The Case Against Loopholes

Why Civcraft Justice Shouldn’t be Decided by the Better Lawyer

No matter how you try and twist it, Civcraft can never compare to the complications and the intricacies of real life. As a community, we need to realize that crimes and punishment are much more cut and dry in Civcraft than in real life, and given the miniscule population of Civcraft, justice for a single case may be relevant to the majority of the community.

Civcraft compared to the city of Chicago, Illinois (courtesy of /u/steve_wozniak1234)

Before we get into that, we must first define what justice actually is. Justice can be described as behavior or treatment that is considered fair and, well, just. This may seem pretty straightforward, but in reality this is far from black and white. What is just in Commonwealth may not be just in Aurora, and that goes for any town on the map. Declaring someone not guilty may not be in accordance with what someone across the map considers not guilty, so we run into the problem of a player whom is unsure of whether they can consider themselves free to do as they please or not.

If one is to play Civcraft, they need to accept and respect the fact that other players have different definitions of justice than them, because if they don’t, they will run into some serious problems when they deem people free to go when in reality there are players across the map who may feel they cheated them out of justice. I experienced this first hand in the Orion Court case of rallag7/Fyreflight, and that changed my personal perspective on justice as a concept in Civcraft.

There are many different criminal codes on Civcraft, some as simple as “be nice” and others spanning over 8 pages with a multitude of conditional scenarios. One would think that as these documents get increasingly specific, justice would improve. Right? Wrong.

With the increase in specific rules comes more room for loopholes and excuses, excuses criminals and their supporters thrive on. These criminal conglomerates will attempt to use your own laws against you in order to shame you into doing what they want. I know this from experience and it does not feel good, but for this you have no one to blame but yourself. The Orion court system has a multitude of problems, and is designed primarily for new players that commit minor crimes. Alongside this, the case of rallag7 was given to the newest judge of Orion, agentnola. I have no problems with him as a person, but placing him in a position to judge a case relevant to many players of the international community was a clearly wrong choice that I wouldn’t have made myself.

The verdict of this case ended in a 5 diamond fine to Vale/mkcoates. I can’t help but feel the system was cheated here, and I was charged with the task of releasing Fyreflight. Like many cases before and more continued through today, I had to release a pearl that I was unsure deserved release. It was not my decision to make, and I had the choice of discrediting the Orion government and doing what I felt was just or following what I was tasked to do. I made the law-abiding choice and released the pearl. Morally, I knew this was the wrong choice, but I had no other option, so once again rallag7 was free to roam the Civcraft world, a world he would later attempt to destabilize with Papa_Pound and the “America invasion” of late 2014.

This invasion was a direct spawn of the “Eagle Girl” crew, a smaller group that consisted of Papa_Pound, Lysika_Lantariel, and a few others, noteably sintralin controlling the reddit account for Papa_Pound’s alt, eagle__girl. Following the transition into America, the subreddits /r/CivAmerica and /r/CivCourt were formed in order to put on a facade of legitimacy to a group that spent their time looting, breaking vaults, griefing, and pearling innocent players. I’m not here to judge the level of criminality of these things, but I’m sure some newer players whom were not around to see these events can recognize some names and make a few current associations.

During this invasion, two vaults were broken. One being Xanadu, owned by /u/clone2204, and the other being the Orion vault. I cannot comment on the Xanadu break, but some relevant players held in the Orion vault at the time of the break are Papa_Pound, shadowjay1, xXTBXx3276, and a few others. A multitude of people came to break the vault per orders of Papa_Pound. Some known faces from Recharge from spring of that year, various new players recruited from Kohi and other servers, and a few old players and LADS. They broke the vault and freed all of the criminals inside despite our defense, and rallag7 was the one to do it. He personally released all of the pearls in the vault he was graciously released from prior to this. Was that justice? I think not.

Fight at Orion vault from Oculism’s (America) perspective

This is what changed my perspective on justice. This is what drove clone2204 to hold people for so long. This is what happens when people are given chances only to fail to play nice. This is what losing hope in the natural good in people is, and this is why concrete justice systems fail to exact justice. Crime in Civcraft should not just consist of reparations and end time. The community needs more to convince them that someone will not ruin their chance like they had in the past. A genuine apology is a must, and many of the justice systems of Civcraft today fail to get that apology.

I would love to be an optimist, but in my years on Civcraft I have learned that looking for only the positives is an easy way to get yourself burned. There are too many people to count that are only here to ruin other player’s fun, and these people do not deserve to be able to play this game. They need to be locked away until they not only can pay reparations and serve end time, but issue a genuine apology and show remorse for their actions. No loopholes, no excuses, no bullshit, that is all Civcraft needs.

Lava grief by rupturedKidney in Downtown Orion (courtesy of /u/TheOnlyomgepicness)

In my time as a new player in the summer of 2013, I encountered one of these players who’s name would go down in Civcraft history. rupturedKidney. This guy thrived on chaos and was only here to ruin other’s work. He lava-griefed everything in Orion and burnt anything that was flammable, and then killed himself if anyone got near. He spent weeks doing this to Orion attempting to make us quit playing. We persevered, but the same cannot be said about the town of Hobbiton, whom rupturedKidney also took an interest in. He burnt that town to a crisp, and even after Commonwealth and Lio assisted in cleaning up, at least 10 players quit and never returned to Civcraft. rupturedKidney killed an entire town in a single day. These are the people that we cannot have playing this game. They have yet to feel remorse for their actions and they spend their time here destroying in seconds what took exponentially more time to create. Do these people truly deserve freedom? If you try to turn the server into a place without politics and only chaos, who is to say that you deserve to be released?

You don’t. Not even consideration.

Not enough justice systems in Civcraft look at remorse as a factor, and that is simply self-destructive. It is a slippery slope when it comes to repeat criminals, and to ensure these criminals are not released just to cause more havoc a multitude of things needs to happen.

How does one prevent players from repeat crime? The answer is simple and lies in the way they are punished for their crimes.

If a player wants to be released, there are a few things requested of them. They must ensure they have paid all reparations and have no respectable disputes over these reparations, they must serve adequate end time, and they must be sincerely apologetic for what they have done. This can be in the form of a mumble conversation, an essay, or even general demeanor during the reparation process. If someone is generally cold when it comes to reparations and is fairly rude when dealing with their pearl holder, I would feel less inclined to release them because that means they have failed to understand that they have done something wrong and are not willing to take responsibility for their actions. Dealing with a third party “representing them” is not something that can be considered genuine remorse, and I will never feel that these players have adequately took responsibility for their crimes.

This is a small community and having a lawyer isn’t as important when the required knowledge of laws is miniscule when compared to real life. An individual can read a few pages of laws by themselves and if they cannot take the time to understand what they’ve done wrong, they don’t deserve to be released.