NationStates: Difference between revisions
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| owner = [[Max Barry]] |
| owner = [[Max Barry]] |
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| author = Max Barry |
| author = Max Barry |
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| users = 229,703 |
| users = 229,703 active nations as of 16 November, 2020 |
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| launch_date = 13 November 2002 |
| launch_date = 13 November 2002 |
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| current_status = Active |
| current_status = Active |
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Revision as of 14:45, 16 November 2020
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 Screenshot taken of a user's nation page that appears upon logging into the game. The user is playing with a dark mode theme. | |
Type of site | Government simulation game, internet forum |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Max Barry |
| Created by | Max Barry |
| Revenue | From advertising, paid premium memberships and encouraged book sales |
| URL | nationstates.net |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Yes |
| Users | 229,703 active nations as of 16 November, 2020 |
| Launched | 13 November 2002 |
| Current status | Active |
NationStates (formerly Jennifer Government: NationStates) is a multiplayer government simulation browser game. It was created by Max Barry and was publicly released on 13 November 2002,[1] based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government.[2] Barry founded the site as an independent vehicle publicising the novel one week before its release.[2] NationStates continues to promote books written by Barry, but has developed to be a sizeable online community, with an accompanying forum board of significant size being an integral part of the site. Since its release, over 7 million user-created nations having been founded on the site, with just under 230,000 being active as of November 2020.
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."[3]
Gameplay
"Issues" gameplay
Players set up their nation by answering a short questionnaire about their intentions for its economy, civil rights and political freedoms,[4] choosing a name,[5] a flag from current countries and territories or their own custom one, a national animal, a currency, and an official motto.[4] Over time, nations unlock new customizable fields, such as the ability to declare a national religion, among other customizations. A player's response to the initial questionnaire defines the type of government they are running,[6] though it can change over time as players answer "issues" within the game. Other settings change the appearance of the website.
Issues gameplay hinges on deciding government policies. Multiple times each day the player is presented with an automatically assigned "issue",[6] such as choosing whether to allow a Nazi march, or dealing with food shortages in their country.[4] The player chooses a government stance from a list of options, or may choose to dismiss the problem. Each choice made affects the prosperity of the player's country (dismissal has no effect), and may have unforeseen consequences. For instance, granting greater political freedom may lead to more civil unrest.[4] Some issues are written by the game's developers, while others are submitted by players with in-game "populations" of 250,000,000 or greater.[7] Originally, nations would only receive issues #0 through #30 in the first month of their existence, but in 2016 when the number of issues-per-day was increased from two to four, this system was scrapped. The player's responses to issues affect the nation's status across 3 main "Freedoms": the level of Political Freedoms and Civil Rights and the strength of the Economy.[6]
Some issues take the part of "Issue Chains", which are series of Issues that cover more significant political scenarios. As of Nov 15, 2020, there are 4 Issue Chains in-game: "An International Incident", where the player responds to an NPC nation kidnapping its citizens, "The Enemy Within", where they player responds to a 9/11-style terrorist attack, "@@CAPITAL@@gate", where the player responds to allegations of a Watergate-style wiretapping incident, and "MADness", where the player responds to escalating political tensions among nuclear-armed nations.
Based on the nation's civil, economic and political freedoms, the nation is assigned to one of 27 government types,[6] from Anarchy, to Inoffensive Centrist Democracy, to Psychotic Dictatorship. Although there is no way of "winning" the game, daily "World Census reports" are compiled for each region and the entire world, ranking nations on anything from economic strength to cheese exports to the most liberal public nudity laws; thus allowing a nation or region to outperform and thus outrank other nations and regions.[6]
As of Nov 06, 2020, there are 1,403 different issues that nations can be confronted with.[8]
Raiding/defending gameplay
Outside the basic technical parameters of nation play, players can also move freely between regions (only if they can), and use their status to "endorse" each other, making one of them a regional World Assembly Delegate, a tactic commonly called "raiding". Raiding sometimes, depending on the regional settings, gives the invaders power over regional appearance, border control, and "embassies" with other regions, among other powers.[9] Certain regions, such as the Black Hawks[10] and Lone Wolves United, exist to do this, leading to the rise of other, "defending" regions who seek to prevent raiders from doing so, such as The Order of the Grey Wardens and 10000 Islands.
Regions
A region is defined as a group of nations which come together in order to interact. They do this on a Regional Message Board, which functions much like a chat room or on regional forums off site. Many regions also use Discord for messaging. Furthermore, many regions, particularly larger ones, have "regional governments", which involve themselves in the World Assembly, in inter-regional gameplay, and domestic regional affairs. Some of these regions, such as The North Pacific, have adopted liberal governmental models, while others, such as Lazarus, opt for anarchy or other forms of regional government.
New nations appear in one of five main game regions (known in the game as "feeders") located in the NationStates version of the Pacific Ocean (The East, West, North, South and the Pacific), but nations are able to move to other regions, or create their own. These are called User Created Regions, or UCRs. Currently, the largest UCR is the region "Chicken overlords".[11][12] However the largest UCR's that are not primarily puppet storage include 10000 Islands, Europe, the Communist Bloc, and Europeia. Nations that remain inactive and are resurrected are put into three "sinker" regions called Osiris, Balder, and Lazarus, all named after entities that purportedly rose from the dead. Nations ejected or banned from a region are moved to a region known as "The Rejected Realms"; nations cannot be ejected or banned from this region, but can move to another region at anytime. The only ways a nation can leave this region without any player input is by ceasing to exist due to inactivity, or by being deleted by a site staff member.
The World Assembly
The World Assembly is a voluntary body concerned with the drafting and passage of international law within NationStates. It has two entirely separate chambers of the body, called the General Assembly and the Security Council. While the General Assembly is concerned with passing legislation on various topics – such as human rights, free trade, and environmental protection – the Security Council recognises various nations and regions for good or bad deeds, through commendations, condemnations, and liberations.[13] World Assembly membership is also commonly used to as a check against sock-puppetting as, while players may have multiple nations, only one nation may be a member of the World Assembly.[13]
The General Assembly, which precedes the Security Council by over a year,[14] has historically had two fundamental ideologies: national sovereignty (colloquially known as "NatSov") and International Federalism (colloquially known as "IntFed"), which is the in-game equivalent to the real-world World Federalist Movement. NatSov players were of the belief that the General Assembly ought to leave as many issues as possible to the discretion of individual nations, and tend to only be more supportive of repeal of previously passed legislation. The General Assembly is moderated by a committee of nations called the General Secretariat; they determine if specific submitted proposals are compliant with game rules and hold and/or reject them if otherwise.[15]
The Security Council is concerned with recognition of nations or regions for actions that are deemed either good or bad. It can take several actions: commendations, condemnations, and liberations. Commendations and condemnations are broadly seen as badges of honour for remarkable or important player actions. The types of actions rewarded vary and include things such as achievements in roleplay and gameplay. Liberations are applied to regions, striking down delegate-imposed passwords that make it difficult to move into the region. They are used at times to defend against raiders or offensively to open opportunities to raid.
Forum board
The website features a large and active forum board powered by phpBB. The board was formerly powered by Jolt from 2004 until 2009, with the acquisition of the company by company named OMAC Holdings being the central reason behind moving from Jolt to phpBB; before this the board had been powered by an older, issues-laden version of phpBB.[16] There are a variety of categories in which a plethora of topics can be found; including but not limited to nation and region-oriented roleplaying, World Assembly discussions and drafting, raiding and liberations, and discussions of current events and creative arts among other areas of discourse. The board lacked moderation from its creation in November 2002 alongside the main NationStates site until April 2003. As of November 2020 approximately 31 million posts have been made on the forum within approximately 400,000 forum threads, with just over 1.41 million users being registered on the forums. The board has anywhere between 50 to 250 users online at any given time, with the most users online at the same time being 590 in April 2013.[17][18]
Notable events in the forum board's history include:
- The ban on new iterations of the left-wing and right-wing 'megathreads' in June of 2020, which generated significant controversy amongst the community as they had become staples of the site's discussion scene. Many believed that keeping the threads despite their numerous perceived flaws would have been a better course of action than barring them, whilst site administrators and others defended the bans by pointing out that the range of beliefs that could be encompassed within the political spectrums of both left and right-wing politics is vast, as well as using the perceived toxicity and unwelcoming nature of both megathreads as valid reasons to bar future iterations of them.[19]
- The mass banning and punishments of board members engaging in erotic roleplaying in May of 2016. A primary catalyst for the punishments being enacted was the involvement of underage roleplayers, users on the forum, and characters within roleplaying threads and chats.[20]
- A politically left-leaning moderator abusing her privileges to retaliate against conservative board members in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush, leading to the removal of her moderator privileges and her being pushed out from the site.[21][22]
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."[23] In the 2008 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."[24] 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)".[6] 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".[25]
Popularity
The game attracted a thousand nations within two weeks, and had 20,700 by the end of the first year.[4] Barry was surprised by the popularity of the game, and saw its discussion forums developing into an arena for political debate.[4] 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".[2]
In April 2020 a relatively popular YouTuber named Drew Durnil made a video on NationStates, which consequently lead to thousands of his viewers creating new nations. The influx of new accounts was detrimental to the site's performance, and was received negatively by the NationStates community, with many referring to the incident as the 'Drewpocalypse'.[26][27][28]
DDoS attacks
The site has been the target of at least two Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, one in July 2014, and one in October 2018.[29][30]
United Nations dispute
In 2008, Barry received a cease and desist order from the United Nations for using the UN name and logo for the international ruling body on the website. In response, he changed the logo and changed the name to the World Assembly on 1 April,[31][32] which many initially took as one of Barry's annual April Fool's Day jokes. However, the page for the World Assembly still contains the URL path 'un' to this day.
See also
References
- ^ Barry, Max (13 November 2004). "NationStates is 2!". NationStates News. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
- ^ a b c O'Connell, Pamela Licalzi (16 January 2003). "ONLINE DIARY". The New York Times. p. 3. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
- ^ Jody Ewing (16 January 2003). "Young author's new book 'Jennifer Government' Headed for Big Screen". JodyEwing.com. Siouxland Weekender. Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
- ^ a b c d e f Goldman, Noah. "A Web Site of Virtual Nations". ABC News. Archived from the original on 7 March 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
- ^ Agencies (12 September 2006). "Virtual nations take control over the cyber world". The Economic Times. The Times Group. Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f Christa Sommerer; L. C. Jain; Laurent Mignonneau (2008). The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design. Springer. p. 173. ISBN 978-354079869-9.
- ^ "NationStates Forums | Got Issues?". NationStates. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - NationStates Issues **SPOILER ALERT**". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 2020-11-13. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 2020-11-14 suggested (help) - ^ Barry, Max. "NationStates FAQ". NationStates. Archived from the original on 6 November 2020. Retrieved 13 Nov 2020.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 9 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ "NationStates | The Black Hawks". NationStates. Archived from the original on 21 September 2020. Retrieved 5 Nov 2020.
- ^ "NationStates | Chicken overlords". www.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
- ^ "NationStates | Regions | Most Nations". www.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 28 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
- ^ a b "NationStates | Frequently Asked Questions". www.nationstates.net. Retrieved 2020-07-16.
- ^ "NationStates | News". www.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
- ^ https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=159348
- ^ "NationStates | News". www.nationstates.net. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - Significant Forum Events". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 14 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ "NationStates • Index page". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - [Discussion/Announcement] NSG's "Wing" Megathreads". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 14 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ "NationStates • View topic - Annihilation April/May Massacre: Cybersexing Deletions". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 23 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - Inactive/Former Mods". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 14 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ "NationStates • View topic - [Question] Can a mod delete a mod?". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 14 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ Jerrad (13 October 2009). "NationStates - Walkthrough, Tips, Review". Jay Is Games. JayIsGames.com. Archived from the original on 2 April 2020. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
- ^ Perron, Bernard; Wolf, Mark J.P., eds. (2008). The Video Game Theory Reader 2. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-3-540-79869-9.
- ^ Kevin Sundstrom (10 March 2013). "30 New APIs: Intercom, EasyPost, and Jorum". ProgrammableWeb. ProgrammableWeb.com. Archived from the original on 1 March 2018. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - Drew Durnil broke nationstates". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 22 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ Durnil, Drew (April 20, 2020). "Creating 1 country to battle 184,028 other Countries in the World". YouTube. Archived from the original on 31 October 2020.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - The Drewpocalypse Thread". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 24 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - *** MAJOR OUTAGE *** [now over]". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 23 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ "NationStates • View topic - NationStates is down again". forum.nationstates.net. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-21.
- ^ "The United Nations vs Me". Max Barry. Archived from the original on 13 November 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
{{cite web}}:|archive-date=/|archive-url=timestamp mismatch; 8 November 2020 suggested (help) - ^ "Nationstates" (PDF). 21 January 2008. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 November 2020. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
