i used to play this game called space station 14 a lot. it’s a really cool game—it’s based on space station 13 and is basically a disaster simulator roleplay on a space station run entirely by the players on the server. it’s also open source so anyone can add stuff to it or even make their own server with custom content.
i’ve done this a bit myself, namely adding one particular thing: tropico, the local pet crab of the atmospherics department. everyone else gets a pet—why don’t we? plus, there’s this cool crab that gets mapped in here sometimes. why not just name it and make it official? me and another player roleplayed out deciding on the name tropico, partially as an homage to the game but also because yknow, he’s a bright orange crab, it’s cute.
so i went to work, getting my pull-request ready. i had to remove some features that the maintainers (reasonably) didn’t want, namely the ability to play as him at round-start and the ability for him to participate in a mutinous revolution (literally 1984). but eventually it was merged, and my precious son was added to the game.
…after some map updates adding him, of course.
which i totally didn’t mess up my PR with, by trying to do that myself without realizing how horribly messy map files are and how out of scope it was.
ahem
anyway, a bit after he was added, i got to roleplay out a little thing on a higher-roleplay downstream server, where i got to improvise the story of how he was found on a very very deep construction job, building some sort of research facility at the bottom of the ocean. and here was this little shallow-water crab, totally out of his depth (literally), completely unfazed by the pressure. which, naturally, resonated with the atmospherics workers on the job, and they took him home to their station after the job was done, where he represents the department as their mascot to this day.
there was a shiny-girl synth character there, who was new to the job, and found the story VERY wondrous and inspiring. which always struck a chord with me.
in fact, the way tropico’s made a splash in the community in general in his own little way is something i’ve always loved. i get to see people… talking about something i made. adoring him as a pet. stealing him, as part of their Antagonist Objectives~!
…or just using him as a mine canary, since it is the atmospherics department. unfortunately, he tends to die a lot, because realistically, crabs tend not to hold up to the pressures of space, nor the various exotic gases that atmos deals in.
but that in particular has actually always been SO neat and interesting and nice to me. this sort of… emergent gameplay thing that i didn’t really expect. it fills me with a warmth, a fucking JOY to see stuff like that happening, to see him making a splash with so many people, in some small way. taking on new life without me even being there.
it’s beautiful, really. and i think i want to find that feeling more, and in more meaningful ways. to make things that people have their own experiences with. to see what those experiences look like. i think this is why i’ve wanted to be a game dev ever since i was a child. the desire to create things like this for others—and that’s me, i did that! to leave my mark on people in some way. to give them their own stories about their experience with something i made. to have them help me make it something larger than just myself. a collaborative noospheric legacy.
or, in other words:
