NationStates is a multiplayer government simulationbrowser game. It was created by Max Barry and was publicly released on 13 November 2002, based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government. Barry founded the site as an independent vehicle publicising the book one week before its release. The site continues to promote books written by Barry, but has developed to be a sizeable online community, with over 6.5 million user-created nations having been founded, with just over 200,000 of which are active, as of July 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."
Gameplay
"Issues" gaming
Players set up their nation by answering a short questionnaire about their intentions for its economy, civil rights and political freedoms, giving it a name, a flag from current countries and territories or their own custom one, a national animal, a currency, and an official motto. The player's response to the initial questionnaire defines the type of government they are running, though it can change over time as players answer "issues" within the game. Gameplay hinges on deciding government policies: Multiple times each day the player is presented with an automatically assigned "issue", such as choosing whether to allow a right-wing protest march, or dealing with food shortages in their country. The player chooses a government stance from a list of options, or may choose to dismiss the problem. Each action or inaction affects the prosperity of the player's country, and may have unforeseen effects. For instance, granting greater political freedom may lead to more civil unrest. 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. For the first 30 days of a nation's existence, only game-created issues can be answered, but after that period any approved issue can be answered. The player's responses to issues affect the nation's status in three main factors: the level of Political Freedoms and Civil Rights and the strength of the Economy. Based on the nation's civil, economic and political freedoms, the nation is assigned to one of 27 government types, 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 the most liberal public nudity laws. As of 27 March 2020, there are now 1,319 different issues that nations can be confronted with.
Raiding/defending gameplay
Outside the basic technical parameters of nation play, players can also move freely between regions, 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. Certain regions, such as the Black Hawks 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 located in the NationStates version of the Pacific Ocean, but nations are able to move to other regions, or create their own. Nations that remain inactive and are resurrected are put into three "sinker" regions called Osiris, Balder, and Lazarus, all named after characters that purportedly rose from the dead. Nations ejected or banned from a region are moved to a region known as "The Rejected Realms".
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. 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. The General Assembly, which precedes the Security Council by over a year, has historically had two fundamental ideologies: national sovereignty and International Federalism, 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 group called the General Secretariat; they determine if specific submitted proposals are compliant with game rules and hold them if otherwise. 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.
Reception
Critical reception
Jay Is Gamess Jerrad praised the game stating "the real beauty in this game is that it's accessible on so many levels." 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." 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 ". ProgrammableWebs 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 nations 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".
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 removed the logo and changed the name to the World Assembly on 1 April, which many initially took as one of Barry's annual April Fool's Day jokes.
Drew Durnil
On the 20 April 2020, YouTuber Drew Durnil posted a video on his channel titled 'Creating 1 country to battle 184,028 other Countries in the World'. In the video, he created a NationStates account with the name Deruuu and showed his 550,500+ subscribers how the game works. As a result, it is estimated that between 30,000 and 50,000 new accounts were made on the website. Due to the increased and unprecedented traffic, the website temporarily crashed. A World Assembly declaration was made to condemn Deruuu because of the amount of traffic the video caused. It received over 19,000 votes, an overwhelming majority of which were against the condemnation. Deruuu ceased to exist on 29 May 2020.
