“It’s not a pressure I want to run away from.”
Success and fame are things I imagine any game developer might want.
Few grasp it, butCitizen Sleepermost certainly did.
It’s deserving of that success - it remains one of my favourite games of recent years.
Who or what are you as a Sleeper?
It’s up to you to figure it out.
Success, though, can be tricky to deal with.
It creates expectations and thrusts people into a spotlight that can be fierce and withering.
“It’s very tricky to deal with.
“I feel a certain responsibility that comes with success,” Damian Martin says.
“Like, Ireallywant the definition of RPGs to be expanded,” they add, using an example.
Citizen Sleeper 2, due very soon on 31st January, is Damian Martin’s answer to this.
“The sequel was made with a lot of pressure on it from that perspective.
But it’s not a pressure that I want to run away from,” they say.
“It’s something that I feel very strongly about.”
They needed a new game.
From its conception, Citizen Sleeper 2 was designed to be different.
That game is there, still exists, so a sequel didn’t need to repeat it.
This game needed to be something else.
Moreso, “There’s lots of stuff inMass Effectthat’s a bit goofy,” they say.
I would never make something as goofy.”
They wanted their sci-fi world to feel more real and a like place that they could conceivably exist in.
So what might having a ship - something other people don’t necessarily have in this world - mean?
“It means people are drawn to you,” Damian Martin says.
Well, it’s people who are also on the run."
For Damian Martin, these connections between people are the key.
Humanity is the ingredient that ties all of the ship-and-crew stories they like together.
Everyone’s expecting Citizen Sleeper 2 to be human.
“They underestimate it.”
But there’s no underestimating it in Citizen Sleeper 2.
Tension itself is a much more pervasive concept in the sequel than in Citizen Sleeper 1.
But it’s not so now.)
Classes also have differing Push abilities to gamble on dice outcomes with.
And crucially, it felt like an RPG.
Another aspect that made Citizen Sleeper stand out was its political nature.
It had things to say about capitalism and about identity and refugees.
But it was never intended as a game to stage political debates in, Damian Martin tells me.
Those things are there simply because they’re topics prevalent in Damian Martin’s - and our - lives.
Citizen Sleeper 2 sponges up Damian Martin’s more recent life experiences in similar ways.
Also, hearing different perspectives to a war based on where in the world you were.
“So I wanted the game to take place on the shores of war.”
A more prominent influence came from health struggles Damian Martin was having personally while making the game.
“It has been pretty rough,” they say, reflecting on the game’s two-year development.
“It imbued so much into the game.
With that, they laugh.
It should be a grand finale for what we now know will be the last Citizen Sleeper video game.
I found that solidarity to be very moving.
A Sleeper is an opportunity for us to have this other robot body that allows for difference.
“That feels like a thing to explore.
I mean, people already have, but to help people do that.
That feels like where Citizen Sleeper should go.”
