The Necessity of Chaos: Order and Disorder in NationStates

[frattastan]

The Necessity of Chaos: Order and Disorder in NationStates
Written by Todd McCloud for the 2012 NS World Fair (12 Nov 2012)

Original source: http://w11.zetaboards.com/2012_NS_World ... 273/1/#new
As posted in the Naivetry Reference Library.

Good evening, everyone. My topic tonight is the subject of chaos and how it affects a region. These days chaos has been given a bad name in NationStates. Those in stable regions tend to fear chaos and what it could potentially bring to the region. Those who are in power tend to want to find ways to prevent chaos. There are those who swear by the evils of chaos and those who seek to cause it in any venue, because that’s what makes the game fun for them. To be clear, there are many forms of chaos that can take root in a region. There’s chaos in roleplay, like if a nation wages war on another nation who happens to be in an organization consisting of other nations, plunging the entire group into war. Drama is a very destructive form of chaos I have seen first-hand in many regions. Alliances formed among people in a region can bring about chaos when they attempt to form a front. That’s all very well, but I’m going to specify my talk tonight by pigeonholing this chaos into just chaos brought on by sudden foreign delegate takeovers in regions. Of course, I’m talking about coups.

Motivation
Older players can remember a time where coups and talks of coups were common in feeder/sinker (that is to say, the pacifics, Lazarus, and The Rejected Realms) dynamics. They can generally recall a handful of coups. Coups, however, are different than rogue delegates, the latter being an elected delegate who went against the government to blaze his or her own path with or without the fate of the region in mind. More on that later. Coups are when a foreign nation or a group of foreign nations move into a region, gain the delegacy, and hold it for a period of time while the formerly recognized government is forced into exile. We can generally envision what happens to a region at this time. A tug-of-war between the foreign government and the current government begin the moment the delegacy is seized, with common nations who have no interest in either body caught in the middle. One side tries to stay ahead of the other side, the foreign group attempts to shed endorsements from the former delegate and other high-influence nations, the former government might try to send out mass telegrams to the region informing fellow region mates what’s going on, the foreign delegate changes the WFE and refutes all the claims of said telegram by launching one of their own, etc. Nevertheless, each coup is a unique fight. In the end, however, the former recognized government wins out. That much we all pretty much know, at least in generalities. Since coups are so different, it’s difficult to really characterize what happens during a coup. I’m more interested in what happens to a community – you know, what it does to them. How does it change them? How does it affect their numbers? Is it more short-term or are there long-term consequences? My analysis focuses on two main recent coups: The East Pacific Coup in 2008 and The South Pacific Coup in 2011. I wish I could include more in this analysis, but I’m playing with limited resources here. I’ll then wrap it up by making some general conclusions and offering my own take on chaos in NationStates.

Case 1: The East Pacific, 2008
2008 was a different time for The East Pacific. Gnidrah was in the middle of his second year as a delegate, working the position after it was handed to him by Loop, the former delegate. The legislature had slowed to stagnation, active mainly in voting in members to their ranks only. The Constitution Convention started out well, but fell through in April. The courts actually attempted to try Loop for treason in a non-serious attempt to raise interest. I’ll stop right here. I’m painting a bad picture, but please don’t think it was one individual or even a handful of individuals who held the brush. The region went inactive. Sometimes these things just happen, and it could be due to a number of reasons – from a group of people quitting the game, to people moving into different areas of their life and having to play the game less, to things just getting stale. So my intent is not for people to take this as “bad people were in power, then the coup happened, then good people came along.” That is most definitely not the point. The point here is the region was a very stale one and attempts at getting people excited and interested didn’t work.

Enter August 2008, when a group of nations led by Lady Phedre among others (Lord Rahl, Lady Anastasia, Lady Edea, and others) acting under the name “The Empire” took the region over with the help of the powerful Gatesville and held it until mid-December, roughly four months. In that time the exiled government attempted various methods to re-gain the delegacy, but it was generally ill-prepared for such an attack and efforts were thwarted. When they did regain the delegacy, work was immediately begun on redrafting an entirely new constitution, based on some ideas from the past, but inviting many newer nations to add input. The legislature (Magisterium) filled in the gaps left behind. The courts became relevant again. Filled with vigor, the region embarked on its first delegate elections, selecting a former raider and first-time feeder delegate to lead the helm. The newly-energized region attracted many people from a vast array of backgrounds. The new government of The East Pacific would flourish since its inception in January of 2009, and would remain a beacon of activity despite being in game-wide a period of low population numbers.

But that’s one person’s interpretation of the events. I want to quantify this, somehow. I’ve already done a study on NS population trends, but this study will be much more difficult to put numbers to because they don’t often match up well with what I’m trying to prove. I think we need to outline what we’re looking at here. First, what defines an active region? Well, government activity could be looked at, but that also invites personal opinion. Same with roleplay activity. But those two things make up a large part of the community, specifically the forum community in a region. And an active region is generally a dynamic region with active forums. So, forum activity is very important and can be correlated to mean a number of things. After all, isn’t the regional forum supposed to be active and exposed to other region-goers? |invisionfree| is nice in that it contains stats one can view if one’s an administrator of a region. Such stats can prove to be valuable. Let’s give them a look. Figure One displays new topics created, new nations registered to the forums, and posts created (scaled to 10%) from January 2008 to January 2010. The coup period is highlighted in a pale green.

[This image has been lost and is no longer available]
Figure One: The East Pacific as it relates to registrations, new topics, and posts (scaled 10%). Coup period is highlighted. Upon first inspection, one can notice a drastic difference between the pre-coup and post-coup periods, especially from about May 2008 leading up to the coup. It’s clear that whatever was bothering the region had not been remedied, especially when one realizes posts, topics, and registrations went up just after the coup, despite the government going into exile and forums being off of the World Factbook Entry. Clearly there was a draw to see what the exiled government was doing during this couple. Registrations then dropped off quickly, followed in tow by the post count and new topics. Then, when the region re-gained the delegacy on December 21st, 2009, something remarkable happened. Posts and new topics exploded. The region had a three-week conference on the constitution. In the middle of January 2009 delegate elections occurred. Registrations spiked to unprecedented levels. Then, when it was all over and the legislature elections were finished, we see a small and short dip in February, but post levels spiked again when The East Pacific’s well-known roleplay community and legislature experienced a revival. Levels climbed steadily until they reached the second delegate elections in July, where the incumbent was elected again, and a similar sharp dip from February ended in July when Magisterium elections took root again. Overall, the region had indeed undergone quite a transformation: what was once a difficult place to maintain interest in became a bastion for activity and excitement.

Now this doesn’t really account for what happened in the region. Nowhere will this graph show you the roleplay wars, the hard work of the administration team, the progress of The East Pacific’s delegate, or the laws passed by the Magisterium. This region experienced what I like to call a “hard reset” – the government was in exile for a long enough time where when the region regained the delegacy most people were of the understanding that drastic changes were needed. So, this coup facilitated change in the region, which is a good thing, especially when one compares what the region had with what the region gained. Turning our attention to Figure 2 below, we’re presented with forum views over a period of three years (January 2007 to January 2010). I expanded the graph to show the slow decline of the region from 2007.

[This image has been lost and is no longer available]
Figure Two: The East Pacific forum views over a three-year span. Events are highlighted. Forum views are, in my opinion, the best representation of excitement in a region (game-created region, that is. This does not correlate well for a small or mid-sized region of dedicated individuals). If the region is viewed as fun or exciting, forum views would increase, wouldn’t they? It’s the same if the region wasn’t very fun or exciting - forum views would decrease, probably. Unfortunately |invisionfree| doesn’t give out weekly numbers here – the choices are daily, monthly, or yearly. I’ll stick with monthly. You’ll notice a few green bars on the graph. These represent the start of the coup (first), end of the coup (second) and delegate changes (third to sixth). Basically all green bars are what I’d classify as “major chaotic events” in the region. While delegate changes that result from elections are traditionally not labeled “chaotic”, they could be viewed as a little chaotic to the average feederite in a region. Major regime changes do in fact bring about small forms of chaos. For the record, “minor chaotic events” could be classified as legislature elections, the incumbent delegate retaining his or her seat, etc. Nevertheless, the regional forums seemed to respond to them fairly well. That and there is a marked difference between pre-coup and post-coup periods.

Case 2: The South Pacific, 2011
Let’s turn attention to the second case, The South Pacific (because I also have that data at my fingertips and sometimes it pays to have that ability). In 2011, the region was couped by an individual nation named Devonitians who initially elicited the support of native nations to gain endorsements. This nation took the delegacy from Southern Bellz on May 22nd and relinquished control back to the legitimate delegate two days later. This individual was later revealed to be Sedge in a post regarding security in The Rejected Realms. Fair enough. The fallout from this left quite an impact on The South Pacific from what I remember, but let’s again turn to the numbers.

Figure 3 displays the number of registrations, post count, and new topics formed from May 2010 to January 2012 (in March the region switched forums so extending this data passed January would be unfair in my opinion). Unfortunately, Zetaboards doesn’t give the “weekly” option and therefore the data “resolution” is a little bit worse. Still, trends can be detected. The coup period – two days – is once again represented by a pale green region.

[This image has been lost and is no longer available]
Figure Three: The South Pacific as it relates to registrations, new topics, and posts (scaled 10%). Coup period is highlighted. Again, we see a marked change from pre-coup to post-coup. But this coup is much different than The East Pacific’s case – it lasted just two days compared to over four months. Still, if we try to cut the green “coup zone” out of The East Pacific and transpose it here, we’d notice it would match up fairly well: minimal to dwindling activity in the beginning, then the coup happens, a small delay followed by an explosion of activity, and then the region evens out about six to eight months later but still at a higher activity level. We see an initial spike in all three lines soon after the coup, followed by a secondary spike about three months later. If we take the views into account, Figure 4, we can match up these views with in-game events.

[This image has been lost and is no longer available]
Figure Four: The South Pacific forum views over a three-year span. Events are highlighted.
As with Figure 2, the green bars indicate events. In order, these events are the coup (first), followed by Topid becoming delegate, then Belschaft, then Hileville. Elections for officials tend to follow on these dates (The South Pacific votes on all cabinet positions all at once). As it can be seen, minor chaotic events like delegate changes tend to follow some spikes, with the coup representing the largest spike. Again due to the poor “resolution” of the data available, it’s much more difficult to deduce anything here, but at least the trends seem to follow in-game changes, like they did with The East Pacific.

General Observations
Now, these are two isolated cases and it’d be foolish to deduce any concrete conclusion here. After all, these coups were much different – The East Pacific’s was a “hard reset” which resulted in a complete overhaul of the government, while The South Pacific’s was more of a “soft reset” in that some changes were made, including an eventual delegate change, but for the most part the old constitution was kept, along with the old government, but some minor changes were made as the saw fit to do so. But, I can take the data at face-value and attempt to make sense of the trends here. First, I think it’s pretty obvious that coups end just before a large spike in activity on the offsite forums. It’s clear from the data, at least, that this spike is generally short-lived, but a longer increase in activity follows, generally lasting for about eight months (again based on the small sampling of data we have). The next conclusion is more of an inference, but the more out-of-touch a region is, the more registrations will spike after a coup. In addition, the longer the coup is, the larger the spike in registration. This makes sense: if a region has been out of touch for a particular amount of time, newer nations that formed or were active during this time of inactivity probably wouldn’t sign up on the forums until the region became relevant again. Still, there’s the typical ‘I registered because I represent ____ region and I’m your ambassador now’ types of registrations and some new/old nation registrations, but those more or less are consistent over time, I imagine. As far as the registration spike in The East Pacific is concerned, I know for a fact that members there attempted to contact every nation in the region via telegram, so the results may be a bit skewed. Finally, there appear to be other events which spike activity, like delegate changes. I suppose large disruptions in the region in-game like coups, rogue delegates, and delegate switches can be classified as “major chaotic events” while small disruptions like government elections can be classified as “minor chaotic events”. This is a broad classification – naturally, coups would probably have much more of an impact than a delegate switch. Magnitude aside, both events involve at least a little bit of chaos. It seems to me that these feeders seem to have a direct correlation between chaos and overall activity: extreme major chaos (returning from the brink of being couped) results in a major spike, major chaos (like delegate switches) tend to show a prominent spike, while minor chaos results in a minor spike. Fascinating.

Explanation and Opinions
I may be pandering to NS history’s great dark hall of fame, right? Truth be told, however, coups are not a ‘cure-all’ for regional inactivity. Many nations who came to the region as a result of the coup might not understand the dynamics of the region and the feelings of those who had to endure a coup. In the case of The East Pacific, some members who were once regulars left the region as a result of the coup. Some nations I’m sure will read this and refute every single claim I attempt to make here, because they’ve been a part of a coup like this first-hand or know someone who was directly affected by it. It’s like the saying, “People will forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” That’s kind of been my experience in NationStates, at least. Anyway, I just want to be sure I’m not coming across as coups are all positive and no negative. They’re most certainly not.

I think individuals who coup a region, and rogue delegates for that matter, are given a bad wrap. They may love the game or love the particular region in which they decide to wreck havoc in. But I think they are a select group of people who understand how the game works. And the game works on conflict. We all like conflict. We like to feel like we’re fighting for something, and we like to think that deep down, the thing we’re fighting for is a good thing. We like to see these conflicts develop and determine which side to jump onto. This is how NationStates came to be such a fun game. The dwindling older populations can explain how Francos Spain revolutionized gameplay, and he did it on conflict and new ideas. Older raider organizations like DEN and Lone Wolves United facilitated a different type of conflict – raiding regions and causing conflict in userite (and sometimes feederite) regions – which spawned various important raider and defender organizations and a whole new side of gameplay. So important is this side of gameplay that the game mods felt it necessary to host a genuine summit over it. Unfortunately, the people who like to initiate said conflict are often depicted as the bad guys. I think rogue delegates and couping nations understand this. There’s little honor in doing what they do, but some over the years have justified their actions by citing how inactive and apathetic the region was before they came in. Are they right in doing so? I believe they are.

It’s what I used to tell myself when I first raided. I was able to see this first-hand when I started out as the delegate of Poland in 2006. I saw how this conflict woke people up. I saw how this conflict brought entire regions I’ve never even heard of onto the scene. I saw how intricate and detailed such a conflict was. The more I learned about it, the more I liked it. I went to raiding and began to experience the conflict first-hand. But, the more I did it, the more I realized how much destruction it caused in the process. Truthfully, there is no free lunch when it comes to conflicts such as these. I’ve seen entire communities destroyed (raiding does not always lead to this of course). I didn’t like that. I thought there could be another way, which led to my retirement from that side of the game some two years later. It made sense to me – if someone couldn’t be active enough to protect their region, why should I feel bad over it? Well, but I did. So, I decided to switch gears and enter into the feeder side of things. One year later I became delegate of a feeder and understood just how important chaos was to a region. Chaos, when it is in small doses, is a very good thing to a fairly active region. Major chaos? Major activity. No chaos? Little to no activity. Generally speaking, I believe the game operates on such principles.

Maybe there was another way. Maybe there was a way to cause chaos in an otherwise stale region without harming the community too much and the end result being resurgence in activity. Regions, especially the game created ones, are designed to be dynamic: ever-changing to facilitate newer crowds, but with an active, opinionated government to ensure some kind of order is in place for these newer crowds to grow in. Peppered in that mix is a good core of players with different opinions to make things interesting and exciting. That, in very broad terms, is how to keep a region going. I’ve written a lot on conflict and chaos thus far. Let me be clear: conflict fuels chaos, and vise-versa. Both working well in a region and in the region working with other regions are very good for said region.

Perhaps I’m playing a bit of devil’s advocate here, but if a region goes too stale, aren’t they guilty of the same thing couping nations and rogue delegates are? Harming a community infected by disinterest and apathy? Turning off potentially good players and preventing that “good blood” of new players to enter the game? Indeed when a community is so far gone, there’s really no way to wake it up. For communities so far gone, no amount of scripts, gimmicks, contests, awards, etc will rouse them. For those communities, they’ve already damned themselves to the fate of a coup, and it’s only a matter of time one will happen, typically ushered in when their security measures fall asleep. Only a sudden and disturbing change in their region will arrest them from their fate. Truly, the region that becomes so apathetic is inviting a coup. Let this be a warning to all regions, because all regions are susceptible: if you don’t care about your region, and if others in the region don’t care about it, someone else will, but probably in a different way than what you want them to care for it.

What hurts a region more? A coup, or inactivity? At least with a coup there is almost always an end to it. But speak comfort, I might hear you say. These are controversial viewpoints, I might hear you say. Indeed they are. And if it’s comfort you seek, then I will say this: the biggest deterrence to a coup is activity. This is what I’ve learned. Maintain excitement. Get new players involved. Don’t do everything yourself – find the dynamic players like you and get them on your team. A region doesn’t need clunky stats like forum views or post counts to be successful, hence why I didn’t compare views with The East Pacific and The South Pacific or any of those other stats. Increase numbers. Get others to add to your region. Find simple tasks (it doesn’t need to be complex) to keep your region running well. If just two people in a region of one thousand care about the current government, I hate to break it to you but unless you have a vigilant delegate, you’re primed for drastic sweeping changes. And finally, avoid drama at all costs. Trust me, that’s a chaos I wish upon no region, active or not. Drama only serves to kill an otherwise good community. Keep things going even if prospects look good. The trick is to get these things going before the region becomes too inactive because (and I’ve seen it time and time again) once that line has been crossed it’s very difficult to get things going.

End Remarks
So, I hope that sheds some light. I trust this was entertaining and thought-provoking as it was for me while writing this. To recap: is chaos a bad thing? No, chaos is necessary in a successful, active region. Coupled with chaos is conflict, the two of which feed off each other. Chaos doesn’t mean disorder, rather, here it takes the form of transitions. A dynamic, chaotic region that has conflict within it or with other regions is generally going to be healthier with one that’s not. The key in all of this is to keep things from the brink, to be active, and always be creative and inventive. There’s so much more in this game, more than we’ve all found and discovered. Keep the fire burning bright!