eRepublik

And so you start out in eRepublik by choosing a country to belong to, and then set about getting a job to earn money. In keeping with the game's short play sessions, you can only work once every (real-world) day, an activity that involves answering a set of trivia questions to get a cash boost. The more questions you get right, the bigger your productivity bonus. In time, these quizzes will be tailored to your profession - become a dentist, and you're likely to learn a lot about gingivitis in the process (quick heads up: you don't want it) - but right now, it's kind of a mish-mash. I chose to join a lumber firm, for example, and ended up fumbling my way through a few questions about Baltic ports and Henry VIII. I did not fare particularly well.

Working gives you experience points as well as money, and levelling remains a big part of the eRepublik appeal. Over time, better jobs will become available, and you'll eventually be able to start your own company, and employ other people. Or, you could become a merchant and travel the world undercutting your rivals. Or, you could just relax, enlist in the military, and fight against another country for reasons you scarcely understand, answering trivia questions all the while.

But if you detect the nasty taint of educational software lurking at the heart of eRepublik, rest assured that the day-to-day grind and Baltic shipping pop quizzes are actually only a small part of the overall package. The most ambitious aspect of the game is its reliance on other players. The boss of your company, and all your fellow employees, are all real people. So's the president of your country, and his congress, and all the other characters helping the world to slowly tick over. There are no NPCs at all in eRepublik, and this leads to the game's real point: social interaction.

"When you get to level two at the lumber job, say, if it was just a normal game, you could get a better job automatically," explains Bonte. "Here, you can talk to your boss and say, 'You're not paying me enough! Give me more money or I'll move on.'"

And that's only the start. eRepublik encourages you to get stuck into your society in increasingly meaningful ways. With the game playing out across a single server, if you get in now, there's a chance that you'll be able to make a real mark on the world. Having just turned thirty, and with a noble history of complete non-achievement stretching behind me as well as beckoning me into the sunset, this is actually starting to sound kind of appealing as far as I'm concerned.

When you first join your country of choice, for example, you'll be greeted with a letter from your new president. This president will have had to make a name for him or herself - most likely by doing something industrious like starting a daily newspaper, writing articles, and getting a lot of subscribers - before getting elected to congress and working his or her way up the ladder to the top. And even if that seems out of reach as an ambition, you can still worm your way into the congress itself and help direct the course of the country from there. For every action in eRepublik, there is an equal and opposite social interaction - and even if you've got a bad apple in charge, the game schedules fresh governmental elections every month anyway. Like in Italy.

So while for most players, the aim of eRepublik is still to make your mark, there are endless ways to do it. "That's the whole idea," laughs Bonte. "Because we offer different careers, you can choose how to work your way up. When you join, you're not just doing your thing, you're part of a nation, and you want your citizen and your nation to do well."