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Entrepreneurs

Alexis Bonte: eRepublik reverses gaming entry strategy

By thomascrampton ⋅ June 9, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

Alexis BonteAlexis Bonte, who today announced a 550,000 euro angel investor round of funding for eRepublik, has a unique reversed-entry strategy for his online strategy game.

Players in eRepublik collaborate to develop their own countries. Described as a Massive Online Social Strategy Game, all citizens (active users) are real people who interact with each other as politicians, entrepreneurs, soldiers and journalists to establish organizations, companies and affect politics. Time is accelerated, with one year online year passing for each real world week.

Over time, the political map of eRepublik resembles less and less the real world. Sweden, Spain, Indonesia, Romania and Italy are nowadays the first five powers. One unrealistic development: France invaded another country (Though it was only Switzerland).

Although still only in private beta, 19,000 users from 43 countries log on for an average of 15 minutes each day to play.

What is the reverse strategy of the game’s business model?

Alexis and his team decided to build the game WITHOUT a graphic interface until the concept has been proven. Rather than take the classic approach for a new game - invest millions upfront before launching - Alexis and his team decided to take a beta approach and build on a proven concept. (See eRepublik video here)

This round of investment - intended to finance the public version of the site - goes towards proving the strength of this novel approach.

Congratulations, Alexis!

Online gamers might be amused by this posting I did on World of Warcraft invades Hello Kitty

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Comments for “Alexis Bonte: eRepublik reverses gaming entry strategy”

  • one
    disastrous management and development... high school kids could do better by dedicating 2 hours after school half the time they have spent already doing nothing
  • aaronasjones
    Thank you for sharing this information.
    Reverse Access Livedoor
  • me
    Ive never seen such a waste of a perfectly good idea. Programmers are a bunch of absolute incompetents, servers are more time down than running, the admins are biased towards certain countries and the moderator team...not that ive had any problem, but they have a fascist-like attitude most of the time, press censorship being the least.

    As i said, a perfect manual on how to ruin a good idea.
  • Get Quick Erepublik Invation in less than 2 Hours: http://blackmice.org/erepublik
  • Both ideas are correct. The 4 years/1 month idea is in connection with the fact that a political mandate (president/congressman/mayor/party president) lasts 1 month.
  • Kaleb,

    Thanks for your comment, but please clarify the time issue.

    A document sent to me by Alexis said that eRepublik has "an “accelerated reality” element: 1 month in EREPUBLIK is like 4 years in real life."
  • Good article - glad to see more people interested in our little virtual world.

    Another big plus of this 'reverse strategy' is that the community itself is very much a driving force in the way the game evolves and develops.

    One small correction to make:
    "Time is accelerated, with one year online year passing for each real world week."

    In Erepublik a day is a day. Don't think we could cope with it going any faster!

    The Geopolitics of Erepublik is also very interesting with 3 major power blocs emerging through alliances formed around Erepublik's 3 most powerful nations, Sweden, Spain and Indonesia. The Northern Alliance, the Mediterranean Alliance and the Asian Alliance.

    So far the big powers have avoided direct conflict instead fighting each other through various proxy conflicts in order to stop one side gaining to big an advantage over the others.
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...