September 2026 Dev Log

It's been... a while since the last development log.

Again.

When I wrote the May Update, Global Nexus had already been in the works for more than six years. Since then, the project has somehow crossed another significant milestone: last week marked the sixth anniversary of the first test game of what was then of course called Campaign for the Entire God Damn World. This also means that the game has now been being built for more than seven years.

Six years ago, five people sat down and attempted to work out whether a game about running the entire world was a good idea (it probably wasn't - and yet here we are).

And that's kind of insane to think about. 

What began in 2019 has grown considerably beyond what anybody could have reasonably anticipated. The original test game was a much simpler affair. It was a rough experiment in geopolitics, territorial expansion, diplomacy, and whatever other ideas I could cram into the rules at the time. Since then, it has been rebuilt, expanded, renamed, rewritten, expanded again, and subjected to an increasingly impressive number of spreadsheets, documents, and late-night design decisions.

And somehow, against all expectations I had when the idea was first formed, we're still going.

The past few months have been no different. Since the previous log, Global Nexus has continued to become larger, more interconnected, and perhaps most importantly, somewhat more complete (though it's still far from true completion).

The focus has increasingly shifted away from simply adding new systems and towards developing the consequences of the systems that already exist. Economies now behave more dynamically. Government budgets have become an actual part of gameplay. Nations can rise, decline, and ultimately lose. And, after more than seven years of development, the game now has something that it has conspicuously lacked for most of its existance: an ending.

So, with the sixth anniversary of that first test game now behind us, here's what has been happening in Global Nexus over the past few months.

Building an Economy

One of the most significant areas of development since the previous update has been within the game's economic framework.

For much of Global Nexus's development, the economy of each nation was wholly represented through broad, national figures. While these provided a useful overview of a nation's economic condition, they didn't fully capture the complexity of how an economic actually functions, or, more importantly, how decisions made in one part of the economy can impact everything else.

The new framework takes a more granular approach. A nation's economy is now divided into 27 distinct sectors, each of which contributes to GDP while also having its own characteristics, requirements, outputs, and behaviours. These sectors continue to function as part of a single national economy, but they are no longer held to be interchangeable pieces of it.

Most excitingly (for me, at least #nerd) is that government budgets have become a tangible gameplay mechanic. Government expenditure it no longer something that just exists in the background of the game. It is increasingly connected to the decisions that players and governments make about investment, public services, economic development, and national priorities.

Measuring the World (again)

The systems surrounding domestic governance have continued to expand since the previous update, particularly the mechanisms used to represent the condition of a nation and the information available to players.

The number of Measures of Society has reached 64*, up from 46 in May. Because if there's one thing the game needed, it was more metrics. These measures are intended to capture different aspects of national life, from economic and political conditions to social stability, institutional performance, and the more elusive forces that can influence how a nation develops.

At the same time, the game's library of policies and government programs has continued to grow. Obviously. It now exceeds 750 individual options. As the number of policies has increased, so has the importance of understanding what those policies actually do. Measures provide a way of connecting individual government decisions to the broader condition of the nation, allowing domestic governance to become an ongoing process rather than a series of isolated choice.

One of the more unusual developments has been the introduced of formal names for individual indices that some measures are tracked on. Rather than assigning every measure a generic name, many now use indices named after notable figures whose work, ideas, or legacy relate to what is being measured. But I'll have more to say on this at a later date.

*there was a new measure I thought of after writing this so it's actually 65 now.

The Game (Finally) Has an Ending

Arguably the most significant (and certainly the most overdue) addition recently is that the game now has an actual end condition and victory system. Kind of.

For more than seven years, it didn't!

This was largely intentional. From the earliest versions of the game, the idea was that the game should be an open-ended geopolitical simulation. There was no predetermined point at which the world had to stop, and no single definition of what it meant to "win". Players and nations could pursue their own objectives, build their nations, form alliances, fight wars, reshape the international order, or simply keep playing for as long as the game remained interesting to them.

For a long time, I liked that approach. It suited the sandbox nature of the game and avoided reducing the entire experience to a single end goal or victory condition.

Eventually, however, I started to feel that something was missing.

As Global Nexus has become more structured and interconnected, having no conclusion at all increasingly meant that many of its systems lacked a meaningful final purpose. A nation could rise to become a global power, collapse into political turmoil, dominate its neighbours, or completely transform its economy, but without an endpoint, there was no real way to determine when the story of a game had actually reached its conclusion.

So, I've been developing defined end conditions and victory conditions. Naturally, they are still fresh and subject to further refinement and in fact another idea occurred to me as I was writing this sentence. But ultimately, there is a framework for determining when a game has reached its conclusion and which players have succeeded.

It's a fairly significant philosophical change for a game that spend most of its existence deliberately not having a fixed endpoint.

Looking Ahead

With another major set of systems now (mostly) developed, Global Nexus is once again in what feels like a new phase. The focus has again shifted to also ensuring that the systems of the game actually work together.

The development of the economic framework, the continued expansion of measures and domestic governance, and the introduction of genuine end and victory conditions all represent a broader shift in the game. Individual mechanics are becoming increasingly interconnected, with decisions in one part of the game creating consequences across many others.

Of course, this is Global Nexus, so saying that the game is entering a more refined stage of development should not be mistaken for saying that it is anywhere close to being finished. Because it's not.

There are still manuals to write, systems to develop, mechanics to test, tables to build, interactions to plan, and almost certain several innocent looking ideas that will eventually morph into entirely new sections of the ruleset.

But after more than seven years of development (one third of my life!) and six years since the first game, the project feels more cohesive than it ever has before.

What started as three people attemptin to build a game about running the world has somehow become a sprawling simulation involving more than 60 Measures of Society, 27 economic sectors, hundreds of policies, interconnected economies, domestic politics, warfare, diplomacy, and now an actual way to work out who wins.

And obviously, more.

As always, thank you for following along - whether you've been here since before the first test, joined somewhere along the way, or have simply found yourself inexplicably interested in watching one increasingly complex geopolitical simulation come together.

There's still a great deal left to build, but it's hard to believe that after seven years I'm still just as enthusiastic as I was when this started when I was 14. I'm still not entirely sure where I want this game to end up, but I'm sure I'll work it out eventually. If I can work out how to to implement a some 2600 grid cell map into the game, I'm sure I can work that out.

But for the first time, I think we might actually have an idea where the game ends, and that's pretty neat if you ask me.

Until next time,

- Jacob

Also sorry there were no graphics or images in this log. I didn't think any of the ones I've created for the manuals in the past few months are good enough to share yet. I'll make sure I've got some ready next time :)