Article
One of the most active and most important topics lately is our massive decrease of citizens in e-sim. I was planning on writing an article, or writing a topic at the forum, about what possibilities we might have to slowly improve e-sim in the future. I figured that before we can look at something new or improved we should make fully use of e-sim from what we've already got. With this few citizens many modules, politics etc. simply don't function as they should. Due to this, I decided to write an article about my opinion on this topic and my solutions first.
Countries with 200+ players
Personally, I think the bare minimum amount of citizens a country needs to function properly is 200. That way you'll be ensured of at least partially a real congress, enough parties to regulate the elections, 1 or 2 talented citizens for the presidential seat and a few people being able to work out a cabinet.
Looking at the screenshot above, it's hard to admit it, but sadly only 20 out of the 50 countries reach this minimum...
In other words, 30 countries is e-sim (with a few exceptions between them) have so few citizens that most likely they are PTO'd in one way or another, and they do not function. They have practicly no influence in diplomacy or militairy concerns in e-sim, their congress is for a large part inactive, no regulations in parties, afraid of accepting other citizens because of the possibility of a PTO etc. etc.
Adding all these countries to the game seemed nice, but simply put: They did not generate more players, only the players we already have became spread even more around the world.
Why is there such a decrease?
Obviously secura has been an important part in this, but all secura actually did was deviding the players over 2 servers, but looking at both servers, the combined amount of citizens in all of e-sim too has been decreasing hugely.
The admins have of course become a lot less active. During the start of the game, a weekly admin news was usual, now we are lucky if it is published once a month. Then of course, e-sim itself slowly becomes less active.
Despite all of this, I think the real reason of the decrease, the most important factor is something else, something much more sinple: E-sim has passed his age of 1 year old. Every player leaves an online game sometime. E-sim already excists for quite a while, so it's normal that a wave of old citizens is starting to leave. This happens in every game, this has nothing to do with e-sim itself. Looking at all the articles of retiring players, all of them are very old e-sim players, it's not shocking they are slowly leaving, that's normal.
There is only one problem...: These leaving citizens are hardly refreshed. Perhaps for every 4 people who leave e-sim (at secura and primera combined), only 1-2 new ones join. We have crossed the age of the game in which the original citizens start to retire, the flow of new citizens is simply not enough to replenish it.
The other nations who do grow, who do keep having BB's and who do at least partially maintain their amount of citizens are very large nations.. looking at the small nations, they cannot maintain themselves
What went wrong and what can we do?
A while ago, I was looking at the first shouts posted in a country I formerly lived in (and my real live country), the Netherlands:
and I suddenly thought "Hey that's it!", "this is what went wrong!". Belarus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Pakistan, Chile, Belgium, Malaysia etc. etc........ none of these countries have been given a flying start.
None of these new added countries have ever grown large. In this screenshot I showed you, they talked about a BB given to NL after their creation by a moderator. And this is what's been going wrong, A country should only have been introduced if it was supported by a very large BB closely after.
Why can't these nations grow? Why can't they maintain themselves? Why have most of them never grown at all?
That is because e-sim is not known in these countries.
Belgium for example, they have got around 11 million inhabitants. Even compared to Norway, with 4 million citizens, or Lith, with 3.5 million citizens in real life, they are extremely small.
Belgium in real life 4 times as large:
Norway, really small in e-sim, even if the Belgians relatively had their amount of citizens, they should at least have 195 active citizens.
Actually, Belgium is currently mainly populated by a foreign Militairy Unit, in other words, there actually are less Belgians then there are Norwegians...
Is this positive or negative? Looking at it in another way.. Belgium has much much more capacity to grow. Perhaps that is actually positive. Belgium sadly can't do this on their own, e-sim is not known in Belgium, to find people inside Belgium who can maintain their population, they first need to have been given more citizens. They need to be given a flying start, so they can keep up with e-sim just like other countries.
To go back to the solution, I can organise a large project here, a project in which we work one week to BB one small country, then wait a week, and go on to the next etc.
But no, If I would do this, it will not do anything at all...
Many people ask for the admins to advertise for e-sim. I won't join this discussion because I don't know much about advertising, it's easy to yell they should, but I'm not a professional in this, so I can't say anything about it.
What we do can do together, is steadily and systematicly revive these near-dead countries with lots of capacity. The mods to need to organise this. What can we organise:
We start with one country, say Belgium.
- We create a BB for Belgium week. The admin could introduce this is an article. In this week, the amount of gold you recieve for aiding new Belgium citizens in the game triples (to motivate citizens to support this BB). If one of the mods could try to invite Belgian citizens as well.
- We can create a new meddal, Babyboom meddal. Very simmilair to society builder, just the thing is, you only get this meddal if these invited citizens are Belgian and if they have been invited within this week. This way, everyone loses his or her all meddals achievement, and thus to gain all achievements, you need to have invited at least 10 citizens (and get them to lvl 7) from the country which is in the spotlights that week.
- A Babyboom contest. Say, after one month, the person who has been aiding the most Belgian citizens to level 7 could both obtain a new achievement and a large gold-prize.
With this here, if the mods organise this, if they stimulate it with achievements, more benefit fro inviting people in such a specific country etc., a country like Belgium will grow as a rocket. We could easiliy get to a minimum of 600 new citizens in Belgium week. Say 15% stays: around 90 new real, active Belgian citizens will play the game.
The Belgian economy will get a massive boost due to all the new workers, their regions will improve, their militairy strength, their politics, and with more citizens, the chances of Belgium BB'ers is much larger!~
We can organise this for a country with less then 200 citizens one week, then one week rest, and we can go on to the next. With this, we will slowly, but steadily, revive e-sim, and bring new countries with new citizens into the game!
The only left thing, with 30 of these countries... 2 a month means we will be finished after 15 month xD.
Because of this, I propose we choose the countries we use for this project very wisely, we can choose them out of their real life amount of inhabitants (and I suggest how developped the country is in rl, which can be an important factor in finding more of their citizens being able to go to e-sim).
Here is a list of capacities of countries with less then 200 citizens:
- India: 1200 million
- Germany: 82 million
- UK: 62 million
- Ukraine: 46 million
- Canada: 35 million
- Mexico: 113 million
- Australia: 23 million
- Netherlands: 17 million
- South Korea: 50 million
- Argentina: 41 million
- Philippines: 92 million
- Colombia: 46 million
- Taiwan: 23 million
- Peru: 30 million
- Belgium: 11 million
- Pakistan: 180 million
This is a list of 17 countries of which I think such a project would work on very well (I placed them in order of how much I think will the effect of such a BB be). They are ordered in amount of citizens, development (a rich country like the Netherlands will have much more people being able to play such a game then in a country like Pakistan), and a little bit in easiness to find websites (it's more easy to BB an english country then a country like Taiwan).
- left out every western nation with less than 10 million citizens.
- I left out every non-western nation with less than 30 million citizens (since that would affect less people)
We can't start a project for all of these countries, but we can certainly hold such a project (one country for a week, a week rest and then another country= 2 a month) for quite a few of them. Perhaps 8 or 10 and we will have revived e-sim hugely.
If we only BB a country like Poland or Lith, it will never improve the game, we should help others so they too can invite their own people and so they too can compete in size
Sincerely,
Firo Prochainzo
Previous article:
Het "conflict" (13 years ago)
Next article:
Dutchy in congress? o.o (12 years ago)
About the game:
USA as a world power? In E-Sim it is possible!
In E-Sim we have a huge, living world, which is a mirror copy of the Earth. Well, maybe not completely mirrored, because the balance of power in this virtual world looks a bit different than in real life. In E-Sim, USA does not have to be a world superpower, It can be efficiently managed as a much smaller country that has entrepreneurial citizens that support it's foundation. Everything depends on the players themselves and how they decide to shape the political map of the game.
Work for the good of your country and see it rise to an empire.
Activities in this game are divided into several modules. First is the economy as a citizen in a country of your choice you must work to earn money, which you will get to spend for example, on food or purchase of weapons which are critical for your progress as a fighter. You will work in either private companies which are owned by players or government companies which are owned by the state. After progressing in the game you will finally get the opportunity to set up your own business and hire other players. If it prospers, we can even change it into a joint-stock company and enter the stock market and get even more money in this way.
In E-Sim, international wars are nothing out of the ordinary.
Become an influential politician.
The second module is a politics. Just like in real life politics in E-Sim are an extremely powerful tool that can be used for your own purposes. From time to time there are elections in the game in which you will not only vote, but also have the ability to run for the head of the party you're in. You can also apply for congress, where once elected you will be given the right to vote on laws proposed by your fellow congress members or your president and propose laws yourself. Voting on laws is important for your country as it can shape the lives of those around you. You can also try to become the head of a given party, and even take part in presidential elections and decide on the shape of the foreign policy of a given state (for example, who to declare war on). Career in politics is obviously not easy and in order to succeed in it, you have to have a good plan and compete for the votes of voters.
You can go bankrupt or become a rich man while playing the stock market.
The international war.
The last and probably the most important module is military. In E-Sim, countries are constantly fighting each other for control over territories which in return grant them access to more valuable raw materials. For this purpose, they form alliances, they fight international wars, but they also have to deal with, for example, uprisings in conquered countries or civil wars, which may explode on their territory. You can also take part in these clashes, although you are also given the opportunity to lead a life as a pacifist who focuses on other activities in the game (for example, running a successful newspaper or selling products).
At the auction you can sell or buy your dream inventory.
E-Sim is a unique browser game. It's creators ensured realistic representation of the mechanisms present in the real world and gave all power to the players who shape the image of the virtual Earth according to their own. So come and join them and help your country achieve its full potential.
Invest, produce and sell - be an entrepreneur in E-Sim.
Take part in numerous events for the E-Sim community.
