Harnessing Unpredictability

Day 779, 17:03 • Published in USA USA • by LiveFreeOrDie

Lately, there has been much concern in the eUS expressed about player retention by heavyweights like Gaius Julius, Ligtreb, and Woxan. This article seeks to present a radical methodology of retaining players: Empower them!

A Critical Look at Centralized Decision-Making

Centralized planning and decision-making has many positive aspects in eRepublik, which has led it to be the main form of government in eRepublik. The main arguments in favor of centralized planning are as follows:

Centralized authority is part of game mechanics. This is quite true, as only the president has the capability to launch attacks or to retreat, and only congress has the authority to set tax policies and approve MPPs.


Game mechanics!

Centralized decision-making is necessary because new players cannot be trusted to make good decisions. The idea here is that new players and two-clickers do not understand the mechanics of the game and so need to be told what to do in order to be effective. For example, players need to be told where to fight in order to create a unified fighting force and maximum damage.


Silly newb!

Centralized control puts decision-making in the hands of the most active and knowledgeable players. The decision-makers are chosen in various ways - through elections, through connections to other players, and, especially, though forum posts and IRC.

Centralized decision-making keeps the country working together. By limiting access to decision-making influence to a few players, it becomes easier to arrive at decisions and to implement them.

But centralized decision-making has drawbacks as well, many of which tend to lead to player defections:


[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_uwR9ycGD-IQ/SHSSPm81PeI/AAAAAAAAABE/Pp4u6WA4lq4/s400/iron%2Bfist.JPG[/img]
Centralization: The iron fist.

Centralized decision-making leaves the vast majority of players with nothing to do other than obey. Players are told that they must move to one of three fortress states. Players are told that they must fight in particular battles. Participation is limited generally to following the direction of a decision-maker, whether that be by participating as a mentor, ambassador, or a member of the military - most players are cast into the role of doing what they are told.


Gratuitous Princess Leia slave picture to maintain reader interest.

Centralized decision-making tends to create an information gap. A few players have information that must be protected from foreign interception. So most players are given orders with little or no explanation as to the thinking behind the orders.


Uninformed citizens can be duped.

Centralized decision-making leads to group-think. After an idea is accepted, players generally stop questioning it. Players who question, for example, the tax rates or fortress strategy are quickly shouted down. Group-think tends to limit innovation. Accepted ideas are not tested against competing ideas.


Group-think in-action.

Communication of orders makes our actions predictable. For example, citizen orders are quickly intercepted by our enemies. The necessity of communicating orders widely leads to enemy certainty as to our goals.


Predictability is soooo 2,009.

Centralized organizations break easily. Centralization and placing decision-making authority in the hands of a limited number of people leads to organizations that are dependent upon only a few people. If those people are away, centralized organizations cease to function or function poorly.


The eUS forums are the central site for eUS activity. They couldn't go down, could they?

Embracing Unpredictability


The Mandelbrot Fractal: Chaos can be beautiful.

The antithesis of centralization is decentralization: It is the embracing and harnessing of unpredictability. A good example is the Internet. Each packet that goes out over the Internet is only given an address and a methodology of determining whether it arrived at a node nearer the address intact. The decentralized nature of the Internet makes it very difficult to break. It's impossible to predict the route that a group of packets will take in arriving at a destination, but this is irrelevant. The important factor is whether the destination is arrived at.

In eRepublik, decentralization is empowering ordinary citizens to take action and make relevant decisions. How would such a structure work? I will give some relevant ideas and examples.

Military decentralization The militia movement is an example of a decentralized military. The national government provides some funding to militias, but they are self-funded for the most part.


Sasquatches get together and form a militia.

Another way that unpredictability could be harnessed in the military is with citizen orders. Rather than provide one unique battle in which to fight, citizens could be given two or more options of battles to fight in. Neither the national government nor the enemy would then know how much damage would be done in the battles. The military could decide where and when to place resources based on the results of the fighting. It would be challenging to the military, but even more challenging to the enemy, who would have no way to predict how much damage to place in a given battle. The only way to defend would be to overspend in each battle.


Battalgazi prepares for eUS battles.

Providing a choice in battles makes the decision of each citizen important, and they will seek to make better decisions - they will try to find out whether they should wait to attack in one region or to attack another region immediately. Eventually, this system would implement crowd-sourcing of eUS battles. The military's job is to finish the battles and to provide meaningful options for the citizens.

Program decentralization Rather than having a small number of large, monolithic government programs (Guns for Huns, Welcoming Committee, Flying Unicorns, etc.) players could be encouraged to create a large number of smaller programs that fulfill the same goals. These programs would be in competition with one another, and the programs that run the most efficiently would prosper, while inefficient programs would fail. Smaller, decentralized programs would tend to have better ratios of volunteers to players served, and the competition would cause programs to innovate to better serve their constituencies.


Decentralized systems are difficult to break.

Harnessing Unpredictability
Unpredictability must be controlled and harnessed to keep the goals of small agencies in line with government goals. Otherwise, unpredictability will only lead to chaos. In this sense, central control must remain and be stable. I propose a new structure to promote and control the unpredictable forces of decentralization: a bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats, who will be appointed by the executive branch and serve two-month terms (subject to no-confidence votes by congress), would serve as enablers and controllers of decentralized programs. Bureaucrats would take matching funds allocated by Congress, evaluate grant requests, and distribute the funds to organizations. The bureaucrats would evaluate the effectiveness of programs and provide funding based on their effectiveness.


Well, our bureaucrats will be incented to say "yes"!

Bureaucrats could receive government bonuses based on the effectiveness of the programs they fund and whether those programs are meeting the goals of the executive branch and congress. Bureaucrats would provide funding based on matching funding already in organizations up to a certain amount, and would require accurate reporting of use of the funds and effectiveness of programs. The bureaucrat would be subject to defunding requirements of the agency that they represent (military, Interior, education, etc.).

Bureaucrats would report up program effectiveness and would distribute funds. Bureaucracy is a necessary part of any effective government, and having a class of dedicated career bureaucrats would provide a source of government and program stability.

Goals would be set by the executive; funds would be allocated by congress; and bureaucrats would handle evaluation and distribution of funds.


Sometimes, red tape can be a GOOD thing.

In summary: I believe that the best way to retain citizens is to give them opportunities to participate in meaningful ways. The best way to do this is to give them the ability to form groups and pursue goals.