When The Levee Breaks

Part Two of Three.

The Liberation Flag of The Proletariat Coalition (November 2011)

No better time to pick up where I left off than the tenth anniversary of the founding of Star City. Hard to believe.

When I originally wrote my NationStates memoirs the game was entering its twilight period and it didn't look like the dawn would follow. Another site was then in ascendence and the former star site blew off its outer shell and began to contract. At the time, and on this blog, I voiced a hope that an exodus of players might at least alter the balance of power in some long-running conflicts rather than the game just become very very quiet. It looked like the latter transpired because for about five years my activity fell to the absolute minimum of logging in to prevent deletion. Of the more than a dozen puppets I maintained at the height of the game I now only have two functioning as informal ambassadors - Isla Pena in the Allied States of EuroIslanders and Dotjxraomm in the AntiCapitalist Alliance. Though it felt like centuries had passed, the game was declining after three years.

Where Do I Start, Where Do I Begin?

Part One of Three.

The Flag of The Polity of Star City

Since I last wrote about NationStates four years ago, I've noticed that the governments of many regions ceased to function and slid into informal gerontocracy as the numbers of residents declined. Well, as I write this on January 30th, my nation Star City is just over seven years old. When this is published my home region The Proletariat Coalition will also be seven years old - though the exact date in March is long-forgotten, it was contemporary with the invasion of Iraq; as such I tend to set the anniversary on the 20th. To mark this, I'm republishing my memoirs from five years ago. You can read the currently outdated history of TPC at NSwiki.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing

CN about to bash NS over the head with a rock in early 2006

It's glaringly obvious that NationStates is dead. Compared to its heyday of 2004, NS is now a post-apocalypse collection of the big regions that weathered the calm. The RPers are still there, but they never mattered. The PRP was right to complain about the complete lack of gameplay improvements as NS passed its 3rd birthday. Perhaps NS never was alive - Max Barry conceived it as a marketing exercise for his book Jennifer Government. CN was developed by Kevin (peace be upon him) as a perpetual nation-sim. The problem was there from the outset - it was soulless.

Post-Exodus

In my last post about Cyber Nations, I briefly mentioned an envisioned "NS Exodus".

The PRP seems to have enthusiastically embraced CN, after their criticisms of NS game-mechanics and utter lack of development in 3 years, to the point the new organisation on the block for NSers is named NPO and no-one is condemning it. I haven't logged into NS daily since Summer 2004, though every day for the past week, I've been on CN every few hours.

It can only be a matter of time until I completely give up on my nations in NS. But let's assume the same happens to prominent members of the Pacific. Eventually the core of the PRP would disappear by the end of 2006, leading to a power vacuum. A new government would rise in the PRP's place, other regions would experience similar changes, and the entire landscape of NS could alter drastically.

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Descent into Bickering

Everybody's other favourite political game (after Particracy) is Cyber Nations. As is traditional for a new political game, a massive influx of NS players will soon bring down their server, though not as bad as the NS server was way back in December/January 2003 because all the short-time players will not be there.

Will a critical mass of long-time NSers bring problems? I don't think so, the issues between personalities on NS should not arise because, unlike NS, CN provides a game-mechanics way to interact. NS gave us the regional message board and essentially halted - the regions then went away and created off-site forums and regional governments (interlinked). That's why personality conflicts and factionalism are abound.

There already appears to be a pan-NS alliance forming on CN. I think this could be the beginning of the NationStates Exodus.

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Jumping Ship

There's an interesting discussion in the Pacific Press about the dire state of NS over the past 2.5 years. This is an extract of a mini-essay you can find in my memoirs: The Redundancy of the NationStates Game (February 2005):

I think it was last Tuesday - NS was down again whilst they implemented new code. What struck me was that it really made no difference - the government ran along nicely even though we couldn't actually see our region or our nations.
If NS was terminated tomorrow, would it make a difference?

No, it wouldn't make a difference. The communities that were established because of NS, do not require NS to continue. A lot of long-time NS players are now playing Particracy aswell, and some have even completely jumped ship - and the communities have also moved. Take The Proletariat Coalition for example, my mini-essay described why a group of political similar individuals was about more than just playing NS - think of it as an internet-based subculture pressure group. A dozen or so TPCers, including myself, are now also playing Particracy and I've founded an "party organisation", named The Proletariat Coalition.

The real TPC community is based on its forum, like all other developed NS regions. There's nothing to prevent it branching into Particracy or any other political games. That's where I see the future for NS communities - unless NS2 is ever so spectacular, that we can't afford to concentrate on anything else.

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NS: TPC Delegate Election

I pass the baton to another... at least there was an election this time :P

Hopefully with USK immigration bringing new active players to the region, there might be more than two candidates standing for election.

Looking back on my delegacy (I'm leaving the good material for the update to my memoirs), it was, as the first, fucked up by circumstance. Did I acheive my aims?: Yes, the only one not implemented was the prefecture setup which I hope to get done through the R&A committee (If I was to pass the buck, I cite the Hypercube abandoning his post and deciding to work in the Story thread).

But the election has just finished and I pass the reigns to fellow blogger, Paranoidm.

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NS: Francoist Thought

Most of Francoist Thought is on par with Jiang Zemin's Three Represents - Plenty of words, lacking in meaning. The rest is an interesting adaptation of Conflict Theory (Marxism) into NationStates - something which I had been trying to do for over a year.

However, the PRP is, as I have observed, a classic totalitarian state - though, less so than its NPO predecessor.

NS: Delegacy

This blog is many things - it's also being used to shoehorn in some Delegate work from NS.

This week has been quite busy (in terms of actually being on NS, rather than offsite forums). My time has been divided into argueing on the CvHQ, and discussing relations with the PRP - oh, and I was mentioned in a longtime player's farewell letter. Before the end of my term, I also want to organise the prefecture structure for the future so as to maintain a population spike of 300+.