B08 NS History I- Lesson 1
Lesson 1: The Games Foundations
Firstly, some IRL background information.
Nationstates. A Game you must all be well familiar with by now! But where did it come from? What was its original purpose? How did it become the successful and all consuming game that made it famous?
The year is 2001. Author Max Barry is struggling to think of ways to promote the concepts for his new book ¡§Jennifer Government¡¨. An idea comes to him, which can combine his need for publicity with his own (limited) programming skills. With the help of the mysterious admin only known as [violet] he crafted a simple text based game where players could create their own nation and answer a selection of simple issues that would affect it in small ways. He admits that he never expected it to be so successful.
Almost immediately nations began to be founded, and the new nations wanted more. Nations were all sat together, in one region, the first region: The Pacific. They could see each other, watch each other grow and change but there were no real methods of communication. [violet] worked day and night and gradually nations were gifted with new features. Firstly there came Telegrams. Nations began to talk. But soon that wasn¡¦t enough as more and more nations began to flood the pacific. Realising that nothing could stop the tide now, Max jumped in head first.
The Game begins
Nations sat in their legions in The Pacific. It was breaking point, the game had to do something or it would fail. And then it happened: The Great Schism. The Pacific was split and the nations were cast asunder into four new regions: The North, South, East and West Pacifics. The Pacific remained at the centre, the older and larger of the group of 5. A rudimentary United Nations was formed, and nations began to assemble in its hallowed halls to debate issues and pass resolutions that would affect all members. But still that was not enough. The 5 filled with nations again, with numbers high in the twenty thousands. And as nice as the new features were, nothing had still been greatly changed. More had to change.
The Greater Schism
Max and [violet] looked down at Nationstates and made a decision that would create the game we know now. The 5 regions were opened and players were given the opportunity to found new regions of their own. Then, they were given the opportunity to use the United Nations to endorse each other and elect in a basic way a leader as the ¡§UN Delegate¡¨. The UN was also reformed with new rules to weed out inappropriate resolutions and to male the whole system much more workable. For example, the ¡§2 endorsements before you can try to get a resolution passed¡¨ rule was added here. Nations could also now submit new issues to be added to the game. As time progressed, nations were given further powers, and founders and delegates could change their regional descriptions and remove nations from regions too. A new game created region was created, The Rejected Realms, for those banned to occupy
These changes were a mixed blessing. The game was undoubtedly changed forever and the players began to march out and make the game their own. However this went farther than the makers ever intended. Nations began to find ways of playing outside of the basic parameters of the game. This gave rise to things such as the Invader/Defender game which we shall cover in greater detail later. The game grew beyond Max¡¦s control.
Problems
By mid 2003 most of these changes had come into effect. Yet as the game became more and more popular it faced more and more problems. Max Barry was threatened with legal action by gamers on a number of occasions. The system was attacked day and night by hackers and other miscreants. The issues system was flooded with new ideas. What had began as gamers pushing boundaries had gotten out of hand. Max had some more major changes to make, changes that would finally create the Nationstates we now know. Max Barry looked to the community and found a team of moderators and admin¡¦s to help him manage the game. He would still remain hands on participant but from here on in, as Nationstates became more hand more time consuming and expensive for him, more and more was passed down. Max Barry, who had once loved the game he had created, began to find its burdens overwhelming. By 2004/5 SalusSecondus, the admin supreme was running most of the game.
Server problems would also plague the game. The ¡§Great DiskSpace Disasters¡¨ threw the game into chaos more than once as records were lost, regions were destroyed and log-ins failed. Nationstates was eventually transferred to Jolt Servers and Forums in an attempt to fix these issues.
Research/tasks for lesson 1
1)Put the following events in order from first to last
Moderators are created
The Pacific is split into 5 regions
Player-created Regions begin
Max Barry steps back
The United Nations is reformed
The Invader/Defender Game Begins
2) Explain 2 of the problems that faced NS after it began to evolve
3) Research: On what date was the 1,000,000th nation created?
4) Research: Find and explain one of the games technical issues over the last 5 years.
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