ABSTRACT
Civilization is a long-running, turn-based, historical strategy video game premised on leading real-world civilisations through imperial expansion. The gameplay portrays the world as terra nullius – empty earth free to claim and settle. Notably, terra nullius was a legal fiction used as part of the doctrine of discovery to justify European colonisation of Indigenous territories on the basis that the inhabitants were ‘uncivilised.’ This chapter explores how Civilization perpetuates those Eurocentric ideas behind the doctrine of discovery and contributes to misrepresentations of Indigenous communities in popular culture. These misrepresentations place Indigenous players and avatars in a box, forced to act out colonial structures without a chance to determine how their own legal value systems are used and presented. Fortunately, legal pluralism provides an avenue for game developers to recognise the validity of Indigenous legal traditions alongside European perspectives. While these collaborative development strategies face hurdles to commercial success in a capitalist, market-based system, recent games have shown how collaborating with Indigenous communities can lead to innovation in gameplay and development that more accurately portrays Indigenous legal traditions.
