Jill has World of Warcraft and Mark has City of Heroes, so if nothing else, peer pressure demanded that I start playing a MMORPG. I dabbled a little with SecondLife, which finally has a Mac client as well as free basic accounts, but I didn't find it very compelling and my poor little Powerbook was struggling with the graphics. But a random web-trawl turned up something that may have me hooked: NationStates.

Novelist Max Barry set up NationStates (NS) a couple years ago to promote his book Jennifer Government, but the connection between the two is fairly tenuous. When you join NS, you are given your own nation. A brief survey of your political opinions establishes your governmental structure from among 27 possibilities (including Civil Rights Lovefest, Compulsory Consumer State, and Inoffensive Centrist Democracy). Answers given to daily "Issues" flesh out (and sometimes transform) the political profile of your nation. You can join the UN to debate and vote on proposals like banning executions worldwide. There's also some kind of intrigue involving "invading" other regions and usurping their UN delegacy.

That's about it for the hard-coded game. It's pretty simple, almost entirely text-based, and can be played in about 5 minutes per day. At this basic level, the primary entertainment comes from seeing the evolution of your country. The game tends to exaggerate the impact of decisions, leading to humorous results. Here's today's report on the People's Republic of Donutarians (which is classified as a Scandinavian Liberal Paradise):

Where NS becomes really intriguing, however, is in the fact that players have developed unofficial aspects of the game that are considerably more involved and complex than the game itself. Players write detailed national overviews and histories and post them to the game boards or the NS Wiki, the game's comprehensive, albeit unofficial, encyclopedia. Groups of players have set up private discussion boards where they establish regional constitutions and governmental structures, plan in-game strategy, and engage in out-of-character banter. Regions have been established to conduct historical and futuristic wargaming. A generally-accepted set of rules have been established for conducting international warfare, trade, and espionage via freeform role-playing. There's a whole subcategory of sports roleplaying, including a recurring World Cup competition (now in its 25th iteration) in which NS players role-play international soccer matches.

I know that many online games spawn various kinds informal associations and activities, but I had not heard of a case where these aspects had grown to virtually overshadow the game itself.