Erepublik: Students Needed as Beta-Testers!

Kaleb

Hi there,

I'm an economics graduate from Nottingham Uni and I've gotten involved in the beta for a new browser-based game called Erepublik.

EREPUBLIK - New World

Erepublik is an economic, political and military simulation with a social dimension. Imagine it as Facebook crossed with Risk and Monopoly. Or if you are familiar with the Civilisation PC games think of it like that where a nation is made up of actual people who have to elect their leader.

Each person has a citizen that they login with on a daily basis. The lowest level of participation is to just login every day to work and earn money and gain in skill, and then vote 3 times a month in the party, local and general elections.

For the more active you can own companies, hire and fire workers and export to other countries, you can take part in politics and even get elected party leader and president of the country (quite hard task in the larger countries!). In March there will also be a military module added which will allow countries to wage war on each other. Competition between different political parties and between countries can be quite fierce!

The largest countries are Sweden, Norway, Indonesia, Spain, Portugal and Iran (yes!) at the moment. So we can also of course always do with more UK citizens even if you don't want to help with economics of the game.

With my economics background I've already helped the developers of the game create accurate models for calculating the GDP, currency exchange reates and inflation figures for the various different virtual countries.

There is still a lot to be added to the game and whilst it is early days I think this has a lot of potential, the concept was even given an award in the 'Le Web 3.0' convention in Paris in December as 'one to watch'.

Students with an economics or politics (or any social science) are particularly welcome to help the game develop and contribute new ideas.

Involvement in the beta is by invite only so anyone who is interested can reply to this post or email me at kaleb.erepublik@googlemail.com