NationStates (officially Jennifer Government: NationStates) is a free web-based nation simulation game. It was created by Max Barry in late 2002 as a promotional gimmick to sell his fictional novel Jennifer Government.
The game allowed a player to create one or more nations based on a series of political questions. Gameplay consisted of answering daily political questions, application to a United Nations, and appointment of a delegate.
Nations were grouped into regions. All players began in one of five 'feeder' regions. These nations could remain in the region, could move their nations into any other region at any time, or even set up a new region. Many regions had an elected leader, called a Delegate, and some participated in complex regional governments, though some contain only a handful of nations. Most of these larger, complex regions did most of their business on off-site forums, like InvisionFree and others, as the game itself was very limited in capability.
NationStates was initially intended only as a promotional gimmick to engage readers of Max Barry's books to play with politics and issues. Eventually, players realized that by 'crashing' a region, and installing a new Delegate, the game could take on characteristics gravely lacking in gameplay such as war, politics, etc.
For a long time, there was speculation that Jolt (who now administers NationStates) would create an expanded version of NationStates. However, despite the rumors, no such sequel ever came into being. Many speculate that no programmer would attempt to create a more complex game for free.
With the advent of Cyber Nations, however, and the rise of faster, cheaper, more accessible alternate reality programming, many speculate that NationStates will eventually decline in popularity.