Kenny's Thinking Garden

Nation Sim Game

4 min read

Nation Sim Game

Core Idea

A nation simulation game inspired by NationStates — player-driven, community-centric, and focused on creative expression and political satire rather than competitive mechanics. The goal is to build something that captures what makes NationStates enduring while introducing selective improvements in areas it deliberately kept simple.

State of Thinking

NationStates has run for over two decades. Understanding why it works is the foundation for building something new in this space.

What makes NationStates work:

  • Daily issues create a low-friction engagement loop — one decision per day, consequences that accumulate over time
  • Player agency is real — choices shape the nation’s stats and character meaningfully
  • Creative freedom is unrestricted — custom flags, descriptions, full nation identity at no cost
  • Community is self-sustaining — regions, roleplay, politics, and forums create a social fabric that outlasts the game mechanics
  • No win state — the game never ends, nations are never destroyed by other players, success is self-defined
  • Technical simplicity — text-based, no heavy graphics, persistent world with data permanence

What competitors did differently and why it matters:

  • Politics & War, Cyber Nations — added war, resource management, pay-to-progress. Attracted a different audience but became adversarial and churn-heavy
  • Simcountry — deep economic simulation, steep learning curve, small niche audience
  • eRepublik — started with politics and media, drifted into pay-to-win war game, illustrates the monetisation trap

Design lessons for a new game:

  • Do not add war mechanics — they shift the tone from creative to adversarial and create pay-to-win pressure
  • Community features are not optional — they are the retention mechanism
  • Avoid pay-to-win at all costs — NationStates monetises cosmetics and convenience only
  • Simplicity at entry is critical — players should be able to start immediately without a tutorial
  • Possible innovations over NationStates: richer economics without complexity, democratic election mechanics, non-destructive conflict systems, better visual presentation
  • Any new game must be distinct enough to stand on its own — not a NationStates clone

What this game is not:

  • Not a resource management sim
  • Not a war game
  • Not a Boardgame Arena-style platform
  • Not pay-to-win

Thinking Trace

  • NationStates has been around since the early 2000s and still has an active community — that longevity is the signal worth studying
  • The comparison games all show the same failure mode: adding war and competitive mechanics attracts a different player and creates monetisation pressure that erodes the creative community
  • The insight is that NationStates’ constraints are features, not limitations — no combat, no resource grind, no reset
  • The question is what a modern version adds without breaking what works
  • Still very early — this is design research, not a development plan

What changed?

— skip, v1 —

Why it changed?

— skip, v1 —

Evidence / Signals

  • NationStates has been running since 2003 with an active community — two decades of retention without pay-to-win is strong proof of the model
  • Every competitor that added war mechanics drifted toward pay-to-win — this pattern is consistent enough to treat as a rule
  • NationStates’ API and third-party tool ecosystem shows community investment — players built tools because they cared enough

Open Questions

  • What is the one mechanic NationStates lacks that a new game could add without breaking the creative/community model?
  • What does “better visual presentation” look like without adding graphical complexity that slows development?
  • What platform — web-first like NationStates, or mobile?
  • How do you bootstrap the community problem — NationStates already has the community, a new game starts empty?
  • What is the monetisation model that sustains the game without pay-to-win?
  • Is there a Singapore or Southeast Asia angle that makes sense for this game?

Connections

Changelog

  • v1 — Initial node

Graph View