Alexis Bonte, the man who indirectly made this invasion possible, has been quick to distance himself from any fallout, however. “I didn’t do this!” he says, when asked for a comment. “It was the users who did it.” Bonte also adds that, once the dust had settled, the outcome turned out to be rather unexpected. “The US had about 1000 inhabitants at the time, and Canada had just 200. If this was all AI-driven, it would have been over in a few hours. Instead, the President of Canada was a pretty clever fellow. He called Spain, asked for forty of their best soldiers, and paid them well. So now there was a Spanish mercenary army showing up, and then the French Foreign Legion joined in, and eventually the US started losing the war and had to sue for peace! They paid thousands in reparations.” The world, it seems, can be a surprising place when you look at it through the lens of an internet browser.

This invasion – and many like it since – took place in the fictional world of eRepublik, a bold collision of MMO, strategy game, and social networking site. Look at it one way, and eRepublik seems a lot like the world you already live in: you’re a citizen of a country, you have to get a job in order to buy food, and if you’re clever enough, or just horribly persistent, you can rise through the ranks to fame, wealth, and power. Look at it another way, and it’s more like Facebook: a simple white page, largely text-based, with a scattering of innocuous-looking icons and update panels. Either way, someone like William Gibson is probably studiously wetting himself (if that’s possible) at the prospect of a fully-functioning world-in-a-bottle peering out of his iMac screen. He would, wouldn’t he? He’s half Canadian, after all.

“The logic was the following,” says Bonte, chief executive and co-founder of Tevin Solutions, the company behind the game. “eRepublik was never going to look like a typical MMO. With the 3D way, the problem is that you need a really powerful machine, and you need a downloaded client most of the time. You can’t do it in a browser so easily. At the end of the day, we thought, ‘We’re building a strategy game. They don’t need that many bells and whistles.’ What you want is that experience where you play something like Risk. We then combine that with the user-generated potential of the web, and then the social tools that you find in things like Facebook, and what you get is really interesting.”

What you get, in fact, is America invading Canada, and sharpish. But while eRepublik is a game with a truly massive scope – it aims to provide a user-directed simulation of a world that’s broad enough to capture geopolitics, social trends, and global economics, yet sufficiently detailed to cover what it’s like to lose your job at a tyre factory and subsequently starve to death – it’s been designed with the needs of a casual audience in mind. All you need to get stuck into the game is an internet connection, an email account, and roughly fifteen minutes of free time every day. This thing is going to be huge in prisons.

“We designed the game for people like me who are great fans of strategy games but no longer have the time to play them,” says Bonte. “You know the feeling, you’re playing Civilization at eight in the evening, you look at the clock again, and it’s two in the morning. So we wanted to design a game with the same depth, but instead of a lot of hours over a short number of days, it’s a fifteen-minute experience over several months.”

And so you start out in eRepublik by choosing a country to belong to, and then set about getting a job to earn money. In keeping with the game’s short play sessions, you can only work once every (real-world) day, an activity that involves answering a set of trivia questions to get a cash boost. The more questions you get right, the bigger your productivity bonus. In time, these quizzes will be tailored to your profession – become a dentist, and you’re likely to learn a lot about gingivitis in the process (quick heads up: you don’t want it) – but right now, it’s kind of a mish-mash. I chose to join a lumber firm, for example, and ended up fumbling my way through a few questions about Baltic ports and Henry VIII. I did not fare particularly well.

Working gives you experience points as well as money, and levelling remains a big part of the eRepublik appeal. Over time, better jobs will become available, and you’ll eventually be able to start your own company, and employ other people. Or, you could become a merchant and travel the world undercutting your rivals. Or, you could just relax, enlist in the military, and fight against another country for reasons you scarcely understand, answering trivia questions all the while.

But if you detect the nasty taint of educational software lurking at the heart of eRepublik, rest assured that the day-to-day grind and Baltic shipping pop quizzes are actually only a small part of the overall package. The most ambitious aspect of the game is its reliance on other players. The boss of your company, and all your fellow employees, are all real people. So’s the president of your country, and his congress, and all the other characters helping the world to slowly tick over. There are no NPCs at all in eRepublik, and this leads to the game’s real point: social interaction.

“When you get to level two at the lumber job, say, if it was just a normal game, you could get a better job automatically,” explains Bonte. “Here, you can talk to your boss and say, ‘You’re not paying me enough! Give me more money or I’ll move on.’”

And that’s only the start. eRepublik encourages you to get stuck into your society in increasingly meaningful ways. With the game playing out across a single server, if you get in now, there’s a chance that you’ll be able to make a real mark on the world. Having just turned thirty, and with a noble history of complete non-achievement stretching behind me as well as beckoning me into the sunset, this is actually starting to sound kind of appealing as far as I’m concerned.

When you first join your country of choice, for example, you’ll be greeted with a letter from your new president. This president will have had to make a name for him or herself – most likely by doing something industrious like starting a daily newspaper, writing articles, and getting a lot of subscribers – before getting elected to congress and working his or her way up the ladder to the top. And even if that seems out of reach as an ambition, you can still worm your way into the congress itself and help direct the course of the country from there. For every action in eRepublik, there is an equal and opposite social interaction – and even if you’ve got a bad apple in charge, the game schedules fresh governmental elections every month anyway. Like in Italy.

So while for most players, the aim of eRepublik is still to make your mark, there are endless ways to do it. “That’s the whole idea,” laughs Bonte. “Because we offer different careers, you can choose how to work your way up. When you join, you’re not just doing your thing, you’re part of a nation, and you want your citizen and your nation to do well.”

The Original: Here

eRepublik is an online real world simulation game, available free of charge. Some of the features include: Getting a job, fighting for your country’s military, joining a political party, running for Congress, and owning your own company.

War is one of the most interesting aspects of the game. From day 2-3 you can train your strength, and join your nations Armed Forces. Once you get to a battle you answer trivia questions, and your score impacts the amount of damage you do.

The main currency of the game is ‘gold’, which can both be earned in game, or can be bought for real life money. There are also the various national denominations. I have played the game for almost seven months, and have yet to pay any real life money – and I have bought a company, which you have to use gold to buy! You receive gold when you get certain achievements, or you can exchange national currencies for gold on the monetary market.

eRepublik is a text based game, but it is still very fun to play. You can spend anywhere from five minutes to five hours on the game every day, with much entertainment coming from reading/writing newspaper articles and the forums.

Step 1 – Welcome to eRepublik

eRepublik is massively multiplayer social networking and online strategy web-browser game. It provides a realtime model of the modern world and allows players to simulate their political, business or military aspirations, in so doing potentially changing the course of history. This tutorial covers the points mentioned by Plato in his introductory video, the first issue of which is the homepage. Familiarize yourself with the homepage.

Step 2 – Upload your avatar picture

Experience points unlock eRepublik’s features and the easiest way to achieve your first two is to upload a avatar for your citizen.

Step 3 – Your profile page

You’ll find the information about your citizen’s career and biography on the profile page. The wellness indicator and the inventory area should be closely monitored as they’re vital to the day-to-day routines of your citizen’s life in eRepublik. Learn more about your profile page.

Step 4 – Buy / Consume food

Just like in the real world your citizen must eat daily in order to survive. You can acquire food from the marketplace, and once a day the highest quality food unit from your inventory will automatically consumed. See more details about buying and consuming food units.

Step 5 – Get a job

Working daily is essential as your citizen needs money in order to buy products, so visit the job market and find a job. Find out how you can get a job.

Step 6 – Work

In order to work you’ll need to visit your employer’s headquarters. Your citizen will receive a salary for each day worked… and don’t worry, working in eRepublik is more fun than in the real world! See more details about working in eRepublik.

Step 7 – Train

Serving your country in a war is important in eRepublik as it helps you to receive the recognition of your fellow citizens, one of the key concepts of the game. To achieve a higher score when you fight you should train daily. Find out how you can train.

Step 8 – Exchange money

In eRepublik you can exchange any currency (including gold, an intermediate currency in it’s own right) for other currencies, each of which is particular to one country. You can do this by accessing the “Market” tab in the main menu, followed by the “Monetary Market” button. Learn more about the Monetary market.

Step 9 – Fight for your country in eRepublik

You can see if your country is involved in a war or Resistance War by viewing the wars list, accessible from the homepage. After you decide on a battle to fight in, click the green “Fight” button on that page. Learn more about the military system.

Step 10 – Vote in eRepublik

There are three major political events occurring monthly in eRepublik where a citizen can vote to elect party presidents, members of congress, and country presidents. You have the ability to express your choice in these elections once you reach experience level 6. Learn more about the political system.

Original article: Here

Farewell, everyone. Real life holds neither meaning nor significance for me since I discovered eRepublik. My final act within this incessantly real world will be the scribbling of this review, and then that’s it, I’m done. No more will the bonds of mortality restrain me – to eating, to exercise, to responsibility, I say “Pish!”.

Knowledge

Perhaps I pished a little early. As it turns out there’s quite a bit of responsibility to be had within eRepublik, so long as you’re inclined to plod off in search of it. Disgustingly, one of these duties is indeed that of improving physical fitness. You’ll need big strong arms in order to succeed in what I can only describe as the geopolitically-charged fusion of The World’s Strongest Man and multiple-choice exam which characterizes the battles (or as eRep cutely terms them – ‘fights’) for territory that form the backdrop for this game. There’s a great deal of warring going on right now in eRep – if you join the eUK today you’ll find the local media moguls stoking nationalist fervour as the country prepares to defend its ally Argentina from quixotic Brazil’s brash behavior – yet my priorities lie elsewhere.

Only democracy….

I truly started to love this game (and I really, really love this game) when I discovered the lubrication. eRep’s political machine is so well oiled, it runs its own Korean hairstyling business. I’ve been playing a mere four days and I’ve already become a regular on the forums, signed up for a degree scheme, and become an integral part of the National Health Service – each of which has been established by the concerted efforts of twelve months of elected presidents, their governments, and the input of opposition parties and the general public. You probably noticed I said ‘president’ rather than ‘prime minister’. It’s true, the eUK (and every other nation) has a president. This is symptomatic of eRep’s greatest weakness – there’s a deficit of flexibility in the way a nation can be governed. The developers have dictated that every nation must be a democracy, replete with monthly elections for president, congress, and party leadership, so we’ll see no dictators or diffused authority within this version of the game.

Levels like in WoW….

It’s not all doom and gloom for the power-mad. Once you’ve reached a certain level, newspapers and companies can be created or bought from less maniacal men, and used to wield power over those creatures who know so little about your true nature, so little. There are investigative journalists eager to pounce on the governments’ new ‘Gulags for First Time Buyers’ scheme, and companies fulfilling the role of provider to every segment of society.The eUK government seems content to allow the free-market to free-marketeer, yet the situation could be entirely different in one of the gazillions (perhaps just zillions) of other countries you could become a citizen of.

Today 50 000, tomorrow 100 000

There’s only the one server, with a global population of around 50,000 and a UK population of 3,000. There’s a wiki set up, detailing the fascinating history of the world since its inception almost a year ago, and the internet is just brimming with further examples of creativity and passion displayed by the (generally amiable and intelligent) eRepublik community. Most of the countries speak English, either because they’re populated by citizens who’re familiar with the internet’s most common language, or because they’re really Americans/Brits who’ve gone on holiday and decided they prefer the exotic climbs of some far-flung land. One of the candidates for the eUK’s House of Lords (a bunch of clever chaps who’re not politically affiliated) is having his appointment blocked because he’s busy working as a Thai congressman.

Conclusion:

It might take you a minute per day to play eRepublik, but it’s worth the time. I recommend this game to politicians or gamers who still play Miniclips….or normal gamers.

See original article: Here

Yeah, 538 people waiting to play this game. The first thought that came through my mind was “This game has to be GREAT!”. So I signed up and waited patiently for my invite. After a month and a half, the invite arrived. I had already forgotten about the game but was eager to try it out.

First Look: When you first sign up for an invite, you can pick what country/region you want to join, but it means nothing as you have to pick again when you get the invite and actually register. You start in your picked country/state and if it isn’t a popular region, there won’t be many people in your town to interact with. I picked the USA for country and Montana for the state. From there, I was assigned to the city of Helena, which has a population of 9. Some regions like New York City have a population of over 200. Others, like Spain, have regions with 500 citizens. But don’t pay much attention to the region you select as you can move later on.

First Impressions: There isn’t much to do. When you first start, all you can do is join the military, and make a CV (portfolio, resume) so you may get a job. Depending on how much salary you ask for, you get a job offer from one of the user-owned companies. Depending on how often you work, you get raises as you level up. Later on, you can even create your own company. Another option is to join the military and take part of the wars in the game. I haven’t been part of one yet so can’t say much about that.

Daily Tasks: There are several things you can do everyday. You can work, do military training, check your food inventory, and vote. All these only require a click of the mouse so it won’t take long. Another thing you can do is invite friends. They claim you get gold when you do so, but I invited a friend who then joined, but I never got any gold, despite emailing them twice about it. Another aspect of the game is the media. You can write articles about in-game politics which is supposed to be interesting. It’s not.

Conclusion: This isn’t a game that will take much of your day. It will barely take a minute, if that. In fact, there isn’t much of a reason to join. You might want to join if you’re bored, in which case, don’t. But if you insist, leave a message on the comments with your email address and we’ll send you an invite. And by the way, that 538 people waiting message has not changed…yet.

I had recently stumbled upon eRepublik through one of my friends who had given me an invite. When i saw that there was over 500 some people waiting to TRY this game, I thought we had found a keeper. The general idea of eRepublik is Players can be politicians, soldiers, entrepreneurs or journalists in different countries, and much of the environment is user generated. The game is still in invite only beta testing, but has 10,000 beta testers from 43 countries currently playing the game. A key pitch of Erupblik is the time required to play the game. It can be a simple 5 minutes or it can be a half hour. You really decide how involved you want to get.

When i first started playing and saw the layout of the game i was really excited because its very indepth with alot of things. Ultimately i would come to find out the only things i can really do in the begining are finding a job, becoming a solider, and buying food at the market. Not really a great interest keeper there. All in all, this is one of the games that looks good from the outside but when you divulge into it you come to find its not really all its cracked up to be. The hardcore gamers will stay clear of this game, and the only audience this game will find are those who are bored and willing to try new things.

Original article: Here