Introduction
THE GAMEPLAY ALIGNMENT TEST
2012: "The purpose of the Gameplay Alignment Test is to identify gameplayers (NationStates players involved in regional politics) on the basis of two ideological axes, (1) their military alignment, (2) their political alignment — which establishes a uniquely "NationStates" political compass."
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The "classic" Gameplay Alignment Test concerned two axes:
I. Internal alignment (regionalism/cosmopolitanism). How the relationship between a nation and their region is defined. Regionalists value loyalty at the risk of curtailing the freedom and individuality of its citizens, and their access to engage with the world at large. Cosmopolitans reward the contributions of a diverse and open membership, often to such an extent it is vulnerable to entryism. II. External alignment (raiderism/defenderism). How the relationship between regions is defined, as it concerns their natural rights and claims to sovereignty. On both ends of this spectrum, adherents assert a belief in a natural law, that being either the law of the jungle or the law of regions and the right to self-determination. Those on neither extreme of the spectrum possess only a weak sense of what constitutes a natural claim or right in NationStates, or exhibit a strictly positivist view of the rule of international law, such that the right to the freedom from aggression is limited to treaties and other legal agreements duly ratified.In 2026, Unibot introduced a third axis, modal alignment. Additional questions were offered as apart of the Gameplay Alignment Test to test players' modal alignment.
III. Modal alignment (modernism/traditionalism). How the relationship between players and the game are defined. Traditionalists accept certain artifices of conflict, customs, values, common sites of participation, as a necessary condition to play the game fully and substantively. Modernists see these artifices as inefficient and inconvenient as far as they concern what it means to win in NationStates. For modernists, conflict is a means to an end, not a desirable end in and of itself.Given the volume of historical data (i.e., the ability to compare real results with long-gone players), there is no expectation that the classic version of the test will be replaced by the modern addition, but we have taken steps to ensure it is available here for those who wish to try our new questions.