Madrid, Spain based startup Erepublik is aiming to make its mark in the online gaming community with a model that combines MMOG and social network.
At its core, Erepublik is a massive online multiplayer social strategy that aims to be intricate and accelerated enough “to attract a spectrum of both fanatical and casual gamers.” 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: 14 minutes a day.
Erepublik’s business model is based on a mixture of the sale of virtual goods, and advertising.
Erepublik has taken €200,000 in angel funding to date and is in the process of closing a further €550,000 round. Management includes CEO Alexis Bonte from lastminute.com and CTO George Lemnaru from Tevin Solutions.
It wont appeal to hard core gamers but that’s not the target market; a time poor MySpace/ Facebook generation who prefers their gaming less full on seems to be the target. It will be interesting to see how it grows in the coming year once it fully opens to the public.