Actually this headline should read, “Players quitting Empire Avenue in droves over a life and/or business! Shareholders shocked but not surprised!”
Lately, some shareholders have been seeing this when they click on some popular players tickers:
When one of the CEOs of the leadership index deleted her EmpireAvenue account today, she posted a detailed post on why she did it. Basically, the game was more about activities and not quality of interactions (I totally agree). My comment to Sharon was:
Shocked but also not surprised, Sharon. You’ve touched upon key concerns I have with EA. Activities are rewarded, not quality. So unless I’m strapped to the computer constantly buying/liking/posting messages or have a team to do this, then people may focus so much on the share price/dividends that this comes at the expense of true interactions.
That said, my involvement in the writing community has been very rewarding and so I’ll keep on playing. Eventually I’d like nothing more than not needing to care about constant “buying/culling/selling” and focus primarily on creating connections. I think I can get there, but I will have to rethink my strategy.
Just this month at least 5 well-liked players have deleted their accounts. Some have jobs that would tie them up for months, and they didn’t want to let their stock price fall and lose their shareholders’ principal investment. Others have decided that it wasn’t what they were looking for.
Deletion is much better than letting your account stagnate and plummet. When you delete while the share maintains value, your shareholders get a refund and they won’t lose principal at the very least. Sometimes people will delete and then come back after they’re ready to, so it is not as if the players have said farewell. Plus, can you really disappear off the social media grapevine? Most of the players *do* social media for a living!
Have I thought about deleting? My god, yes. Empire Avenue can be a time sinker if I let it, and I’ll admit, sometimes I’ve let it! Then I get really upset that I’d spent the last half hour mindlessly clicking “thumbs up” to register activities when I could have been doing more constructive things like writing an essay, reading a stack of books I’d bought from Amazon (or borrowed from the library), or actually getting to know some of the Empire Avenue players beyond their share price and dividend output.
But I haven’t been pushed that far, and I can first blame the investment of $110 cold hard cash in luxury items. I’d hate having to ante up that amount again if I deleted and then returned after however-many months. I really would like to just pay it once. So worst comes to worse, I’d definitely tell people that I’m about to go AWOL for X amount of time, and have people do their fire sale, and then I’d park the account and let it accumulate eaves. I know I’m not doing the “preferred” method of deletion, but I’d do my best to give lots of heads-up and send out shareholder mails and post on Xbar/TeamZen/SocialEmpire groups and let shareholders know.
Another reason why I’m reluctant to leave is that I have really met a group of people that otherwise remained below my radar if it hadn’t been for Empire Avenue. This tells me that the platform works, but the mechanics still need a lot of work. I’d rather scale back to a sustainable level of activity than leave altogether. I’ve said this elsewhere and I’ll say it here: this game of Empire Avenue is a lot like life, at least, I’m going to play it like the way life goes. If I pile too much on my plate, I’ll adjust and learn what’s the right amount. If whatever I’m doing is taking time away from creating real connections, then I’ll do less of “tasks” and more of “actually getting to know a person”.