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Make it into a MMOG, with groups of players forming "governments" to run specified countries in the game, that'll be even more fun

www.nationstates.net

My little chunk is in

http://www.nationstates.net/nation=lemmingcus_meenicus

Yes yes yes, we have all read it, but have you played it?

Why aim for Warcraft? Unless the aim is to limit research to owners of high-end computers who rank graphics at least as high as gameplay and have large amounts of spare time and will put up with grinding, then it's the wrong model to compare such a project to.

Planetarion peaked at over 100,000 players (before it went pay-to-play) and all you need to play it is a browser. It's a simple game to code, as evidenced by the countless clones that were quickly written when the owners started charging. Gameplay there happens in 3-month (or so) rounds, with rule changes each round, so it's the perfect model for the research described.

Cutting things down further, the browser-based NationStates is so trivial it's barely even a game, and there's practically no in-game interaction between players, but 1.9 million nations have been created. It works because it's a nice idea, and it has forums where people roleplay all the things the game ought to include but doesn't.

If you want a game where economics play a big part, aim it at web users. There's a huge and nearly empty market for an blackberry/iPhone MMPORG. Make it turn-based so you can play it to a decent standard even if you only log in once a day, and hard-core players don't need to check in more than once an hour. Political Asylum provides an excellent model of how this can work.

There's a lot of games which take less than 15 minutes a day to play. One example is Nation States, which takes less than 5 minutes a day to play. Something non-gamey, like Brain Age, doesn't require much more than a few minutes either.

I've read a lot of comments on handhelds that like their instant-on/resume feature (specifically, the DS and the PSP) so they can play games while "on line at the bank" --- now, I'm not jubilant about the service at my bank but even when it takes a long time I'm in line for no more than 5 or 10 minutes. So clearly there's people who buy these gadgets to play for minutes at a time. A review I read for Tetris DS lauded it for the ability to be online and playing someone else within 60 seconds. Heck, I bet you can get in a Halo 2 game in or two in 15 minutes.

If you look at older games there's a lot of games which can be satisfying in 15 minute increments. Take Geometry Wars or Bejeweled for example. Games that you find on XBLA or other compilations.

Or, if we're talking table top games, stuff like Checkers or Othello or Backgammon or any number of simple card games. Not every table top game needs to be as long as complicated as Risk or Settlers of Catan or Monopoly.

It sounds insincere and hackneyed but gaming is about passion. If you like gaming for gaming's sake (not just to pass the time a la MS Solitaire) then it doesn't matter if you only play half an hour a day or 3 hours a day.

I dunno if it's exactly what you're looking for, but have you tried out NationStates? It's free and all that...

Since none of the posters that have replied to this seem to be aware of the fact:

Nationstates is a game where you play as a government, or a head of state, or maybe just the whole nation (it's not really specified). You are given 'issues' once or twice a day, and depending on the choice you make, you change the way you're nation is described. Also, it takes a very satirical view of just about everything.

I know several teachers who use NationStates in class. Funnily enough I'm also aware of many schools who ban us outright.

We got so many enquiries from teachers that we made a special page for them.

I know several teachers who use NationStates in class. Funnily enough I'm also aware of many schools who ban us outright.

We got so many enquiries from teachers that we made a special page for them.

require the citizens to be personally responsible for their lives. Drugs would be legal. There would be no speed limits.

When people drive, they are also responsible for other people's lives, wether they realise it or not. Hence the speed limits.

Especially if you're gonna have people driving high on coke.

Anyway, go play nationstates, it's free, and fun for a while.

I would like to see a game with a dynamic system based on all kinds of sociology and psychology (basically culture in general) including religion. The probem with a lot of the games that involve culture is that the 'cultures' in them are preset and unchangable.

A game where you get to mold the details of a culture and see how it develops and how it interacts with other cultures would be fantatic.

A primitive version of what I am thinking of would be something like NationStates. With that, you just set up a style of government, and you deal with issues that it sends you every day. I am thinking more along the lines of something realtime where you not only delt with issues that it gives you, but also initiated events yourself, actively influencing the culture.

The culture would have various subcultures in it: religious, intellectual, militant, pacifist, apathetic, civil-rights-loving, and others groups of that nature. There would also be a counterculture element, if the culture moves in one direction, a certain low percentage of the population would move in the opposite direction.

In the real world, naturally an individual person can belong to more than one subculture. But of course in the game we are looking at the cumulative effect, not at individuals.

Some subcultures might work well together and a person could easily be a member of both, like intellectual and freedom-loving, while others are almost entirely incompatible in the same person, like pacifist and militant. Subcultures like that would even be aligned against each other.

There would be two numbers attached to each of the subcultures, one would be the number of people in that subculture (the sum of all of these could very well be greater than the population, since an individual can be in more than one subculture). The other would be how strong that subculture is, perhaps what percentage of the 'Ideosphere' (for lack of a better term) the ideals of that culture take up. For instance, if two subcultures have approximatly the same number of people, but the people in one are more vehement in their beliefs, then that subculture would have a higher percentage.

The player would decide what kind of government the country would have: democratic, totalitatian, theocratic, etc. I am thinking that a good way to do this is instead of selecting a pre-defined type of government, all the various types could be broken down into thier defining elements, and the player could modify those elements at will, perhaps even mid-game.

The user would deal with issues that are raised (or that he raises himself) involving economy, education, censorship, foreign policy, how the government works, civil rights, the government's attitude toward those rights, and other things of that nature. How the player deals with the issues would define how the culture changes and develops.

I think that if there are going to be wars in the game, then they should be fought automatically. The player would be more concerned with the affect of the war on the populous. Although the player would be able to divert resources to the military; this would also have an affect on the culture, as would where the resources came from.

I am not sure what kind of interface the game would have. If nothing graphically representational can be though of, it might just be a series of menus, charts, and dialog boxes, kind of like the game Uplink

Something like that would definitely be worth my money.

Oooh. As a back-end, use something like the [single-player, online] nationstates.net political simulator. NationStates' 3-axis (political/economic/personal freedoms) model would offer a lot of political options.

and I don't think two dimensions are enough, you can't (usefully) reduce every issue to a binary problem.

Presto! Here you go with a three-dimensional ternary problem:

http://preditor.is-a-geek.net/viewsite.php?spage=n smap

(deliberately not linked since that site is slow as hell and uses dynamic content. Remove spaces inserted by Slashcode). I was unfortunately unable to find the diagram on the original website, NationStates, the website that came up with the scheme.

The quick summary for the lazy is pasted from the NationStates FAQ:

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.

Whether this constitutes a good model of political thought or not...you decide for yourself.

Max Barry wrote a web game with 850,000 users and you think he has no idea about computers because he prefers to spell "internet" lowercased?

Yep -- NationStates.

Speaking of kids school walls being plasterd with ads you remind me of Max Barry's book "Jennifer Government" truly the most humorous and insightful book written about the future of corporatism in the future. If you fancy a look at the online rpg based on the book it can be found here at http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/

Have you tried NationStates? Online, browser-based, country-simulator. Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda fun. Sign legislation based on randomly-generated controversial issues, sit back, and watch your country take shape under your benevolent guidance, iron fist, or both.

> It doesn't tell you stuff like "bleedin' heart liberals are costing the economy a fortune", nor "greedy right-wing powermongers are pushing everyone into poverty."

The fun part of NationStates is that it the consequences of your decisions are always portrayed positively relative to your biases. So instead of the two examples you chose, you'd see something like "Bleeding-heart liberals that formerly cost your economy a fortune are being rounded up and sent to Wharton Business Camp's mandatory MBA re-education programme", and "With tax rates of 100%, greedy right-wing powermongers' kids have been reduced to selling lemonade on street corners, but the government has begun cracking down on that."

You state an appealing concept, for sure. Who wouldn't want to live in a society governed by "reasonable" laws (instead of mostly commercial ones)?

The fact of the matter is, I'm sure you'll find, that there are just too many facets to a population to make do with anything simple, and too many rotten tomatoes to make do without stringent prohibitions here, there and in between.

And, I don't think lawyers should be avoided at all costs, in spite of their common reputation -- there are also good lawyers you know.

Meanwhile, may I refer you thusly.

I'm sure some of the people over at theNationstates forums would be able to help you.

In an old (old old old) issue of Nintendo Power, in a feature on Japanese games, an NES/Famicom game was featured that simulated the presidential campaign and election processes. The candidates were obvious clones of current political figures (I seem to remember "George Push" (Senior)), but also included at least one female candidate and I believe some minorities. I think everyone who saw the blurb, myself included, must have marveled that the Japanese public would be so interested in the US political process when most Americans seem like they couldn't care less.

From games like the Civ series, Nation States, and many others, it's apparent that people are interested in some aspects of the role of national leader, but I have yet to see a game that really hit "being the president of the US" right on the head...maybe because that game wouldn't be worth playing?

Jennifer Government - Nation States - kind of an intro level presidential sim. Although it's really interesting, it's hard to spend more than 5 minutes a day once you have it set up.
If George Bush played Civ 3 - a little presidential gaming humor

I have a toddler too, so I hear you about limited game time!

For me, I went back to the console a few years ago when I started working at a computer all day because I wanted to kick back in the living room with a snack and a frosty beverage and enjoy casual gaming at the flip of the switch rather than spending yet more time in front of a computer installing and configuring software. My console is integrated into my entertainment center and also serves as my DVD player, so its intrusion is minimal.

At present, I don't have any games on my PC, but if the game was compelling enough, I have no opposition to playing on a PC. I'll have to look into VGA Planets. That sounds like the kind of thing I'd enjoy. Have you checked out NationStates?

Try out Nationstates.net. It's simple, it's addictive, and it wont take more than 15 minutes out of your day.

And you can even sort of play Jennifer Government. But I agree. When reading the book I had to think about Acclaim U.K's marketing philosophy more than once.

Jennifer Government by Max Barry.

You can even play the game, Nation States.

Stay tuned for the movie.

Some of my favorites:

explodingdog
Homestar Runner
Nationstates

I have them all categorized as "Silly" in my Safari button bar.

I HIGHLY recommend everyone check out 'Jennifer Government' and the related simulation website 'NationStates'
An exerpt follows:

"Welcome to paradise! The world is run by American corporations (except for a few deluded holdouts like the French); taxes are illegal; employees take the last names of the companies they work for; the Police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; and the U.S. government only investigates crimes it can bill for.

Hack Nike is a Merchandising Officer who discovers an all-new way to sell sneakers. Buy Mitsui is a stockbroker with a death-wish. Billy NRA is finding out that life in a private army isn't all snappy uniforms and code names. And Jennifer Government, a legendary agent with a barcode tattoo, is the consumer watchdog from hell."

Jennifer Government

Safari still doesn't allow me to check my issues and change my settings in my NationState. Come on, Apple, how am I supposed to keep the people of my country happy when I have to tend to them using an inferior browser?

>Why has an entire industry sprung up just for filing individual income tax returns?!?

For the exact same reason I get paid $40 to install $20 worth of Anti-Virus software.

Because people just don't want to do it for themselves. It isn't difficult, "they" (the customers) just think it is, and people like me (dare I say the word... I can't think of a better one... although this word is a little over the top) "prey" on these people. Well, I really don't think I'm preying on them in a bad way... it's not like I don't offer to show them how to do it instead. But when someone offers me cash for a job like software installation, I'd be a fool to say no!

Personally, I'm surprised that all the slashdotters need software to do grade 6 arithmetic for them. Just use the forms, and a pen. Simple, simple, simple, and totally free (Yes, the pen too... you can complete the forms in a government office using their pen if you really are that cheap!).

[Sorry if this gets posted twice... slashdot is AMAZINGLY slow today. Almost as bad as this site.]