Template:This month's featured article/January, 2007

Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game playable on the internet. It was created by Max Barry in late 2002, based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government.

In the game, a player has charge of a "nation". At the time a nation is created, the player chooses a few basic characteristics such as name, currency and style of government. The nation's population starts at 5 million people and increases automatically with play.

Gameplay hinges on deciding government policies: the player is presented with automatically assigned "issues" and chooses a response from a list of options. Players can also dismiss (ignore) issues: this has no effect on the nation. The frequency with which new issues arise is set by the player (from 5 to 14 issues per week). After the original issues written by Barry were found to be too few for the game to develop satisfactorily, players were allowed to propose new issues starting 15 July 15, 2003.