Habbo Roman Empire: My first-ever virtual "democracy"

When I created the Roman Empire of Habboon (an unauthorised Habbo knock-off) in November 2016, I knew nothing about the Roman Empire.

I didn't even know that the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic were two different things.

My principal history adviser and future Roman Empress, Vocaloid., told me she learnt Roman history from reading Percy Jackson novels. "Eh, good enough," I thought as I deferred to her on design choices.

I knew next to nothing about how government worked. When a player called .Max. came to me with his concerns about the elected Empress's power to appoint the head of the Senate, citing separation of powers, I gave him the virtual equivalent of a blank stare. "Separation of powers"? What's that?

The only reason why I even called my organisation the Roman Empire was that I needed a "cool-sounding" name that could signal it had a democratically elected leader. The "White House" was already taken, and so was the "UK Government." The "Roman Empire" seemed like the next best thing.

Back then, Habboon was filled with corporations—the rivalry of which had sparked into full-blown war. As someone who was relatively new on Habboon, I had neither the connections nor the money to directly compete with them. Why should someone join my organisation when they could just as easily join organisations like Interpol, the International Police Department (IPD), or the Elite Police Force (EPF) to name just a few?

I knew early on that for my organisation to get off the ground, it needed to have something that others didn't offer. And at the time, one of my biggest inspirations was the Habbo White House (the non-knock-off one).

Unlike many other organisations on real Habbo, which functioned more like multi-level marketing schemes than the intelligence agencies they were naming themselves after, the Habbo White House held regular elections for its top leader—the President. In a world where the founders of corporations commonly held absolute power (which they self-justified on the basis that they spent hundreds or thousands of US dollars on the game), the idea that an organisation could have its head be an elected post was nothing short of revolutionary.

The Habboon White House (the knock-off one) half-heartedly copied its Habbo counterpart. It also held regular elections, but only for its Vice President. The President—the player who founded the Habboon White House—remained president-for-life.

The Habboon UK Government was worse. It had a "Prime Minister," a "cabinet," and "MPs," but they weren't elected at all.

My thought was that if I made the Emperor or Empress of the Roman Empire—the highest position of the organisation—into an elected one, I'd be able to distinguish myself from the competition. After all, "you too can be the Empress of Rome!" was something my rivals couldn't sell to new players.

But the prospect of democracy didn't just woo new players into joining—it wooed veteran players (who had participated in other organisations) as well.

Securing the support of veteran players was crucial for any virtual organisation, and doubly so for an organisation that was newly created. Veterans can bring experience, allowing them to run your base without adult supervision. Veterans can bring connections, allowing them to be diplomatic envoys to their former employers (something particularly important when corporations were nuking each other into smithereens). Veterans can even bring intelligence, allowing them to brief you on potential threats and opportunities.

Many organisations at the time secured the support of veteran players using the patronage system, whereby the top jobs would be doled out to veterans to essentially buy their loyalty.

These organisations would stack the corporate ladder with a ton of utterly meaningless roles, often with prestigious-sounding names, to expand the number of roles they could give out using patronage.

Take, for instance, the Elite Police Force (EPF), an organisation founded by its paramount leader, Veraco.

Veraco was the only man who mattered. With absolute power over the organisation, he could make or unmake any player's career. But he held a rather unassuming title, "Head of Foundation."

Under him, the EPF had roles for:

• Assistant Head of Foundation
• Executive Founder
• Founding Constable
• Founding Sergeant
• Founding Minister
• Co-Founder
• Joint Founder

These titles could be doled out to important players to secure their loyalty. But they weren't the only titles he could hand out. These were just the roles for the "Foundation" division—the highest rung of the EPF corporate ladder.

Under the founders were the "Founder Reps"—players who were supposedly entitled to the "respect" of a Founder, but who were nonetheless ranked below them.

Under the "Founder Reps" were the "Leadership" team with even more prestigious-sounding titles like "Leader of Division," "Leader of Administration," and "Leader of Accounts."

And under the "Leadership" team was the "Government" team.

But for how effective the patronage system was in buying loyalty (and it was very effective—there's a reason why it's still the predominant model used by Habbo corporations to this day), there was one thing it couldn't offer to veteran players—actual meaningful power.

Nicole- may have been the "Prime Minister" of the EPF, but she never possessed the power to appoint her own "ministers." Veraco was the one who did that for her.

Nicole! (no relation to Nicole-) may have been "Secretary of War," supposedly with the power to direct the military, but she likely wasn't aware of Operation UPA—a covert military operation to infiltrate one of the agency's main rivals. Veraco was the one who had the details.

(Well, Veraco and I. I knew about the operation too.)

By dangling the carrot of the Roman crown (along with assurances that candidacies would be restricted to people of ... a certain rank or higher, wink wink), I was able to convince several high-ranking members (particularly those of the Habboon White House) to jump ship.

My first foray with virtual democracy, then, wasn't based on idealism (as much as I may have proselytised it at the time). It was based on a transaction.

I needed veterans to fill my organisation's ranks; they needed something in return.

I bought their loyalty with the promise of democracy.

Rejection of the crown

When I created the Roman Empire, I was obsessed with finding a new Emperor or Empress.

I despised the title. I despised the implication that came with it.

When Vocaloid. and Contrary became Empress and Princess of the Roman Empire, I felt a sense of relief. I dutifully took my place as Vocaloid's third-in-command as her Secretary of State.

Upon Vocaloid's ascension to the crown, I quickly edited the Roman Empire's official website to show off the organisation's new leaders:

I added an FAQ to emphasise the democratic nature of the Roman Empire:

The SPQR [Roman Empire] is a democracy. This means the highest ranking leader of the organisation (the Emperor/Empress) is elected every 2 months and therefore there are no 'owners'.

I made it abundantly clear that as the founder of the Roman Empire, I possessed nothing but an "honorary title" and had "no real power."

But if you dig into the website a bit further, you may notice a glaring omission—where's the Constitution?

The website stresses the Empress was "in command of everyone and everything" and possessed the "sole duty of governing the Empire," but gives no further details.

The FAQ makes a vague mention of cabinet officials being appointed by the Empress, a Legion branch that defended the Empire "from domestic and foreign threats," and a Senate branch that could create laws and run the courts.

But what exactly can and can't the Empress do?

In short, I don't know. The Roman Empire never had a codified constitution. It never had a single document detailing what branches there were and what powers and responsibilities they had.

The innocent reason for this was that I probably didn't know what a "constitution" was at the time. The UK doesn't have a codified constitution, so I didn't encounter the concept at school.

The Habbo White House—the organisation I had taken inspiration from—also didn't have a codified constitution (and wouldn't have one until 2019). Its founder, Financier, was British, and perhaps it didn't occur to him to make one.

But had I known what a codified constitution was at the time, I'm not sure I would've made one for the Roman Empire.

Because the ambiguity was kind of the point.

Yes, there was a Senate that technically possessed the power to pass new laws.

But it was a bit hard for the Senate to do that in practice because there weren't any codified rules on how laws were made. There were no rules on when the Senate met, how the Senate met, or how the Senate voted.

There was a Legion that technically was tasked with protecting the Empire from "domestic and foreign threats."

But those tasks were made practically redundant because I had already automated the day-to-day operations of the Empire's headquarters.

The lack of any real thought I had given to the Empire's constitutional arrangements really betrays how I viewed the role of democracy at the time.

I didn't view democracy as a governance tool. I viewed it as a public relations one.

I viewed democracy as a performance—a dance to attract members to join the Roman banner.

My obsession with finding a new Emperor or Empress wasn't based on a willingness to hand over the keys of power to an elected leader. It was based on a willingness to be perceived as doing so.

By stepping down as leader, I could grandstand to allies about the virtues of democracy.

By stepping down as leader, I could perform provocative actions under the Empress's name.

By stepping down as leader, I could move public attention away from me and onto the newly elected Empress.

But did I actually have an intention to voluntarily hand over actual power? No.

Because paradoxically, the promise of democracy aggravated my paranoia.

The veteran players that I'd spent so long courting began giving briefs that deeply troubled me. Reports of corporations infiltrating one another. Reports of organisations getting nuked by another. Reports of ongoing covert military operations against agencies that, as far as I could tell, had done nothing to provoke them.

These intelligence briefings, along with my discussions with friendly agency owners and the occasional sabre-rattling by unfriendly ones, effectively gave me a siege mentality—the belief that the Roman Empire was under constant threat from external actors. I felt like I couldn't even trust our closest "allies."

It was this constant fear of being infiltrated and taken down from the inside that, ironically, made me deeply distrustful of the democratic system I had spent months creating.

It was why my website constantly emphasised the Empress's ability to appoint her cabinet ministers—the purely aesthetic exercise of shuffling a few deck chairs around was about as much power as I was willing to relinquish to an elected leader. (And hey, it's way more power than what Prime Minister Nicole- had!)

I was willing to do whatever it took to protect Rome's national security—and the actions I took showed just how little I actually cared for "democracy."

Firstly, I developed Wired weapons, ostensibly for self-defence, behind the backs of the Secretary of Defence, the Princess, and the Empress. None of them (to my recollection) was informed about it, and none of them authorised using them against the Habboon White House.

Nor would they, because the Habboon White House was a friendly agency that had done nothing to provoke us. The Secretary of Defence himself was a former member of it, and we had several members who left on amicable terms with them.

But I didn't care—national security came first. The test needed to be done so I could see it working in practice.

Secondly, I just unilaterally created legislation.

Yeah, there was supposed to be a Senate—and indeed, if you examined the official Empire website, the bill was actually voted on by the Senate.

But I employed a tactic known as lying. This vote never happened.

I marked myself as approving my own bill, and I marked the most inactive Senator I could find as approving it as well. The rest of the Senators were marked as absent. If any Senator asked about the vote, I'd just explain that a Senate meeting did happen, but they weren't online during the time.

Had Senator Patrick suddenly come back from the dead and enquired why they were marked as approving it, I'd probably have brushed it off as an administrative error.

In the end, every single law the Roman Empire ever had was, in fact, written by me. An embarrassing fact that I would attempt to conceal by literally signing laws with someone else's name on it.

With the power to unilaterally create laws came the power to put players accused of breaking those laws on "trial."

In the Apollo case, Apollo (the owner of a rival organisation, MI6) was charged with violating section 1(4) of the Defection Act 2016, which made it a criminal offence to "encourage the defection [of Roman Empire members] to a foreign organisation."

The evidence submitted by the prosecution was screenshots of him attempting to sway Secretary of Defence Harvster into joining MI6.

The evidence was damning. It was an open-and-shut case.

In the end, Judge Patrick was magnanimous. He sentenced Apollo to a permanent ban—a forgiving sentence, considering prosecutors originally sought a ban for all of MI6.

But the trial was nothing but a sham. There was no due process. There were no court procedures. I picked the prosecutor (Harvster), the witness (Harvster), and the judge (Patrick) in a closed process.

I was hollering at the public gallery like I was watching a pantomime (and what was the judge going to do? Kick me out? Under what authority?)

As the controller of the official website, I had free rein to add as much evidence into the file to support the prosecution's case. Apollo had no such privilege—he could only defend himself with his own words. (And he definitely wasn't doing that, much to my delight).

The most grievous flaw of Apollo's trial, however, was the fact that what Apollo did wasn't actually illegal at the time.

When Apollo messaged Harvster on the 23rd December 2016, the Defection Act didn't exist. There was no section 1(4). There was no capital offence that banned the "encouragement of defection."

So I just retconned it into existence.

If I were willing to just make up Senate votes to "pass" my legislation, I sure as hell was also willing to create retroactive legislation, backdated to—oh how convenient, the 23rd December 2016—the very date of the alleged offence.

And as transcripts of the trial showed, I had no apprehension in threatening to retcon other crimes into existence, such as "terrorism," to charge Apollo with:

The Apollo trial would end up being one of my pride and joys—an oft-cited case study I'd use to showboat to Roman citizens about how their glorious Empire was governed not by the arbitrary caprice of a tyrant, but by the rule of law. An Empress and a cabinet elected by you—the citizenry.

But this was just propaganda. There was no rule of law in the Empire.

And sometimes my mask just slipped off.

You may not be surprised to learn that the covert CIA-style black sites I installed in the Empire's headquarters (which essentially froze a user's game client by exploiting a bug) were also done behind the Empress's back.

I self-justified their installation, again, on the basis that protecting the Empire's national security was my first and foremost priority. But just like Light Yagami with his Death Note, it didn't take long for me to utterly abuse my power to freeze the game clients of my perceived enemies. Annoyed me in a sleight? Bye-bye client.

Apollo was lucky in that regard—at least he got a show trial. The people I added to the list didn't.

For all of the misdeeds I did in the "service" of the Roman Empire, which transformed it from being a prospective liberal democracy to a sham Fraenkel dual state, I ironically ended up buying into my own propaganda.

By the time the Roman Empire came to a close (as we all moved on to doing other things), I genuinely believed that I ran some sort of democracy.

And my positive experience running the Roman Empire ended up propelling my interest in virtual democracies and government. It would end up being the first of many that I'd end up participating in.