Join the new world

Niche customers are how many games make their money these days. It remains true that in nearly every venture 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the customers. eRepublik like many games functions on the principle of your small niche whales spend a large amount of money to fund the game. It is this interaction of premium purchases that can negatively impact the game if done wrong.

Case Study: Competitive Smartphone Games

You have all played a smartphone game that has some element where you are competing against other person in some manor. These games are able to pull in thousands of dollars from their most dedicated players. The problem these games face is that retention is low; Once people play the game for a week and hit the wall, they usually drop.

That is a huge problem if your game is based on competing directly with other players. If you have no players then you have no content which means you will lose your whales. They are only able to balance this by spending a large amount of money in advertisement and recruitment of players.

eRepublik is not like many games it actually requires a bit of time investment

Living in the end times
The problem this game faces is that it needs to think about players as the game content. While it is the golden rule of freemium: give players who pay more a better experience; however, this does not mean giving free players a worse experience. Even if this game was to bring on a large amount of new players that spent money at a far less rate than the current base it would be good, because you have just increased the actually value of playing the game.

The game currently is just one big Skinner Box where we become slaves to extrinsic reward schedules.

If you make the game a cool place on its own then you can actually get people to like the game without using psychological trickery.

The reason why people tend to drift away from this game occasionally is because they just get swept away by a more compelling reward schedule. I recently quit my job doing website to write software for this guy who wanted to get into the IOT market. I also have been playing quite a bit of Pokemon go in my free time. Oh my god I need to catch up on new episodes of Jane the Virgin. Oh yeah those RL relationships. Simply, if you can not keep the experience compelling enough people will drift away.

Agency
I have said it before and I will say it again. Agency is what people really strive for in a game. How can I make meaningful choice in developing my character. Not just CLICK BUTTON GOOD! SPEND MONEY GOOD! SAVE TO INVEST IN FACTORY BAD!

You can still give paying players larger rewards and give them a reduction in penalties.

Give the players interesting mechanics where they can experiment and succeed on their own merits. Those games are the ones where people are interested in spending money.

Conclusion
I have decided that I will withdraw my monetary support for this game which isn't much, but I do spend a small amount on this game. I encourage you to do so until the developers can make progress in creating a compelling experience.

BONUS
One thing we can do as a community is to start recruiting people for this game. Get out and promote some of the things you still love about the game. Work hard to invite these people in and develop a community for them.

Announcement
I am going to organize a live stream to talk about living in the end times.
If you are interested please PM me. Thanks



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