- Pronouns
- she/her
- TNP Nation
- Former English Colony
- Discord
- Erastide
Source: Jennifer Government: NationStates FAQ
General
So what is this?
Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you.
Is it really free?
Yes, it really is.
Is it a serious political thing, or just for fun?
Well, you can play it either way. NationStates does have humorous bent, but that's just because international politics is so inherently funny.
Who's Jennifer Government?
Jennifer Government is a novel by Max Barry, on which NationStates is based. The book is set in an ultra-privatized world, of the sort you can create in NationStates, if you're mean enough. For more information check out www.maxbarry.com.
Why did you make this?
Because it seemed like a fun idea, and a way to let people know about my novel Jennifer Government. With luck, some of the people who play NationStates will buy the book. Then my publisher will think I am a left-field marketing genius, instead of a chump who blew four months on a web game when he should have been working on his next novel.
Gameplay
How do I play?
Click on the Create a Nation link and follow it from there. You'll be asked to choose a name for your nation, a motto, a national animal, and a currency. Then you answer a short questionnaire about your politics. This will determine what sort of nation you end up with: authoritarian or permissive... left-wing or right-wing... compassionate or psychotic... you get the idea.
Once a day, you'll be faced with an issue, and need to make a decision as to what to do about it. This determines how your nation evolves.
Do I need to provide my e-mail address?
No, although it's recommended. If you don't supply your e-mail address and you forget your password, there's no way to get it back. This means your nation would be consigned to limbo for all eternity. Think of your poor people.
What will you use my e-mail address for?
Nothing devious. Originally it was to mail you updates about your nation. Then two thousand people signed up to the game in the first two weeks and this became impossible. Now it's only used for United Nations purposes (see below). It's possible that I will use it in the future to announce news relevant to NationStates and my novels, but if so, I promise that it will be very infrequent and I'll allow you to unsubscribe. You won't get spammed.
How do I win?
Ah, but what is "winning," grasshopper? There is no way to win as such. Which is better, a left-wing civil rights paradise with no money, or a right-wing economic powerhouse where the poor are left to fend for themselves? (That's a rhetorical question.)
One way to succeed, at least in a sense, is to make it onto the top rungs of a United Nations report. These are compiled once per day, one for each Region and one for the entire world. Nations are ranked on anything from economic strength to the most liberal public nudity laws (the UN has a lot of time to fill in). There's a certain glory in making it onto one of those.
Which region should my nation be in?
It's up to you. New nations begin in the Pacific, but you can move out. You can even start your own region. This is a good idea if you're playing with a few friends: create a region and all move there. To do this, visit your current region's page and click the link that says, "Tired of life in (your region)? Then move to a new region!"
Unless your nation is a member of the United Nations, its region only determines which daily rankings list it appears in. For UN members, however, region is more important (see the "United Nations" section of this FAQ).
I don't agree with any of the options on this issue!
Dismiss it, then. This is the equivalent of ignoring an issue until people stop talking about it and there's not so much pressure to do something. If you were a real government, you'd do this all the time, of course, but in NationStates it's more interesting if you respond to issues by actually making decisions.
How do I go to war against another nation? Or trade?
In one sense, you can't. NationStates doesn't include these things -- because it's a simple game, and because they would bias things in favor of militaristic and capitalist nations. One of the nice things about NationStates is that you can craft a nation into your idea of Utopia without having to worry about such pragmatic concerns as national defence.
Into the breach, however, steps the NationStates community, which has independently devised an entire system covering war, trade, and just about anything else you can think of. This takes place entirely on the forums (mostly in International Incidents), and is role-played.
Many people have asked about the possibility of a more sophisticated version of NationStates, with trade, military conflicts, and more. This does sound cool, but I haven't decided yet if I want to do that. It would be a lot of work, and I'd have to charge people to play it. But it's possible.
The North Pacific Army (NPA) FAQ.
Who wrote all these issues?
I wrote the first thirty, back in the days when I thought nobody much would be interested in playing a political simulation game. I imagined NationStates as the kind of game you might stumble across, have fun with for a week or two, then move on. Then this entire community just popped into existence, as vibrant and dedicated as any on the internet, and it became clear that 30 issues just weren't enough. Rather than devote the rest of my life to writing them, I decided to ask players to submit their own issues, and let the moderators edit them into a form suitable for use in the game. That's the current system: new issues are constantly entering the game.
If an issue has been written by a player and/or edited by a moderator, it says so whenever you view that issue. If it doesn't credit an author, it's by me.
How do I manage my region?
The person who created a region is known as its "Founder," and can access a page called "Regional Control." This allows him or her to set the World Factbook Entry, password-protect the region (to make it invitation-only), and eject troublemakers. Regional Control is also available to UN Delegates, although the Founder can disable this.
Politics
Isn't this "simulation" biased towards your politics?
Very possibly. Not intentionally, though. And since there's no ultimate measure of success or failure in NationStates, any bias shouldn't affect much. For example, you don't win the game by having the strongest economy. It just means your nation has a strong economy.
Why is my nation so weird?
Everything is exaggerated a little. Well, okay, a lot. Your decisions affect your nation very strongly, so your country might seem like a more extreme version of what you were aiming for. Unless you have radical politics. In which case you probably think nothing's wrong.
My decision had unintended consequences!
Yep, that'll happen. For one thing, see "Why is my nation so weird?" above. For another, pretty much every decision you make will involve a trade-off of some kind. It's kind of an exercise in choosing the best of a bunch of bad options. You might find this frustrating, especially if you're the kind of person who thinks the solutions to all the world's problems are obvious.
Is my nation left-wing or right-wing?
The left/right scale isn't used in NationStates. Because it's one-dimensional, it's not a very accurate way of measuring your politics. NationStates has three main scales: personal, economic, and political. In each case, you can be authoritarian (moral, or restrictive) or libertarian (liberal, or laissez-faire). For example, someone with left-wing politics might want high levels of personal freedom (e.g. no drug laws, gay rights), low levels of economic freedom (e.g. taxes, welfare), and average levels of political freedom (e.g. compulsory voting at elections). A libertarian might prefer high levels of freedom on all scales. An authoritarian might want the opposite.
These three scales determine your nation's UN Category (see below).
Are those three scales the same as Civil Rights, Economy, and Political Freedoms?
Not exactly. "Economy" in particular can be strongly affected by other factors. But they're pretty close.
How is my nation's UN Category determined?
On each of the three main scales (personal, economic, and political), your nation is ranked as having high, average, or low amounts of freedom (or permissiveness, if you want to look at it that way). From this it is assigned one of 27 possible labels.
My nation is "the Free Republic of Bruteland," but the UN says I'm a dictatorship!
You can call your nation whatever you like, but it doesn't make it true. The UN categorizes nations based on their laws, not their names. Changing your name from "Dictatorship" to "Republic" (or anything else) has cosmetic value only.
General
So what is this?
Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you.
Is it really free?
Yes, it really is.
Is it a serious political thing, or just for fun?
Well, you can play it either way. NationStates does have humorous bent, but that's just because international politics is so inherently funny.
Who's Jennifer Government?
Jennifer Government is a novel by Max Barry, on which NationStates is based. The book is set in an ultra-privatized world, of the sort you can create in NationStates, if you're mean enough. For more information check out www.maxbarry.com.
Why did you make this?
Because it seemed like a fun idea, and a way to let people know about my novel Jennifer Government. With luck, some of the people who play NationStates will buy the book. Then my publisher will think I am a left-field marketing genius, instead of a chump who blew four months on a web game when he should have been working on his next novel.
Gameplay
How do I play?
Click on the Create a Nation link and follow it from there. You'll be asked to choose a name for your nation, a motto, a national animal, and a currency. Then you answer a short questionnaire about your politics. This will determine what sort of nation you end up with: authoritarian or permissive... left-wing or right-wing... compassionate or psychotic... you get the idea.
Once a day, you'll be faced with an issue, and need to make a decision as to what to do about it. This determines how your nation evolves.
Do I need to provide my e-mail address?
No, although it's recommended. If you don't supply your e-mail address and you forget your password, there's no way to get it back. This means your nation would be consigned to limbo for all eternity. Think of your poor people.
What will you use my e-mail address for?
Nothing devious. Originally it was to mail you updates about your nation. Then two thousand people signed up to the game in the first two weeks and this became impossible. Now it's only used for United Nations purposes (see below). It's possible that I will use it in the future to announce news relevant to NationStates and my novels, but if so, I promise that it will be very infrequent and I'll allow you to unsubscribe. You won't get spammed.
How do I win?
Ah, but what is "winning," grasshopper? There is no way to win as such. Which is better, a left-wing civil rights paradise with no money, or a right-wing economic powerhouse where the poor are left to fend for themselves? (That's a rhetorical question.)
One way to succeed, at least in a sense, is to make it onto the top rungs of a United Nations report. These are compiled once per day, one for each Region and one for the entire world. Nations are ranked on anything from economic strength to the most liberal public nudity laws (the UN has a lot of time to fill in). There's a certain glory in making it onto one of those.
Which region should my nation be in?
It's up to you. New nations begin in the Pacific, but you can move out. You can even start your own region. This is a good idea if you're playing with a few friends: create a region and all move there. To do this, visit your current region's page and click the link that says, "Tired of life in (your region)? Then move to a new region!"
Unless your nation is a member of the United Nations, its region only determines which daily rankings list it appears in. For UN members, however, region is more important (see the "United Nations" section of this FAQ).
I don't agree with any of the options on this issue!
Dismiss it, then. This is the equivalent of ignoring an issue until people stop talking about it and there's not so much pressure to do something. If you were a real government, you'd do this all the time, of course, but in NationStates it's more interesting if you respond to issues by actually making decisions.
How do I go to war against another nation? Or trade?
In one sense, you can't. NationStates doesn't include these things -- because it's a simple game, and because they would bias things in favor of militaristic and capitalist nations. One of the nice things about NationStates is that you can craft a nation into your idea of Utopia without having to worry about such pragmatic concerns as national defence.
Into the breach, however, steps the NationStates community, which has independently devised an entire system covering war, trade, and just about anything else you can think of. This takes place entirely on the forums (mostly in International Incidents), and is role-played.
Many people have asked about the possibility of a more sophisticated version of NationStates, with trade, military conflicts, and more. This does sound cool, but I haven't decided yet if I want to do that. It would be a lot of work, and I'd have to charge people to play it. But it's possible.
The North Pacific Army (NPA) FAQ.
Who wrote all these issues?
I wrote the first thirty, back in the days when I thought nobody much would be interested in playing a political simulation game. I imagined NationStates as the kind of game you might stumble across, have fun with for a week or two, then move on. Then this entire community just popped into existence, as vibrant and dedicated as any on the internet, and it became clear that 30 issues just weren't enough. Rather than devote the rest of my life to writing them, I decided to ask players to submit their own issues, and let the moderators edit them into a form suitable for use in the game. That's the current system: new issues are constantly entering the game.
If an issue has been written by a player and/or edited by a moderator, it says so whenever you view that issue. If it doesn't credit an author, it's by me.
How do I manage my region?
The person who created a region is known as its "Founder," and can access a page called "Regional Control." This allows him or her to set the World Factbook Entry, password-protect the region (to make it invitation-only), and eject troublemakers. Regional Control is also available to UN Delegates, although the Founder can disable this.
Politics
Isn't this "simulation" biased towards your politics?
Very possibly. Not intentionally, though. And since there's no ultimate measure of success or failure in NationStates, any bias shouldn't affect much. For example, you don't win the game by having the strongest economy. It just means your nation has a strong economy.
Why is my nation so weird?
Everything is exaggerated a little. Well, okay, a lot. Your decisions affect your nation very strongly, so your country might seem like a more extreme version of what you were aiming for. Unless you have radical politics. In which case you probably think nothing's wrong.
My decision had unintended consequences!
Yep, that'll happen. For one thing, see "Why is my nation so weird?" above. For another, pretty much every decision you make will involve a trade-off of some kind. It's kind of an exercise in choosing the best of a bunch of bad options. You might find this frustrating, especially if you're the kind of person who thinks the solutions to all the world's problems are obvious.
Is my nation left-wing or right-wing?
The left/right scale isn't used in NationStates. Because it's one-dimensional, it's not a very accurate way of measuring your politics. NationStates has three main scales: personal, economic, and political. In each case, you can be authoritarian (moral, or restrictive) or libertarian (liberal, or laissez-faire). For example, someone with left-wing politics might want high levels of personal freedom (e.g. no drug laws, gay rights), low levels of economic freedom (e.g. taxes, welfare), and average levels of political freedom (e.g. compulsory voting at elections). A libertarian might prefer high levels of freedom on all scales. An authoritarian might want the opposite.
These three scales determine your nation's UN Category (see below).
Are those three scales the same as Civil Rights, Economy, and Political Freedoms?
Not exactly. "Economy" in particular can be strongly affected by other factors. But they're pretty close.
How is my nation's UN Category determined?
On each of the three main scales (personal, economic, and political), your nation is ranked as having high, average, or low amounts of freedom (or permissiveness, if you want to look at it that way). From this it is assigned one of 27 possible labels.
My nation is "the Free Republic of Bruteland," but the UN says I'm a dictatorship!
You can call your nation whatever you like, but it doesn't make it true. The UN categorizes nations based on their laws, not their names. Changing your name from "Dictatorship" to "Republic" (or anything else) has cosmetic value only.