NationStates

NationStates (formerly Jennifer Government: NationStates) is a multiplayer government simulation browser game created and developed by Max Barry. Based loosely on Barry's novel Jennifer Government, the game launched on 13 November 2002 with the site originally founded to publicize and promote Barry's novel one week before its release. NationStates continues to promote books written by Barry, but has developed to be a sizable online community, with an accompanying forum board. , over 9.8 million user-created nations have been created with 337,471 nations active.

History

thumb|right|upright=0.8|[[Max Barry in 2006]]

NationStates, then named Jennifer Government: NationStates, was launched on 13 November 2002 by Australian novelist Max Barry to help promote the sale of his novel Jennifer Government, which NationStates is loosely based on, prior to its release. Development began in August. Barry has stated that he was influenced to create the website after he took a multiple-choice political quiz to determine a person's political affiliations; he added that "it was fun, but I also wanted to see what kind of country my policies created, and have to deal with the consequences". As a result, Barry changed the name of the organization to the "World Assembly", introducing the change as a permanent April Fool's prank. Barry joked about the situation: "[Players have] implemented privacy safeguards, promoted religious tolerance, passed a universal bill of rights, and outlawed child labor, amongst 240 other resolutions [...] Clearly this wasn't anything the real UN wanted to be associated with." Barry complied willingly, citing his support of the UN and his total lack of legal standing.

Gameplay

thumb|left|upright=1.0|A chart showing the game's 27 government types

Players register by setting up their nation through answering a short questionnaire which determines the type of government the nation will have.

The gameplay is centered on the player deciding government policies through "issues." Issues are written by either Barry or the players themselves with moderator editing and are based on real-world politics with an "absurd and humorous direction". Users can create their own regions that other nations can populate. nor winners and losers. There are a variety of categories in which many topics can be found. , approximately 33.14 million posts have been made within approximately 443,000 forum threads, with just over 1.8 million users being registered.

Reception

Critical reception

In the 2009 book The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Lars Konzack critiqued that NationStates promoted libertarianism, but also stated that it is "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 them reflect on their own decisions, investigating political theory turned into meaningful game aesthetics." In the 2008 book The Art and Science of Interface and Interaction Design, C. Paul said that NationStates is "an interesting take on the interplay of freedom and control (and governance without government)". ProgrammableWebs Kevin Sundstrom listed NationStates among its "30 New APIs", remarking that its application programming interface (API) "provides a developer interface for automate game world data collection". Super Jump Magazines Andrew Johnston described NationStates as "a product of an era in which people still created websites solely as a means of self-expression".

References

External links

Official website
Forum board
World List