It’s Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from eRepublik, a Spanish startup that wants to take strategy games and make them more social, more interactive, and therefore, more fun.
eRepublik wants to change the way that strategy games are played by taking out the hours of game play. Anyone who has played Risk or Diplomacy knows how long traditional strategy games can take. eRupublik has built an online virtual geo-political simulator that allows the player to “make history” in its virtual world with as little as fifteen minutes of daily game play. And, it is both free and completely browser based, two things that most strategy games are not.
It plans to make money from by selling the virtual currency used in the game. eRepublik is currently in private beta, and has raised one million dollars.
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Looks sick.
Second.
Yea. It’s too bad eRepublik offers a lackadaisical gaming experience. I’m in the private beta.
You log in for the first time, create a character, and attempt to get a job. This usually involves another player granting you one, so you need to message someone and wait.
Then you get a job and click on a “work” button every day, once a day, until you have enough money to buy some more food.
It’s seriously the most boring experience I’ve had from any game ever. I get that eventually I’d have enough money or “work experience” or whatever to do something useful, but it really shouldn’t take that long before I can have some fun.
Sounds cool…Like to give it a try…Run FreeWargamer.com as a hobby site, deals with a lot of these sort of companies.
ThatGuy kind of nailed it. Sounds great in concept but it is quiet lackadaisical. I’m in private beta as well. I do think they are onto something but it needs a little bit more umf for that 15 minutes you do put in during the day.
Why profile a company that has 5000 odd people waiting for an invite ? , it doesnt even say when open registration will take place. its just waiting peoples time.
This sounds a lot like Cantr (http://www.cantr.net), which has been around for many years. Except in Cantr, there is no currency, and absolutely no way to buy your way to the top. Give Cantr a try while waiting for this one.
First of all this is a Romanian start-up. Alexis Bonte (the guy who is pitching) came here and bought a videosharing start-up and then he set up eRepublik.
@thatguy, tks for the feedback don´t forget that what you are playing with is a basic prototype that we have used to gather feedback and content in order to launch the public version (@mikael the public version will be live in a few days and we will let everyone in the waiting list in).
Still 35,000 people do play every day and seem to enjoy it so not so “lackadaisical” for everyone (tks for teaching me a new word, had to look that up ;o)
@David checking out FreeWargamer.com
This is a great game. Worth playing every sec of your life.
Just enjoy and the fun will come too!
It’s a Romanian start-up, you American racists!!!!!! George Lemnaru is a Romanian, he had the idea, and Alexis Bonte ( a French) has the money. AMERICAN IGNORANTS! AMERICAN IGNORANTS! AMERICAN IGNORANTS! AMERICAN IGNORANTS! AMERICAN IGNORANTS! IT’S A ROMANIAN START-UP, YOU IGNORANTS!
I guess you should tone down your voice.
You know that George Lemnaru is Romanian. I know that too because I am Romanian too. But did you know that Alexis is half french-half portuguese?? You didn’t …is that making you an ignorant??
Whose fault is the eRepublik didn’t promote themselves as romanian-spanish startup? Is it Techcrunch’s fault? Whose fault is that everybody hear about Alexis Bonte and nothing about George? You should talk to eRepublik about that! And to their PR department…see what they have to say…instead of coming here and ranting about “American Ignorants”…
Romani isn’t the center of the universe, you know…and if people don’t know about us is because WE don’t promote ourselves better.
only the offices are in spain. but you say that eRepublik is a spanish start-up. Be ashamed of this, TechCrunch liar !
@alex relax its actually an international start up with offices in Romania (tech and community management) and Spain (Biz dev, finance, marketing & Pr). And yes its correct that its George´s (the CTO) original idea, altough he will be the first to say that the team and the Erepublik citizens make it better each day with their feedback. Oh and I´m half french, half portuguese and I do a little more than just having money :o)
Erepublik is a great game and better idea.
I don’t think it’s a game for hardcore players who spent hours everyday improving the skills of their virtual characters. Here, the only skill that matters is your own: economy, politics, diplomacy, and even war strategy (meaning the art to lure the enemy to do what you want, not giving orders to brainless troops).
I’m also a player of the beta, and the great inside Erepublik is that you don’t have an objective, you set your own goals. For example, if you are a general in a war, you not only have to plan and do some clicks to send troops. You must become a leader of other players, and the more difficult part, gain their respect and confidence to guide them to battle. If you are a politician you must write and create your political program, and convince people to vote you, but not only that. Once you become president or a minister, you must work during a full month to maintain the economy and all the country.
This game covers the place for an important group of players, who want to test themselves everyday, who want to be able to play from their job and don’t want to spend endless hours improving their character or killing monsters to gain more experience points. It’s a good simulator. Yeah it needs improvements, many improvements, but it’s in the good path..
I actually was bored at work over the summer and started playing Ikariam. I still log on every day or two to command my cities and armies, etc. It’s pretty addicting and sounds way more fun than this game. Check it out.
Ikariam.com
This really is an amazing accomplishment. As with everything it is not without its flaws, but the amount of depth, complexity, and work brought forward is unparalleled in any other game you can find. I see amazing thigns coming from erepublik in the future and I am glad to be a part of it.
I have been actively playing Erepublik since April of 08′
Thatguy plays games like Kingdom Hearts. He can’t play a game without being told to push the A button to jump. He gets lost every 2 minutes in GTA. He throws the controller every time the the princess is in another castle
Marry me, Emerick.
Gentlemen.
Great idea, bad implementation.
Game bugs, game team ignorance, server hacks,… all that is enough not to pay for their in game add-ons and not to play game any more.
Really disappointed after 6 months of play and huge promises from admins how they will repair and control the game mechanics. Big words, no implementations!
Better find other game to play.