[Special Report] An Intangible Nation






An Intangible Nation
My Discourse Community Essay on Europeia

Written by Ervald



Disclaimer: This article was originally written as an essay for an English Composition class I took over the summer. It was aimed for an audience not familiar with NationStates.

The following quotes below are excerpts from multiple speeches given at a festival in 2017 for an online community called “A Decade of Europeia”.

"This week we celebrate our little patch of cyber-paradise - a place that began as the brainchild of one fantastic man and flourished over the last ten years to house a phenomenal collection of legislators and lawyers, artists and academics, eccentrics and deep-thinkers; all forming one bizarre and brilliant family." - Pope Lexus X

"Europeia is my home. While she has no physical address, no bed for me to sleep in, and no kitchen where I can microwave nachos, each time the beautiful blue background loads (EuroClassic 'til I die), I feel a warm fuzzy feeling inside--the same feeling I feel when I pull into the driveway of my childhood home or when I step onto the campus of my alma mater. Comfort and familiarity. Chamomile tea. A warm blanket. Friendly faces." - Sopo

Back in 2017, “A Decade of Europeia” marked the 10th year anniversary of a community called Europeia that is located on an online browser-based political stimulator called NationStates. We see within those excerpts, there are two very different facets of the community. One makes them sound like a well-developed government full of intellectuals and the other makes them sound like a welcoming informal community. I have been part of Europeia for about 6 years now, since 2015, and I can attest to both of those quotes.

Hate or love Europeia, many across the game of NationStates will tell you Europeia is one of the most politically engaging regions out there (regions are the name of communities, nations are the name of users) and its legal system is top-notch; multiple citizens of Europeia have gone to or are currently enrolled in law school. You will even find citizens who are involved with real life political parties or political campaigns. Besides its politics, from my own experience, it is one of the least toxic and most caring communities I have ever been part of. Europeia, however, can struggle with this balance sometimes, especially over the past few years with the adoption of the popular communication system, Discord.

Discord is essentially Skype on steroids - you can create servers for communities and those servers are capable of holding a multitude of text and voice chat channels. You can even do video calls and screen shares on Discord. Europeia has a server on this software and it is the heart of most of the social communication in the community and it is very fast-paced and casual. This is in stark comparison to Europeia’s online forums that hold all governmental content and conversations. Forums are less popular nowadays with the exception of Reddit, but they are still widely used by regions on NationStates. Europeia’s forums has categories dedicated to specific purposes. There is “Europeian Centre” where you apply to become a citizen or ambassador and you can chat with fellow citizens, there is the Arnhelm Capitol District dedicated to the executive, judicial branch, and administrative team, the Palace of the People that holds the Senate and elections, and many more. These categories have subforums such as “Newcomer’s Hall” and “Arts & Entertainment” which you can see in the Europeian Centre category. These sections could have even more subforums but every subforum will have topics such as the introductory thread explaining how to get involved with Europeia’s government “Welcome to Europeia! Now What?” and people can post in that thread.

Before the introduction of Discord, due to communication platforms that just weren’t that optimal for users (such as Skype and MSN Messenger), the forums had a lot more social conversations and activities. There have been debates on this social-political split and I wanted to explore it especially from the viewpoint of someone who would attempt to join this community and compare that from the viewpoint of someone who has been in Europeia for so long, that joining it probably looked very similar to how you joined other social communities on the internet at the time.

But for those who have never played NationStates before, how do you even join the game? What does it look like? How can you join Europeia? When you first create an account on NationStates, you are creating a nation. You get to pick your country's ideology, name, flag, currency, etc. When the nation is created, you notice a few things at first. Your nation will spawn into a "region" which is a collection of nations. There is a section at the top called "Issues" and you get three prompts everyday that is an exaggerated political situation and you get to decide how to respond to it with the few choices given. There is also a section called "Telegram". In the first few minutes, you'll be getting messages called "telegrams" from people in other regions asking you to join their region. You can disable getting these kinds of messages in your settings. The messages will talk about what the region's atmosphere is like, what they like to do, and what opportunities there are to "rise up". There are a lot of other functions and menu titles on this browser but for a newcomer, it can all be kind of confusing unless you decide to click around or ask an experienced player. But "Notices", "Issues", "Telegrams", and the region you are in will immediately have notifications popping up.

If you decide to join Europeia as I did, you will notice a nice-looking banner and flag along with a blurb titled "World Factbook Entry" that includes all sorts of links on how to get citizenship and join the Discord server. Keep scrolling below and you see the "Regional Message Board'' (RMB) and it can be chaotic. You will see people with poor grammar, odd comments, sometimes problematic posts that have to be suppressed by Europeian moderators (unfortunately, NationStates is too lenient when it comes to punishing people with abhorrent views such as Nazis), and sometimes posts from government officials advertising something. NationStates does have a minimum age in order to join the game, but it is not really enforced, there are no rules on required language and moderation is relatively hands-off. This explains why the RMB can seem immature and chaotic overall. It is common for citizens on offsite locations such as Discord servers and forums to mock people who only communicate on the RMB or "gameside". Europeia requires users that apply for citizenship on the forums be at least 13 and Europeian administrations do actively enforce this rule. I can remember at least one occasion where someone who was under 13 lied about their age and got kicked out but were told they could rejoin once then turn 13. Discord also has a minimum age of 13 to join the app so Europeian administrations will enforce the minimum age on that app as well.

When it comes to joining Europeia’s Discord server, it depends on if you have citizenship or diplomatic status on the forums. If you decide to sign up for citizenship, it can take several days to process your application. The application is also quite formal and uses English idioms, etc. which can be hard for some non-English speakers or people who have never done online applications before. There are only six questions along with an oath of citizenship to take. If you decide to join the Discord server, you are placed into a channel called the "lobby" which only non-registered users are in. You become a registered user if the server administrator determines that you are a citizen or diplomat. Sometimes people join the server and do not realize that they need to apply for citizenship on the forum. A "lobby helper", who is designated to help people in this channel named Peeps told me this: "It wildly depends. If they are already masked as a Citizen or Diplomat it typically happens faster as I believe whatever checks admins do are done when they apply for those two things, but an admin still needs to see it and the thread they post. I've seen it take five seconds and I've seen it take three days." There are many different channels but the most popular one is #eurochat which is considered the general chat channel of Europeia. Other public chat channels include #news for news going on in Europeia, #rl-news-politics, #sports, #minecraft, and #video-games. There are multiple other chat channels but those are for exclusively citizens and government officials such as a #senate channel where only elected senators can chat in or #fa-staff where members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can chat in.

Compared to how you join other online communities such as just posting on a subreddit on Reddit or clicking on a link to join a Discord server, this is complicated. For newcomers, the social aspect of Europeia is far easier to access than the political aspect, which is mostly based on the forums. Because of this and that applying for citizenship on the forums is required to join Europeia's discord, this can be a daunting integration process. The Ministry of Interior is tasked with not only recruiting NS players to join Europeia on the NS website, but also trying to help integrate new citizens by getting them to join Europeia’s Discord server and forum. It is not uncommon to see citizens apply for citizenship, and then never become active and lose their citizenship after occasional activity checks. Almost all, if not all, presidential candidates have talked about how to improve integration efforts in their platforms. There have been many ideas such as mentoring programs, having more staff to help welcome new potential citizens, and making the forums easier for new users to understand, while some advocate for a holistic approach of just having a more welcoming regional culture and making the government easier to join. A lot of integration programs are focused on Discord-oriented players but there have been attempts to get RMB-only players to join the Discord server and forums.

This got me wondering about what it would have been like for someone to have joined Europeia far before Discord was even a thing, perhaps when the region was using Skype or MSN Messenger. I spoke to Calvin Coolidge, the current President of Europeia, who joined the region all the way back in 2014. He said that Europeia was the first ever forum-based community he joined, but it was not an odd sight to him saying “Whenever I was looking for help on video games or something and I needed a walkthrough, for instance, google always led to forums, so I had seen them before.” Europeia was using Skype at the time and the Skype server itself was very fast-paced and casual, but unlike Discord, it could not do multiple channels. There was only one chat channel on the server, and it resembled a giant text group chat. However, there was a separate Skype chat for the cabinet. But with Skype being limited compared to Discord, the forum was more active, especially in a social sense, Calvin says “However, the forum still was a lot more active as a place to be compared to now, as Skype was not great for going back to search things, and if you wanted a centralized discussion, even for something silly, the forum was the only place to really do it.” However, Discord is not just creating a bigger gap between the social and political aspect but in some ways, that Calvin remarked to me, it is muddling the gap and bringing in politics to Discord. Due to Discord being able to have channels, vaguely resembling the ability of ministries to have subforums on the forum, it is able to conduct governmental business. As a member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our most intense and important debates on the state of foreign affairs issues don’t happen on threads; they happen in Discord channels. This is what leads Calvin to describe Discord as “feeling a lot more like a new forum" in a way that Skype never approached.

So, to an individual who is brand new to Europeia, what was it like to join the game and region when Skype was replaced by Discord and there was a starker yet muddled gap between Discord and the forums? I spoke to Pland Adanna, a current senator, whose first region on NationStates was Europeia and he has only been playing since January of this year. Interestingly enough, he told me that he has never been involved with any other online communities, including social media and his first online community is Europeia. He joined the forums first before joining the Discord server but there was not a long gap between the two events and when I asked him if the forums were difficult or weird to navigate, he agreed saying “It was absolutely weird and it took awhile to adjust”. When I asked him if the forums felt socially active to him, he admitted “I didn't pay too much attention and it seemed socially active”. He said he was really paying attention to the governmental activity of the forums, particularly in the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs that handle issues with the World Assembly, NationStates’ equivalent of the United Nations. Although, a sign that the Discord server is far more socially active than the forums might be evident in this remark Pland made to me “...I will admit that I muted eurochat pretty quickly”.

Going into writing this paper, I originally had the hypothesis that Discord and the forums were forcing a stark divide between the socially-oriented players and the politically-oriented players, but after speaking to both Calvin and Pland, I realized it is more of a murky border between the two facets of the community. It is not guaranteed that all new players are going to gravitate to Discord like many assume; Pland is an obvious exception to that rule. It is more about what communities you have interacted with before Europeia. Both Calvin and Pland, despite joining Europeia 7 years apart, gravitated to using the forums even if they had different levels of understanding of how the forums work. They’re both politically active players with Pland being considered a rising star in Europeian politics and Calvin being President and Senator for multiple terms. Europeia talks a lot about how to recruit and integrate new players who are more used to fast-paced chat programs than forums or like being a “social player” more than being involved with the politics of Europeia, but I personally think we forget there are players out there who may not be familiar with either. We could have had many new citizens by now that made Europeia their first ever online community, but we were too caught up in talking about the players who got to experience Discord first in another community before seeing what our forums were like.

But despite those flaws, I love Europeia. It is a hot mess when it comes to trying to balance out trying to make sure both our Discord server and forums has social activities going on and relegating political conversations to the forums when it gets out of control in #eurochat. But besides that integration challenge, it is one of the communities, both online and in-person, that I have been a part of the longest. It has helped me develop my rhetorical skills when I used to struggle with grammar and writing essays. Being around so many well-informed players helped me develop a better understanding of the world, particularly in public policy, and meeting like-minded players who share hobbies that I love doing in real life. Several Europeians in the past have even done real-life meetups. It is an online community and it is complicated to join at first, but it is so worth it in the end.
 
I was hoping maybe this article would spur a conversation about our integration methods so I guess I'll take a stab with my own observations.

1. Peeps and I had a brief conversation about this on Discord yesterday and he commented that the citizenship application could seem daunting, especially in the way the questions are phrased. I am not sure if I entirely agree. I think it could for native non-English speakers but not sure if that would be enough of a justification to reword questions. Maybe someone who is newer here can chime in? I don't remember if I found the application daunting. Slightly unrelated but I did mention about maybe processing applications more quickly but I believe that was seen as possibly carrying security risks as brought up in this thread: https://forums.europeians.com/index.php?threads/citizenship-process.10055362/

2. How do people even find out about NS in the first place? I really wish I asked @Pland Adanna and @Calvin Coolidge to elaborate on this but I forgot to. They both mentioned NS was their first real online community. So they were clearly seeking out a political stimulator. If I look up "browser political stimulator" and "online political stimulator" on Google right now, NationStates does not show up at all on the first page. I am not sure if NS showed up more often on the first page of search results for Pland or Calvin or maybe there was another website or way they used to find out about the game. Would be interesting to see if Europeia could be somehow be advertised outside of NS (and I am not talking about Twitter. :p)

3. RMB. I know some folks genuinely see no worth in the RMB but Pland told me in his interview that his first few days in Europeia were answering issues and using the RMB before joining the forums and then when he did, he mostly paid attention to the MoWAA. I am not sure if that was entirely on his part or he saw some Europeian official advertising in the RMB about something going on the forums involving the WA but if we keep up a presence on the RMB, we can target politically-minded players who go "Oh, there is politics on the forums? Sound dope compared to the daily issues I get."
 
Integration is always tricky for me. Vor's paper had a lot of stuff in it that I read as streamlining the process, and I guess making cit apps easier to read is part of that. Or is it? I mean, it's an important document of sorts, so people should ideally be reading it pretty clearly :p
I learned about NS from eavesdropping on people on my school bus talking about it so I guess I'm not the best person to ask about that one. In my earlier integration thread I also said that I wouldn't have wanted to be pushed into things too quickly. At a certain point you get annoyed with people suggesting things you can do when all you want to do is chill out for a bit. I should reiterate, though, that it depends on each person and there are definitely people who want to be advertised to.
 
I was content answering issues and reading the RMB for over a year before I made my first forum account. I think I'm on the extreme end, but I think that does prove that there are casual issue answerers that are capable of getting involved. So yes, I do think the RMB holds some value, if only as a way to get people used to how NS functions and as a stepping stone to forums and Discord.
 
I finally got around to reading this, and it's a great piece!

I think one of the hardest things about integration is that there is a divide between the interests causing players to enjoy what NS has to offer and the interests causing players who enjoy what NS regional governments have to offer. Players who enjoy roleplay, answering issues, and creating fictitious factbooks can be very successful in gameside NationStates. They can pretty much keep to themselves, not be active daily, and still build up impressive stats. However, these sorts of players, the players that the NS site was probably best designed for, are not of much use to regional governments. Consistent activity, political ambition, and being social are very important for political success here in Euro, while being essentially irrelevant to the NationStates game. Of course, there are people who have an overlapping interest in both these areas, which is how many of us got here.

By being a region that is very well designed to maintain an elite political environment and have a vibrant social scene, Europeia is somewhat poorly designed to integrate the average NS player into our community. We see this divide with the disdain some Europeians have towards the RMB, the conflict involving the creation of West Europeia, and the tiny fraction of nations in our region that end up becoming citizens. We can do a better job at our gameside integration, but there's also an inherent limit to our efforts that stems from the fact that many citizens simply don't enjoy interacting on the gameside much. I think that some have brought up unique initiatives that bridge this gap somewhat, and political drive backing gameside efforts can help a lot. But that fundamental divide still remains.
 
I really wish I asked @Pland Adanna and @Calvin Coolidge to elaborate on this but I forgot to. They both mentioned NS was their first real online community. So they were clearly seeking out a political stimulator. If I look up "browser political stimulator" and "online political stimulator" on Google right now, NationStates does not show up at all on the first page. I am not sure if NS showed up more often on the first page of search results for Pland or Calvin or maybe there was another website or way they used to find out about the game.
Technically I said NS was my first forum community. I only say that because I was a part of many online communities in the years before I joined NS, but none of them used a forum. But yes, I did Google search "political simulator" or "government simulator game" or something like that to find NationStates, I'm pretty sure this was the second or third result I got, and obviously it was the one I connected with.
 
I really wish I asked @Pland Adanna and @Calvin Coolidge to elaborate on this but I forgot to. They both mentioned NS was their first real online community. So they were clearly seeking out a political stimulator. If I look up "browser political stimulator" and "online political stimulator" on Google right now, NationStates does not show up at all on the first page. I am not sure if NS showed up more often on the first page of search results for Pland or Calvin or maybe there was another website or way they used to find out about the game.
Technically I said NS was my first forum community. I only say that because I was a part of many online communities in the years before I joined NS, but none of them used a forum. But yes, I did Google search "political simulator" or "government simulator game" or something like that to find NationStates, I'm pretty sure this was the second or third result I got, and obviously it was the one I connected with.
My apologies for that mistake!

But it sounds like it was easier to google for NationStates compared to now.
 
1. Peeps and I had a brief conversation about this on Discord yesterday and he commented that the citizenship application could seem daunting, especially in the way the questions are phrased. I am not sure if I entirely agree. I think it could for native non-English speakers but not sure if that would be enough of a justification to reword questions. Maybe someone who is newer here can chime in? I don't remember if I found the application daunting. Slightly unrelated but I did mention about maybe processing applications more quickly but I believe that was seen as possibly carrying security risks as brought up in this thread: https://forums.europeians.com/index.php?threads/citizenship-process.10055362/
I definitely found the application daunting, mostly because it just seemed so formal/official. To be fair though, everything was a little daunting because there was just so much.
2. How do people even find out about NS in the first place? I really wish I asked @Pland Adanna and @Calvin Coolidge to elaborate on this but I forgot to. They both mentioned NS was their first real online community. So they were clearly seeking out a political stimulator. If I look up "browser political stimulator" and "online political stimulator" on Google right now, NationStates does not show up at all on the first page. I am not sure if NS showed up more often on the first page of search results for Pland or Calvin or maybe there was another website or way they used to find out about the game. Would be interesting to see if Europeia could be somehow be advertised outside of NS (and I am not talking about Twitter. :p)
I think I googled something like "online political games" and found NS. I just regoogled that and couldn't find it so I'm not really sure exactly what I googled but I definitely found it with a google search.
3. RMB. I know some folks genuinely see no worth in the RMB but Pland told me in his interview that his first few days in Europeia were answering issues and using the RMB before joining the forums and then when he did, he mostly paid attention to the MoWAA. I am not sure if that was entirely on his part or he saw some Europeian official advertising in the RMB about something going on the forums involving the WA but if we keep up a presence on the RMB, we can target politically-minded players who go "Oh, there is politics on the forums? Sound dope compared to the daily issues I get."
Actually, I joined the forums after I got one of the TGs from Europeian WA Headquarters saying that they wanted help in the ministry. (Of course, that's in every single telegram but I didn't know that then. :p) It seemed interesting so I TGed Seva, who got me set up on the forums, walked me through getting citizenship, and then helped me join MoWAA.
 
1. Peeps and I had a brief conversation about this on Discord yesterday and he commented that the citizenship application could seem daunting, especially in the way the questions are phrased. I am not sure if I entirely agree. I think it could for native non-English speakers but not sure if that would be enough of a justification to reword questions. Maybe someone who is newer here can chime in? I don't remember if I found the application daunting. Slightly unrelated but I did mention about maybe processing applications more quickly but I believe that was seen as possibly carrying security risks as brought up in this thread: https://forums.europeians.com/index.php?threads/citizenship-process.10055362/
I don't quite think it was too daunting for me, but I did feel like I needed to be very official and all business.
2. How do people even find out about NS in the first place? I really wish I asked @Pland Adanna and @Calvin Coolidge to elaborate on this but I forgot to. They both mentioned NS was their first real online community. So they were clearly seeking out a political stimulator. If I look up "browser political stimulator" and "online political stimulator" on Google right now, NationStates does not show up at all on the first page. I am not sure if NS showed up more often on the first page of search results for Pland or Calvin or maybe there was another website or way they used to find out about the game. Would be interesting to see if Europeia could be somehow be advertised outside of NS (and I am not talking about Twitter. :p)
I found out about NS from my history teacher a few years back, and decided to get back into it in January. Word-of-mouth helped it gain some players (none of whom are still playing :p) at the end of the year.
3. RMB. I know some folks genuinely see no worth in the RMB but Pland told me in his interview that his first few days in Europeia were answering issues and using the RMB before joining the forums and then when he did, he mostly paid attention to the MoWAA. I am not sure if that was entirely on his part or he saw some Europeian official advertising in the RMB about something going on the forums involving the WA but if we keep up a presence on the RMB, we can target politically-minded players who go "Oh, there is politics on the forums? Sound dope compared to the daily issues I get."
I spent about a month on just the RMB, and I think I got onto the forums after many IFVs telling me to get involved, and I was eventually like "sure, why not? Sounds fun."

Thanks for this, Ervald.
 
Someday, someone will do a full-fledged scientific study on Europeia.

Until then, this is one of the most accessible pieces I've read on the matter of integration and players' participation. Well done, I hope you got a decent grade.
 
Someday, someone will do a full-fledged scientific study on Europeia.

Until then, this is one of the most accessible pieces I've read on the matter of integration and players' participation. Well done, I hope you got a decent grade.
Thank you so much! And I did get a good grade, no worries. xD
 
Compared to how you join other online communities such as just posting on a subreddit on Reddit or clicking on a link to join a Discord server, this is complicated. For newcomers, the social aspect of Europeia is far easier to access than the political aspect, which is mostly based on the forums. Because of this and that applying for citizenship on the forums is required to join Europeia's discord, this can be a daunting integration process. The Ministry of Interior is tasked with not only recruiting NS players to join Europeia on the NS website, but also trying to help integrate new citizens by getting them to join Europeia’s Discord server and forum. It is not uncommon to see citizens apply for citizenship, and then never become active and lose their citizenship after occasional activity checks. Almost all, if not all, presidential candidates have talked about how to improve integration efforts in their platforms. There have been many ideas such as mentoring programs, having more staff to help welcome new potential citizens, and making the forums easier for new users to understand, while some advocate for a holistic approach of just having a more welcoming regional culture and making the government easier to join. A lot of integration programs are focused on Discord-oriented players but there have been attempts to get RMB-only players to join the Discord server and forums.

I've read through this a couple of times to really digest all of the information, and firstly, this was a wonderful piece Ervald. The section I've quoted really reflected on my own situation, and similarly to Sanjurika, it interested me that it took me quite some time before joining the forum community outside of general RMB browsing. I intermittently came back and forth to the NationStates website over the years, interested in the overall idea and creative outlet of factbooks and world-building, but not being much of a nation role player I wasn't hooked in. After receiving a telegram some years back, the flag of that nation and the telegram content stuck in my mind, and I somehow decided that Europeia was where I wanted to be - so I think even something as our regional page and telegrams must stick with other people in some way, especially as I'd never been in an online community (generally speaking) before, and the forums seemed incredibly intimidating. Personally, once my citizenship was approved it seemed like information overload, and while Discord seemed a little daunting at first, I will say that the more casual approach really helped with the integration factor. Although forums are essential to making this community function and to be attractive to new people in my mind. Overall the community is very unique, and I think you captured that essence incredibly well in your essay. I really do wish there was a way to bring more people here, especially as there is the foundation to really help people in so many ways, and to spark some of that unknown or untapped ambition too.
 
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