A Decade of Cyber Nations
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Today marks the 10 year anniversary of Cyber Nations. I always like to look back on history and it seems appropriate to do so today, so here we go.
I registered the Cyber Nations domain name in 2003 with the hopes of creating a web based nation simulation game but I was unable to come up with a working model and I quickly abandoned the project. I let the domain name sit idle for a year and decided to let it go in 2004 since I couldn't find a use for it. In 2005 my interest was sparked again and so I re-registered the domain name on May 22, 2005 in the hopes to get a game up and running but once again I was unable to lay down any real code structure. Finally on December 24, 2005, during my Christmas break from work, I sat down and really began developing the game. I spent the majority of my Christmas break glued to the computer in hopes to get a working game rolled out by the first of the year before I lost interest in the project for a third time.
The game was launched on January 6, 2006 with little fan fare and with very few features. The early game was quite buggy with major issues plaguing the entire economic system that originally did not include tax collection or bill payment systems. Other features like the resource and trade agreement system, foreign aid system, national events, nation rankings, government position, improvements, wonders, technology, aircraft, tanks, nuclear weapons, and cruise missiles were added months after the initial release date as the game continued to be a work in progress. The few players who originally discovered the game did so by way of Google AdWords but word quickly got around to other gaming communities and the system began to become overrun as it was originally had only a Microsoft Access database backend and hosted via a shared hosting provider. At that time the community forums also ran on a Microsoft Access database version of Snitz Forums 2000 and it existed as a subfolder on the same shared hosting server as the game.
During the first couple of weeks the server began returning “Service Unavailable” errors in which numerous attempts were made to resolve. Such attempts included converting the game database to a MS-SQL database (I had just completed an SQL Server course in college during that same month) and moving the community forums to Invision Free, an offsite forum hosting provider. Still the “Service Unavailable” problems persisted and the game was moved to another shared hosting provider but the problem was not finally resolved until the game was moved to its own dedicated server. The game still has it's traffic bottlenecks, that's unavoidable due to the way the game was designed and played, but throughout the years a myriad of dedicated servers have kept the game alive.
So much has transpired over the years, so many players have come and gone, so many fascinating geopolitics and world wars, so many friends made. I'm amazed that there are nations still in the game that were created the very same month that the Cyber Nations was born, with their tiny 3 digit nation ID's, they've seen it all. Those ancient alliances that were all created during that same month, Global Alliance And Treaty Organization, Orange Defense Network, New Pacific Order, World Task Force, Green Protection Agency, alive and still strong (some stronger than others). As I said before, I never would have imagined that the game would still be around after all these years (heck I always figured it would sputter out after a few months which was evident at the initial lack of planning and hosting infrastructure) and while the game has seen much larger player base populations in the past (at times it was too large imo) I'm happy to see that the game continues to have such a loyal following after so many years. Thank you to everyone who has been part of the journey.
I leave you with some old relics of the past. This first one is kind of embarrassing given my horrible handwriting (I generally write much better than this, unless I'm in frantic note taking mode). Here I scratched out some thoughts on 3/15/2003. I still chuckle at the question that I posed at the bottom, as I don't believe that one has yet been answered:
The first logo for the game:
This is the very first image of the game as I was coding it in December 2005 on the old Compaq monitor that I was so glued to. I'm glad that High Contrast theme did not survive very long.
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