Do you ever play a game — or watch a movie, read a book, what have you — and it’s neither extraordinarily bad, or extraordinarily good, but for whatever reason you just can’t stop thinking about it? It sticks with you because there’s simply something missing. Something unanswered.
This essay is about The Outer Worlds.
You make your character. You crash on an unknown world. A life in the stars awaits you, yes, but mostly a life under the thumb of corporations. You’re a newcomer, and an outsider, in a hyper-capitalist world.
It’s less often that that unanswered feeling actually gets an answer. I played The Outer Worlds in 2021. I enjoyed my time with it plenty, but when I finished the game I couldn’t help but feel there was something missing. I found that missing thing almost a year later, when I played a different game.
This essay is about Citizen Sleeper.
You make your character. You crash on an unknown world. A life in the stars awaits you, yes, but mostly a life under the thumb of corporations. You’re a newcomer, and an outsider, in a hyper-capitalist world.
In Persuasive Games Ian Bogost argues for attention towards the way systems of gameplay create meaning in games, what he calls procedural rhetoric. The procedures a player goes through, the possibilities and results, determine the argument, the story, the meaning of a game. It is useful here to examine the systems of gameplay in these games, and see how they relate to the broader systems represented in their gameworlds.
The Outer Worlds presents its hyper-capitalist society as a sort of satirical play, something to behold. Containing its excesses in neat vignettes through quests and dialogue, the player moves through the world like it’s a theme park. The gameplay is otherwise exactly as advertised: Fallout but in space. Perfectly enjoyable, thoroughly entertaining, but removed from the reality of the world the game is trying to communicate. At no point in the game was I short on money, or any other resource. I’m pretty sure you can beat the whole game without ever buying anything. I needed, ammo, guns, armor, sure, but never did that lead me to engage with the economy of the world around me in any significant way. Never was I forced under the pressure of these supposedly all-dominating corporate powers.
Citizen Sleeper is different. For those unfamiliar: you play a Sleeper, a human consciousness copied to robotic body by the company Essen-Arp. You serve as both employee and property of the company. Until you escape, and subsequently, crash onto a city-sized space-station. From there it’s up to you to figure out how to build a life. In doing so, money isn’t something you can avoid dealing with. Your robotic body is purposefully build not to last. Your physical condition is constantly deteriorating, and maintaining it will cost you.
It works like this: at the start of every in-game day you roll a handful of dice. You can apply the results of those dice rolls to take different actions in the game. A high number on the die means good odds of a good result, a low number means things will likely go wrong. The amount of dice you roll at the start of a day is determined by you condition, which deteriorates every day, and the rate at which your conditions deteriorates is determined by your energy, which declines in the same way. You replenish your energy by buying food, and your condition by buying medicine. If your condition completely depletes, your body falls apart. You need money.
Luckily there’s Dagos. At the start of the game he gives you a job dismantling spacecrafts to sell for parts. It’s reliable work, the pay’s not bad, and there’s little risk involved. With this job your first days on the station are not too unpleasant. It’s not a problem right away but you’ll need to figure out where to buy food and medication. You’re new, you’ll have learn how to find your way around the city. To do that you’ll have to use your dice as well, which means you can’t use them to make money, but — given the reliable job you have — that’s not a big issue. Soon enough you’ll meet Sabine, who’s got a lead on some meds, and Emphis, who’ll trade you a mushroom-meal for a good story from time to time.
After several days however, Dagos will tell you that he doesn’t have any more work for you. Truth is, Essen-Arp has tried to eliminate you before, and he can’t keep running the risk of them showing up on his doorstep. The reliable income you had disappears. You need a new job, soon. Hope you found some leads in the city by now, otherwise you’ll need to spend your time (and dice) on that, while your condition deteriorates. The pressure increases. Sabine says she need a couple days before she’ll let you know if she can hook you up with medication. Other jobs are less reliable; they pay less, or they’ve got more risks involved, like further damaging your condition.
In the meantime you find out that Essen-Arp is indeed still after you. They’ve hired a bounty hunter, and the clock is ticking until he arrives.
That’s another important aspect of gameplay involved. The ticking clocks. Some things take time, or require repeated effort. This gets represented through a little clock that slowly fills until completion. Sabine needed time. Every day that clock gains a tick. A ship needs repairs. Every time you work on it the clock gains a tick. A bounty hunter is tracking you down. The clock is ticking. What can you do before it fills? Escape the station? Disable the tracker hidden in your body? Those things take time, effort, investment. Meanwhile, you still need to eat, still need to keep working your job.
Sometimes you have a bad day. You just roll ones and twos. What do you do then? Go back to bed, decide that day is wasted, try again tomorrow? Sometimes, maybe. But you still need to eat. Even on a bad day, you can’t just decide you’re not participating. Luckily the game has a use for your low rolls. Your robotic systems connect to the digital networks of the station. You can start hacking. Hacking allows you to apply your rolls in a different way. You don’t need a high result, you simply need the correct result, and often that’ll be a one or a two. That way you can use a bad roll to gather data to use or sell. But this is dangerous work. In these systems, you’re illegal. An illegal consciousness in their networks, and hacking brings you into contact with the station’s security systems. A bad day might mean all your legitimate opportunities disappear, and you’ll have to rely on dangerous work that may get you caught.
This is procedural rhetoric. Citizen Sleeper is a game with a lot of text, much of it beautifully written, but that’s not the only way the story is told. The systems of gameplay work together to communicate its meaning as well. Rolling the dice, the declining meters, the ticking clocks, the risks and opportunities. It’s surviving, maybe even building a life, under the constant pressure of systems. That’s life under capitalism. The commodification of basic needs like food and medications, demanding you rely on luck. Luck your medication is available, luck you get to keep your job, luck you get to earn enough to buy food before your body deteriorates and your opportunities get smaller still.
This is the difference between The Outer Worlds and Citizen Sleeper. Effective procedural rhetoric. Both are trying to make you believe in a world of totalizing extra-global hyper-capitalism, but The Outer Worlds makes for a paradoxical experience in the end. You watch people stuck in dead-end jobs under ridiculous demands from their corporate overlords, while you yourself gallivant around, jobless and careless, living proof that those supposedly totalizing systems are in fact quite easily escaped. Citizen Sleeper places you into its systems, making you a part of the world it creates.
