer their Indian and Chinese regions.
Awards
- December 12, 2007 - LeWeb3 2007 The honorable mention company[14]
- October 9, 2008 - The Future of Web Apps conference winner[15]
See also
Notes
- ^ A reference to the Left Behind series ruled by Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia; the first leader of the eRepublik alliance was even named Nicolae Carpathia
References
- ^ "eRepublik V1 launches" (PDF).
- ^ "former eRepublik programmer indicates the use of Symfony in programming eRepublik".
- ^ "eRepublik Funding Rounds".
- ^ "eRepublik lève 550 000 euros et prépare le lancement public de son jeu en ligne". TechCrunch France.
- ^ "eRepublik Combines MMOG And Social Networking".
- ^ http://www.erepublik.com/en/get-gold
- ^ "First World War in Erepublik".
- ^ http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/EDEN
- ^ http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Phoenix
- ^ http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Sol
- ^ http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Brolliance
- ^ "New feature: eRepublik chat module is live!".
- ^ "External Forums and IRC channels list".
- ^ "LeWeb3 2007 winners".
- ^ "Coverage of FOWA London 2008 winners".