Inside Social Games

eRepublik — a hybrid title that is part strategy game, part MMO and part social network — currently claims around 126,000 regular players (and 350,000 registered accounts), coming from 200 countries and growing steadily. Players visited more than 3.7 million times in May.

Earlier this month, the game’s developer, eRepublik Labs, finalized a $2.77 million round of funding, led by Paris-based AGF Private Equity. The company previously received $1 million from AGF and several angel investors.

Guillaume Lautour, a partner at AGF, will be joining the company’s board. The company says it plans to invest a good portion of the financing into the eRepublik title. It also hopes to grow the company beyond its current level of 30 employees in order to add new games to the company’s portfolio.

Here’s how eRepublik works: Players log in and join a country. Employing social means, they grow that country by making economic choices, such as starting businesses. To become more powerful, counties may also declare war on one another. Since there aren’t any NPCs in this world, the elements of game play rest solely in the hands of the users — known as “citizens” —that run it. The entire game is rendered in 2D, enabling it appeal to many demographics.

While the specific details of eRepublik’s future plans remain unclear, the social strategy game itself has been repeatedly updated based on user input. While that may be slowing down the development cycle, the company hopes that involving users along the way will yield a much better game more quickly than it otherwise could.