''NationStates'' (formerly ''Jennifer Government: NationStates'') is a multiplayer government simulation

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created and developed by

Max Barry Max Barry (born 18 March 1973) is an Australian author. He also maintains a blog on various topics, including politics. When he published his first novel, ''Syrup'', he spelled his name "Maxx", but subsequently has used "Max". Barry is also th ...

. Based loosely on the novel '' Jennifer Government'', the game was publicly released on 13 November 2002 with the site originally founded as an independent vehicle publicising the novel one week before its release. NationStates continues to promote books written by Barry, but has developed to be a sizeable online community, with a large accompanying forum board. Since its launch, over 8.27 million user-created nations have been created, with around 304,218 being active as of 5 January 2023.

Gameplay

Players begin by setting up their nation through answering a short questionnaire, which determines the type of

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...

the nation will have. The gameplay hinges on deciding government policies through "issues", which are presented to the player multiple times each day. The player may choose from a list of options or dismiss the problem. The player's responses may affect the nation's status across three main statistics: '' political freedom'', ''

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'', and ''

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''. Based on these main statistics, the nation is assigned to one of 27 government classifications. Players can also choose to join the World Assembly, a United Nations-like voluntary body concerned with the drafting and passage of international law. It has two entirely separate chambers: the General Assembly and the Security Council. While the General Assembly is concerned with passing legislation on various topics, the Security Council recognises various nations and regions for good or bad deeds. Players spawn in one of five 'Pacific' regions (North, South, East, West, and just the 'Pacific') but they can then move to different regions, which are a community function similar to a

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. Many regions have a functional government and democracy. Users can create their own regions. While NationStates lacks a mechanic for war between nations, it is possible to invade and take over other regions by exploiting a World Assembly mechanic whereby every World Assembly member can 'endorse' other World Assembly members in their region, and the nation with the highest number of endorsements in a region becomes the World Assembly (WA) Delegate, and is responsible for approving proposals to get them to the voting floor. WA Delegates can have other administrative permissions as well, so a group of World Assembly member nations can move into a region, endorse each other until one of their number becomes the WA Delegate, and then use the Delegate permissions to do what they want with the region. This is known as 'raiding', and the opposing strategy, where nations move into a raided region and endorse the original Delegate to prevent the 'raiders' from taking over or griefing the region, is known as 'defending'.

Influence

In an interview, Max Barry said the influence for the game began with a questionnaire he took: "NationStates was influenced by a little political quiz I did once, where you answer a bunch of multiple-choice questions and have your politics categorised. ... It was fun, but I also wanted to see what kind of country my policies created, and have to deal with the consequences".

Reception

Critical reception

'' Jay Is Games''s Jerrad praised the game stating "the real beauty in this game is that it's accessible on so many levels." In the 2009 book ''The Video Game Theory Reader 2'', Lars Konzack critiqued that it promoted libertarianism but says "open to experimentation and reflection on politics rather than being merely political propaganda. It becomes a philosophical game in which the player is invited to become part of an examination of political ideas. This game takes advantage of the potential in games to truly put the player in control and let him reflect on his own decisions, investigating political theory turned into meaningful game aesthetics." In the 2008 book ''The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design, Volume 1'', C. Paul said ''NationStates'' "is an interesting take on the interplay of freedom and control (and governance without government)". '' ProgrammableWeb''s Kevin Sundstrom listed ''NationStates'' among the ''30 New APIs'' remarking its application programming interface "provides a developer interface for automate game world data collection".

Popularity

The game attracted a thousand players within two weeks, and had 20,700 by the end of the first year. Barry was surprised by the popularity of the game, and saw its discussion forums developing into an arena for political debate. He was impressed by some of the activity in the forums, relating how "one nation accused another of conducting secret missile tests and posted photos to prove it. That escalated into an international crisis that was only solved by sending in teams of independent weapons inspectors".

Cease and desist

On 21 January 2008, developer Max Barry received a cease-and-desist letter from the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoniz ...

for unauthorised usage of its name and emblem for the game's fictional organisation. As a result, Barry changed the name of the organisation to "World Assembly". To introduce the changes, it was disguised as an

April Fools April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may b ...

prank, where the in-game United Nations “spectacularly imploded in a colossal fireball of extra-dimensional inanity” and was suddenly replaced with the World Assembly, and all resolutions passed by the in-game United Nations are now marked as historical resolutions.

Forum board

NationStates has a large and active forum board. The board was hosted from 2004 to 2009 by Jolt, before being self-hosted when Jolt was acquired by OMAC Holdings. There are a variety of categories in which a plethora of topics can be found. As of November 2020, approximately 31 million posts have been made within approximately 400,000 forum threads, with just over 1.41 million users being registered.

References

External links

Official website

Forum board
{{Portal bar, Internet, Politics, Video games 2002 video games Browser games Fictional governments Government simulation video games Massively multiplayer online role-playing games Browser-based multiplayer online games Video games developed in Australia Political video games