Gareth Damian Martin on the game’s refugee-themed DLC.
Science fiction often isn’t really about the future.
It’s a reflection of our present, how today’s anxieties and issues might be represented tomorrow.
But it’s also a game about identity, about capitalism, and about trans experience.
It’s something the developer admitted to feeling uncomfortable about.
“As in, it kind of implies strange things about what games are.
And to be the best British game in a year?
It makes me feel very uncomfortable.
That stuff’s complicated.”
What inspired the refugee story in the three-part DLC?
That fell to the wayside during making the game.
How does the universe work?'
But those are very mechanical game design reasons.
A citizen is a very specific kind of classification that is used for and against individuals.
And it felt necessary to explore the idea of being a refugee in relation to being a citizen.
Because I think there are a lot of tension points there.
The DLC seems particularly political and relevant to today, was that intentional?
Obviously it’s impossible not to pay attention to what’s happening in this country right now.
But I didn’t think ‘Oh refugee flotilla because timely hot button subject’.
I think there are other games that do that.
It aligns with those things but at no point did I ever think I’m making a metaphor here.
I was much more interested in modelling a wider set of themes that would connect to that.
The game has a diverse mix of characters.
Why did you decide to champion outsiders?
Does that reflect your own personal experience in any way?
Just observing them is not enough.
See this giant boulder?
It’s going to slowly roll over us and pressure us.
But we can’t do anything to stop it.
And that feels like a very particularly contemporary feeling.
And whether or not that is a terrible, miserable tragedy?
There’s a real juxtaposition between warm human stories and the coldness of space.
Was that intentional to bring humanity to science fiction?
Yeah, 100 percent.
I think that’s the thing that really excites me in sci-fi.
But the game is intended to be about now, as opposed to about the future.
And that’s something that’s part of my experience with urban space.
The music also reflects that juxtaposition.
What was your brief to composer Amos Roddy, and what were you trying to evoke with the music?
And so it’s not just exciting or propulsive, but it’s often thoughtful and reflective.
So I think that quality is something we really pushed.
I think a lot of things we talked about were also cycles.
And then we tried to embed the mood system in the game.
And so we ended up just leaving it like that with that very nebulous sense.
That’s just video games.
It’s all numbers at the end of the day!
You said that Citizen Sleeper is a game about now, what did you mean by that?
That’s how I think of science fiction.
I love to read science fiction from the 80s.
And when you read it, it’s got nothing to do with the future.
It’s got everything to do with what was happening in the 80s.
And I think precarity was the starting theme for me.
Why is it that we think of ourselves as being very precarious?
And how is it about the real risks we’re exposed to?
And trying to model some of that with the dice system.
So I was always trying to lean back into this idea of what does precarity mean?
What does it mean to be exposed to risk and to feel that?
And what different kinds of precarity exist?
We’ve seen it in this country.
When something happens like Brexit, you feel like anything could be rolled back.
Anything could be changed.
Any kind of fundamental right or belief could switch.
I wanted to also experiment with the idea of doing something episodic.
Does that mean there will be more from the world of Citizen Sleeper?
Are there more stories to tell?
I’m definitely not done.
I’m not shifting my focus for the time being.
So I think that’s what I’ll do.
There definitely will be more things for people who are interested in Citizen Sleeper.
They should pay attention to me for the next three months!
