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On the fourth day He made eRepublik, but, behold, it needed more beta-testing

And so we are told this is the golden age
And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
-"New Year’s Day” – War

The media module is my message
eRepublik is unlike any MMORPG out there that I know of. It has 4 modules: military, economic, political, and media. Only one of them forms the core of the game, the military module. But only one brings all four together to transform eRep into the next evolution in gaming. The military module is the backbone of the game engine, as it funnels all eRep activity into the final goal of conquering enemy nations. The economic or business module supplies this endeavour, providing the gold stockpiles and gear for battle. The political module determines who will set the economic policies and who will have their finger on the button to declare war or sue for peace. What’s left over? That poorly developed underdog, the media module. The repository of all political swagger, joke articles, and other eRep detritus. Surely, it’s foolish to presume this 3-tab index of ‘news’ relegated to the bottom of the screen transcends all of eRep.

Call me crazy, but it does…and eRep’s all in your head. It doesn’t really exist. It’s a figment of your imagination. Nothing you’ve bought and sold, battled and conquered, or medals earned…none of it exists. Bits and bytes do exist. There is a data signature on a server somewhere out there to prove that you do e-exist. I’m not arguing against that. What I am saying is that the only real thing that exists is a direct product of the media module. All else is an imagined form of reality that the media makes real.

Boom, e-existential headshot…give your head a shake and take a look at what’s really e-out there.

Imagined communities
War is waged not by individuals, but by nations of united citizens. The rewards of the war module go beyond the ranks and medals earned from battle experience. What’s at stake is national pride or, in dire circumstances of defeat, national identity. To call ourselves eCanadians means we have sovereign territory. To lose our lands is to lose our political and economic freedom, without which we become the subjects of another empire. On a larger scale, alliances denote another form of identity. Whether you call yourself a member of ATLANTIS or P.E.A.C.E., it’s an imagined community made real by the politics of language and the exchange of ideas across borders. What keeps the war module churning is not the quest for more resources. eRep currency and territory has no RL value. Instead, what motivates our drive to conquer and survive is to keep alive our eCanada community. That sense of nationalism somehow feels real.

In his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Benedict Anderson explains we create our sense of national identity. To sum up his argument, he writes that the combination of print media, capitalism, and politics “created the possibility of a new form of imagined community, which set the stage for the modern nation. The potential stretch of these communities was inherently limited to [sovereignty] and … existing political boundaries.”
Or, to quote the biggest community media ‘authority’ out there, Wikipedia: “An imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on quotidian face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity. Even though we may never see anyone in our imagined community, we still know they are there through communication…According to Anderson, creation of imagined communities became possible because of print-capitalism…Nation-states were thus formed around their ‘national print-languages’."

Basically, we are eCanadian not because we own sovereign land, nor have democratic elections. It’s the media module, our national print-language, that bring us together as a nation. Take away the media module and you go right back to other games like Travian…or Halo, that have no political reality and only a limited sense of community. The exchange of ideas in the articles and the comments below have created a new form of literature, a new art. Political dramas, celebrityhood/infamy, and inside jokes have developed an e-culture and sense of national history. It’s a conglomeration of Duke Leto’s gear-grinding rants to Adam Sutler’s lengthy historical documents, or marcchelala’s election-day coverage to AB’s grand burlesques. Sure, you work each day, visit the e-market, scan the news headlines, and maybe head off to battle in a foreign land. Nevertheless, all the wars that keep eRep going are inspired by competing national identities.

Just remember, every time you click a news tab or read a line of newsprint, you exchange part of yourself with the rest of us out here. You might never meet another eRepublik player face-to-face. Still, you are linked by a common eCanadian identity. Is it any less real than the imagined bonds you share with all other RL citizens? Is it easier the ‘be of one community’ with a group of several thousand people cooperating/competing online than with a nation full of millions you’ll never see?

A Member of the Writers' Guild of Canada