Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper) On Creating More Meaningful Choices in RPGs

Sep 6

Episode Description

Gareth Damien Martin (They/Them) is an award-winning writer, designer and artist. Their first game, In Other Waters won the Jury Prix at IndieCade Europe.

Most recently, they’ve released the critically acclaimed role playing game Citizen Sleeper which places players in the role of an escape worker on a lawless space station on the edge of interstellar society and explores themes around capitalism, gig work, precarity, and more.

We talk to Gareth about the genesis of Citizen Sleeper, the cyberpunk influences that inspired the game, how their own personal experiences with gig work helped shaped the game, and so much more.

Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben Thorp

Episode Notes

You can follow Gareth Damian Martin here.

Visit our website: Originstory.show

Do you have feedback or questions for us? Email us theoriginstorypod@gmail.com

Cover art and website design by Melody Hirsch

Origin Story original score by Ryan Hopper

Phil 0:25
What's good everybody? Welcome to origin story, the podcast that interviews creators about where they came from, to understand how they got here. My name is Philip Russell and I am with my co host, Ben Thorpe. And then this week we have Gareth Damien Martin. They are an award winning writer, designer and artist and their first game, and other waters won the Jury prix IndieCade in Europe, and most recently, they are known for this new Cyberpunk game called Citizen sleeper, which places players in the role of an escaped worker on a lawless space station on the edge of the interstellar society. And it's kind of exploring ideas around capitalism precarity and gig work. This was a really, really, really interesting conversation about a game that, at least for me, was kind of like a surprise hit, and really, really affected me. So it was really cool talking about them.

Ben 1:27
Yeah, Phil, we have a friend, Joe, who has created the Joey's, which are, you know, his version of the Oscars, like, here are the movies that he thinks are the best ones of the year, this for me is gonna get a Benny like solid, better candidate. Easily, I think like probably the best story game, I feel like that I've had a chance to play this year, you've kind of put on this spaceship. And right away, you are forced to make these really hard choices about are you going to eat are you going to find enough of this kind of tech juice that you need, because you're kind of a robot that is in the process of basically breaking down because you're meant to be a worker for this huge corporation. And because you've escaped, your body is like slowly falling apart. And so you're forced into the situation where often I think you're making these really hard choices between trying to help other people trying to kind of move the story forward. And just like basically trying to survive like stasis costs a lot for you in this game. And it's done through these like these dice, you kind of get dice at the start of every turn. And you know, the lower dice you can't do a ton with and then the higher dice will give you like these rolls that can move things forward. And so I think really captures this feeling of just precarity and nothing ever quite working out and trying to survive with the scraps that you're given that I think like at baseline was just like, such a powerful game, and I know, like really resonated with both of us.

Phil 2:56
Yeah, and, you know, I think for me, it was it's really interesting, because Gareth is somebody that I had been following on Twitter for like, a couple years, I think. And I was just I think it was just one of those scenarios where I must have seen something that they had tweeted, and I had started following them, but I wasn't like really keeping up. But ironically enough, it was like I was seeing all these screenshots for citizens sleeper over the years. And like, personally, when I was looking at the screenshots, I was like, oh, that's probably not a game that I'd be interested in. So like, it really wasn't on my radar. And then to finally like, pick it up after there's kind of this huge blow up of like, positive critical response right when it released, it really just kind of blew me away in terms of what it was doing on a narrative level and how, like you're saying with the dice mechanics, how it was blending its gameplay mechanics into really resonant narrative moments. And, you know, in this conversation, we get so much into, you know, how Gareth approached, you know, conceptualizing those mechanics, how they kind of came to the idea of citizen sleeper through their own work and graduate school and working on novels. And I think this really get into, like precarity and kind of what he what Gareth is trying to explore and citizens sleeper and the various ways that capitalist society pushes marginalized people to to the margins, right?

Ben 4:30
Yeah, and I think like, just so beautifully written like I think that's one thing that is like maybe worth mentioning at the top is one of the things that this game I think really stands out for is its writing I you get to these kind of long paragraphs of each story beat and I don't know I don't know what you but like I would kind of come back to those. There's this really beautiful kind of haunting music that will be in the background and there was a song The thing about playing this game, especially kind of late at night, which is often when I would have a chance to kind of sit down and play it, that I, I don't know, there was something about these like, well rendered and well written paragraphs and this kind of contemplative but like sad music in the background that I just found, like, very affecting.

Phil 5:18
Yeah, 100% I think like that would be just a perfect jumping off point to getting into the conversation with Gareth again, it was it was really, really interesting and I think kind of eye opening to talk with Gareth about the game and about visual novels and as a medium. And yeah, as always, if you enjoyed the conversation, feel free to leave a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. And especially, we'd really love to hear from y'all over email. If you have any kind of thoughts on the episode. Ideas for a future episode could be or you just want to tell us something. Feel free to hit us up at our email the origin story pod@gmail.com.

Ben 6:08
Should I should I tweet, Gareth? And let them know that they're getting a Benny like, do you think that that's, do you think they'd care?

Phil 6:15
I think you need to at least like design what the venue is going to look like. Okay, all right. That's fair. Like is it a trophy? Is it a badge?

Ben 6:23
I'm thinking like, definitely a trophy. Yeah.

Phil 6:27
Well, more on that at the tail end of the show. Let's get right on.

Gareth Damien Martin is an award winning writer, designer and artist, their first game and other waters won, the jury pre indicated Europe. Most recently, they released the critically acclaimed role playing game citizen sleeper, which places players in the role of an escaped worker on a lawless space station on the edge of interstellar society, and explore its themes from capitalism gig work, living with disability precarity and more. Gareth, we're so excited to talk with you. Thanks for coming on the show.

Gareth Damian Martin 7:37
Thanks for having me.

Phil 7:39
Yeah, as always, we'd like to start with just like, how are you doing? You know, you've released this game. It's gotten so much press coverage. I feel like I'm just curious, like, what, what's that feeling? Like? And, you know, how have you been? Since it's kind of out there?

Gareth Damian Martin 7:53
Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's really great. It's been fantastic. It's been kind of, I think, because the game is on game paths. It's been really cool to see the kind of long tail of people still talking about the game and still discovering the game. I'd usually be a bit maybe a little bit scared to kind of name search my own game on social media. But actually, I've found that like, it's it's just kind of Walter wall good vibes. So I'm, yeah, I'm enjoying that that part of it. Yeah, it's, it's really nice. And it's, it's kind of like, citizens sleepers kind of designed to be a bit of a living project and a bit of a living world. And so it's really fun to get into that part of it, as opposed to the part of it where I was kind of keeping it a bit secret, and wasn't sure if it would work out and, you know, had a lot of experiments and questions that they didn't have answers to, but now I have a lot more answers to them. And I can kind of build on it and think about it. And it's yeah, it's out there, which is really great.

Ben 8:55
We've talked to some folks in the past who I think are on different ends of the spectrum in terms of engaging with, you know, what people are saying, or what people are writing about, or, you know, people's reactions to the game, too. You know, on the other hand, we had some folks on who were talking about, like, watching all of the different Twitch streams and seeing how people were playing through things and what is your maybe relationship to people's, you know, reactions to or playing through the game?

Gareth Damian Martin 9:21
Yeah, I mean, I did watch some stuff. I watched one by Jack Dickey, who is composer he's a games writer as well, and he works on the show the actual play podcast friends at the table. And that was really fun because I love friends at the table. And it was really fun to hear Jack reading out all of the words I'd written and things like this when it when it launched. And they have a wonderful voice and they think that it's also I think that there's definitely something funny that happened that even happened when I streamed the game after launch is I was reading out the text in the game in the intro, and even hearing myself say it out loud. I was like, wow, This game is written in a really weird way. Like, I got so used to the style that I've used for this game, but hearing it out loud, I'm like, this is kind of a this is quite unusual for video game writing, I'd kind of forgotten that it was as unusual in a way as I developed it, because I've read that intro like as though countless 1000s and 1000s of times before the first things I wrote. So, yeah, what do you hear it out loud a lot. You're like, oh

Phil 10:31
that's interesting. I mean, I think, you know, Ben and I both come from an English academic background. And you know, it's funny when I, when I started citizen sleeper, that was kind of one of the first things I clocked was that the writing felt really familiar for me coming from my graduate studies. And like, just reading so much literature. And I'm curious, maybe if you could take us back to the genesis of the projects. I know that you also have a PhD in experimental literature, like did this start maybe as just like a prose work and then evolved? Or that it always was always a game? Or tabletop game? Always? Maybe the the

Gareth Damian Martin 11:10
goal? It's yeah, it's a weird one. Because the more I've been asked this question and had to think about it, the more that I keep remembering other other bits of citizens sleeper that come from different places in my life. So I think it's kind of a hybrid of a lot of things. And the obvious, like the always the most obvious influences, and the most obvious origin is kind of like the most recent origin, right? So. So the kind of origin which is straight after another waters, kind of having discovered tabletop role playing games, and contemporary ones during development of another waters and learned to run them and kind of really enjoying running them. And seeing all of the systems that exist in them, especially in blades of the dark, which is where I kind of take the idea of clocks from and some of some of the dice rolls, although it's actually in the end, it's not that similar, but that I kind of like picked, I saw that all this stuff was here, I was like, oh, nobody's actually putting this in games. So this is a huge untapped resource. And if I could figure out like, how to bring some of these qualities across the games, I feel like I could do something very interesting. And so that was, that's one origin, right? That's one point at which you can kind of say, okay, it was about that. But also, it I've been wanting to make a story about being a gig worker in a, in a chaotic city for a long time. And I actually a, you know, my PhD in experimental literature, my, my journey in experimental literature started with a novel that I wrote I think it was in my early 20s, about a person who lives in London, and they the, in London is a weird city where everything is built on top of each other has this crazy history. And if you go into a, like a cafe in London, you will go to find the toilet and you'll go down a set of stairs, and then you'll go into like this kind of non space, I guess, like now we it's like the liminal space meme, right, you enter into this corridor, where like, there's 20 doors for some reason, but only one of them is to a toilet and all of the others just say like, private, no access on them. And so this, this character basically goes into one of these spaces, and then they like, go through one of these doors, and then they, they they meet a person there, who then kind of disappears and they start becoming obsessed with finding this person. And they kind of slowly uncover this whole, like sub society that basically exists in like bathroom corridors and interconnected things. And it was it was a really weird novel that was kind of about my experiences, being unemployed, and doing crap jobs in London. But I wrote that novel and then i i left it alone. And then one day I found it on my computer and I fed it into like a speech scramble like a text Scrambler. And what I found was like the output from that text scrambler usually that you know, usually you just put like a popular song in there, right? It just kind of messes it up. And it's like, oh, it's funny that like, it's done a funny and silly thing. When you put like 60 70,000 words in it, you produce like this mad combinatorial like construction. And I was like, Oh, this stuff is incredible. So I was feeding in and getting this stuff out and feeding in and getting out. And I started a whole practice basically of like working with, with procedural machines and trying to kind of like, feed text in then take it and feed it back and rewrite it, adjust it and and so this was what my PhD was all about. And while citizens people was not written like that, I think like the idea of, of kind of being a, an individual who's like finding all of the connections in a kind of urban space and is digging into the kind of the weirdness. And then also, the idea of stories that are all kind of like placed next to each other and can overlap and can talk to each other was also something I was really interested in. So So that's like a whole other literary origin for me. And for citizen sleeper as well. And yeah, and then it's just my kind of also my own experience. And I think like, you know, the seasons, he is also obsessed with bodies and it's obsessed with kind of depersonalization is obsessed with all those things, because those are things that I've experienced and kind of tried to put in my art and tried to find ways to talk about them. And not to kind of like, make conclusions, but just to kind of explore like those atmospheres and qualities and try to kind of put them in so. So yeah, the more I dig into it, the more I'm like, oh, there are too many origins for me to really, like, make a nice, easy answer. So some days I say one, and some days I say the other and yeah, today, I'm saying those three for now, at least.

Phil 15:46
You know, so I mean, I think bouncing off of that, you know, citizens sleeper takes on, like the actual mechanics of the game, take a lot of DNA from, you know, traditional tabletop games, where, you know, normally the DM is kind of setting this, this scene, and then the players are reacting and they roll, they roll dice to determine if what happens with their actions, but then, you know, citizens sleeper, you kind of take this approach of like, you have a hand of dice. And then you can kind of utilize those dice to do various actions, however you see fit, and there's kind of done, it's a different kind of term on that system. And I think maybe if we could start there, and kind of how you came to that, that'd be really great for us to maybe break open some of the other really interesting things the game is doing.

Gareth Damian Martin 16:34
Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think the hand of dice was for me very much about solving the problem of trying to bring randomness and dice rolls into video games. I just think that people who play video games are not very tolerant of randomness, maybe especially not like a lot in the way that a tabletop player is, right? A tabletop player is completely on board, usually with the idea of randomness. But what I noticed in something like blades in the dark is there's a lot of negotiation around dice rolls. So in that game, you know, you the GM has this really nice thing where they set the kind of the conditions of the dice roll. So like how risky it is, and what the effect of a success will be. So you might have like a limited, like effect, and you might have like a risky or dangerous like risk. And you could also negotiate that as a as a player with the the GM, so you can kind of say like, Oh, if I, if I try and sneak past this guy, that that will be controlled, because I'm you know, it's like more likely to happen. While if I try and fight him that might be risky or dangerous, right? So it's like it has this descriptive ways of, and then the player can do things like ask for a devil's bargain, which is one of my favorite roles in blades, the dark, which basically gives the gym to they can do something like usually it's ticker clock, but usually it's like change something, and they'll they'll give an extra dice to the player. And then the player also has various other ways of kind of like they can spend stress. So they can like build a dice pool, for a roll, depending on how likely they they are or how likely they want it to be that they will get a success, right. And they can invest as much or as little resource into each role. And so while you do have that randomness, I think there's this really nice kind of selective choice that happens in that game where it's like you, you can see when a player really wants to do something, they have the tools to, to at least give themselves a good shot. And if they don't care about something, then maybe they'll take the they'll kind of like, you know, quote unquote, roll the dice right on it, they'll, they'll take the the odds, and they'll see how it goes. And that gives a really interesting kind of ebb and flow. And so that yeah, that idea of kind of, one out, that's where I started with wanting to give players access to this kind of like, to be able to play with the system and to push and pull. And then the idea of it being a kind of hand of dice just really came from wanting to represent this idea of, of waking up and having like, personal resource on some level, like having the things that you can do the amount of energy you can do. And once I kind of hit on that idea of like, you wake up and you roll your dice, and that's you for the day, it just really felt like it was it was kind of like connecting with everything I wanted, like I hit on that idea. I was like okay, this is gonna work this is this is narrative and thematic. But it's also solves kind of like very practical problems about you know how dice exist in games, because other dice games that I know games like Tharsis or whatever, they expose the player to extreme risk, or games like disco Elysium where a fail is kind of like just closing the door in your face. Sometimes it leads to a consequence, but most often it just leads to kind of stasis and neither of those are really what you'd want to do at a tabletop situation. So you know my idea was to try to find a third way between those two.

Ben 19:54
At what point did you kind of feel that you know the the dice were working and it's really resonate. way to comment on, you know, oh, this is a person living and moving through the world, because I just, I think I was floored multiple times by just how effective that was in kind of making you feel the stress of being alive. And so often there were moments in the game where someone will ask you for help or ask you to do something, there's the moment where I think you're being asked to watch someone's kid mean, I think, well, one of the characters kind of goes to work their shifts, and I'd be like, well, that got a couple of dice, and I really got to make some money to get my medicine. So I don't think this is going to end. So it, it just it really, you know, helps build this feeling of anxiety about moving through the world just show effectively. And was there was there a moment for you where you're like, Yeah, this is gonna get a hit.

Gareth Damian Martin 20:47
I think it was to do with, with I paper, prototype the game a little bit, and to just use dice and just have dice. And I just made these little stacks of index cards that represented progress through a story. And you'd have to put a certain number on them. So let's say like, it'll be numbered, like 20, or whatever, and you just assign the number. So I just, you just stack the dice up, you roll them each day, and you stack them up on these index cards. And then when you clear the card, you take it away, and like you've got the next thing, and that was how I paper prototyped it. And when I was doing that, I rolled like a hand of wands, right. And I was like, oh, like, immediately, just kind of like, what do I do with this, like, this is a and it was such an intro, it created such an interesting like, moment for me that I think it was that was part of it. But I think the the other side of it was really just me being very aware from my own experiences, how precarity like financial and kind of social precarity exposes people to look like you are most close to the kind of true luck when you are at an extreme level of precarity. And I have had moments in my life where I really one where I like had a, you have like paid travel cards in London, and I had just enough money to get home. But because of the way the travel cards work, if you touch if you don't touch them at both ends of the journey, you get like an instant fine. And sometimes it just randomly does that, even if you do touch them at both ends of both journeys, just like for some reason, the system just goes wrong, right. And so I had just enough money to get home from across the city. And I went to touch it in and it was like gave me a fine and just wipe the card. I didn't have any money in my bank account, have any money. So I had to. And you know that to me that that was the kind of moment that I wanted to put into isn't sleeper, that kind of thing where it's like, well, I'm trying like, I'm being responsible. I'm trying to make this work. And then it's like, no luck is just like, Nope, that's, you know, you don't get it like, sorry. So yeah, I did want to give people that feeling sometimes.

Phil 22:52
That's not interesting. I mean, it's like, I guess my only exposure to you know, tabletop role playing games is like super traditional, like Dungeons and Dragons. And obviously, like, you know, when you look at the mechanics, fairly restrictive system when you think of like dice rolls and things like that. Whereas with this, I think it really struck me this that that DICE sand idea, because it spoke so much to dislike thinking about how we navigate the world thinking about like mental illness like Sunday's, you're going to wake up and you only you only got the three days and you know, sometimes that little one, you're going to that one, that one role, you're going to get something but it's gonna be really marginal. And I just felt like it really, it made me connect more with the character than I've really experienced in most other games. Like I was saying to Ben, prior to us hopping on this call that you know, and a lot of role playing games more traditionally is like dialogue is the choice. You're making choices. They're like the dialogue choices, they're hyper binarized. And I never feel like that's the thing I would say and, and citizens sleeper. I've always felt as I'm playing that. Maybe it's not verbatim what I'd say. But it's like, emotionally, how I'd react whenever I get a dialog choice. And I think that is just reflective of kind of the ways you've built these systems. And it's just a I mean, it's not even a question. It's just like a really interesting way. I think you went about designing the game.

Gareth Damian Martin 24:26
Yeah, I mean, I think that's an advantage I have over other RPGs because I think that there's a kind of design concept in videogame RPGs which is about this kind of quote unquote meaningful choice idea. That is That means that there has to be like a broad range of kind of equally meaningful choices. And, and none of them really in a way like mean very much to your character. They're all about like pushing other people around because your character often doesn't have had like, I know they sometimes have a stake in it. But so often in RPG is like making a choice is actually making a choice for somebody else. It's like writing In the guy off the cliff or like pulling him up, but because the character has to be this very broad container for a huge number of stories, it's kind of hard to do it while in citizen sleeper, it's like, I'm really interested in this idea of making RPG is about like a specific experience. That's not about like, you can be anybody, which is kind of like the original promise of the role playing game, right? It's like, you can be a sprightly elf, or you can be like a heavyweight barbarian, right? Like, you can be all these different people. And you can play in that world. And I guess the thing I was kind of interested in doing with citizen sleeper is like, I can't do that in a video game. It's quite hard to do that in a video game. And it's kind of I'm not super interested in it. So I'm like, Well, what if I bring all the people that play the game? to roleplay? One quite specific experience. And I tried to give a range within that. But it's like, there is no way you can roleplay citizen sleeper as like a rich industrialist, right. Like, it's not within the scope of the game. And so it means I can be more nuanced, I think in terms of like exploring the very particular emotional experience that's there, right? Yeah, the range is reduced. But I'm super interested, I'm super interested, like small RPGs and RPGs, being allowed to be smaller. And as thinking about role playing as like being something that can be that's not about offering a free choice, because I don't think that relates to what it's like to live in the world. And I think, I think RPGs are actually like, yeah, they're often about like, putting ourselves in the shoes of somebody in their life. And so I think it's interesting to explore, like, well, what, what are the implications of that? Rather than just like, oh, yeah, I can do that. I can be a farmer for five seconds. And being a farmer means I, I plant crops and dig them up and sell them. And that's all that being a farmer is. And it's, and it's like, well, no, we all know, that's not what being a farmer is. So it's not the full emotional range. But it's like a, you know, a tick on the back of the box, or whatever it kind of, you can do anything. So yeah, I'm interested in more specificity in exploring that.

Ben 27:01
I was listening to an interview that you did with Austin Walker, kind of formally of waypoint. And he kind of made the point that it's like, it does make it more resonant, when you can never choose to stop being the sleeper, that that is kind of a political choice that really frames the world around you. And I was thinking, you know, both the the dialogue feels more effective. But I think that choices themselves that it's like, you can choose not to move a relationship forward, you know, you're not ultimately faced with a dialog choice where you're like, Fuck you, or I love you. It's really about do I want this relationship to progress or not. And I just found that really effective, because again, it feels true to life in this way, where it's like, oh, you know, my buddies asked me to come to a concert that he's putting on, but I've got a shift that I've got to work. And, you know, I'm balancing the things that I have to do and ultimately, sorry, but like, I have to go do this other thing. You know, you're not really making dialog choices, but you are making choices about whether or not you show up. And I felt like that was really well captured. In this in this the way that you've set up these very limited choices.

Gareth Damian Martin 28:09
Yeah, no, I mean, that's great to hear, because that's exactly what I want the idea that like, yeah, you turn up for your friends, or you don't you decide who your friends are, by them being the people that, you know, typically friends are just like the people that we happen to spend time with, whether by choice or by situation. And so I wanted to try and get a little bit into that. But then also, I think the thing is that the dialogue, it's so hard to make dialogue choices kind of mechanically crunchy, and I think a lot of games have tried that and kind of failed as well, it's so it's so often it's just kind of a stat and you can like push your persuasion stat really high. And that just gives you extra dialogue choices, which just immediately, like solve a problem, usually. And it's just kind of like, well, that that doesn't feel very good. And it's kind of feels like we're not, there's a big gap of design there. So by some of the choices are in the dialog, but I like to think of dialogue choices as being an expressive space where it gives the player a chance to kind of like express who they feel the character is. And it's not actually about making a decision there. It's about instead like, trying out various things. So I try to write dialogue scenes where the player gets a chance to kind of talk about the things they might do. So they say like, oh, I might help you or I might, and they kind of get to make promises a little bit not necessarily to the character but to themselves about what I've kind of said now that I yeah, I'm interested interested in this, like they get to think through it. And then it's in the gameplay where they can actually make those choices and turn up but in the gameplay, I have a lot more levers and screws to kind of like turn right and to pressure the player and make those choices hard. So yeah, I can do that thing to you where where you're like, oh, I want to help out my friend. But I know that I'm not gonna get paid for helping out my friend and babysitting their child, and I know that I need money to eat. And so it's like, yeah, I can see that those things are gonna be chewy and interesting decisions. And so I want to put the decisions there not have them in the dialogue. So the dialogue is more of yeah, this kind of like explorative space for the player to explore the kind of role playing of the character.

Ben 30:12
I want to ask you a little bit because you brought it up already about disco Elysium. Because I think this game really feels to me like it's in conversation with it to some extent. And it feels like they both make choices in setting not in literal setting. Obviously, citizen sleepers up in space, disco Elysium is here on a Earth. But they feel like they're set in kind of the wake of, you know, ruined capitalism. And, you know, to some extent, also failed revolutions. And they both to me seem to pose this question of, well, what, what now? What do we do now? And I'm wondering, you know, why that was a place or a setting that you wanted to explore? And what drew you to it?

Gareth Damian Martin 30:57
Yeah, I mean, I think the reasons that I the things I like about disco Elysium are the things that I also like, generally about settings and the I like that idea of places where history has happened. And we're still having to deal with it, whether there is actually a sense that this place has been places before, I think comes also from my, my experience of cities and my interest in them. And that kind of process of like looking at all the layers and living in them and kind of seeing, seeing that. And so I think that's something that really attracted me to the eye and the idea of the eye, but then also also kind of just a lot of interest in places, especially like the Kowloon Walled City, places that are kind of like fallen between the legislative gaps of society, and had ended up in these kind of weird mid places where like, something can grow. And then it's like, but then someone's always gonna come and try to like instrumentalize that or change it. And I think there's so many interesting tensions that happen in those places, and so many interesting kind of urban structures that are built there. So I think that stuff is really cool. And like you say, disco Elysium. It's like a kind of Paris Commune type influence there. You know, it's this weird kind of bit, where history is slightly suspended. Like, we have the, you know, we have kind of firing squads and a revolution, and we've had a war, but it's like, right now, what is history right now? It's kind of like, is it you know, just gullies and always asking that question, like, is it the is history, like the accumulation of events? Or is it you know, and, of course, like, the amnesiac character is there to kind of be like that, without history. And there's this really strong synergy between the idea of personal history and then like, the context of history as a wider structure around us. And I found all of that stuff. Stuff. Super cool. And in disco Elysium. So yeah, I mean, the game is definitely conversation with it, I kind of slightly you know, ripped off their, their way of laying out text. I think like that. I don't know how many other games have done that. But what I was looking at when I was like, that works was disco Elysium. And I also am very grateful to that game for, I think making prose easy. Style text a bit more mainstream. I think like a lot of people that would be the first video game they play that had a kind of prose style, in its text. And there's, there's like an incredible sequence, you can trigger in disbelief and where the camera kind of zooms out. And it just starts describing like bits of the city just like bits that you can't go to, there's like, it sounds talking about a street that's up on a hill and someone's there. And there's like, any kind of like, goes into this weird like moment where it pulls away. And I think that that moment is so cool. And I constantly thought about that kind of trying to create those kinds of moments as well in citizen sleeper where it feels like, because you're using prose, because you're using a literary style, you can kind of do things that you can't do in dialogue, you can like pull back, or you can stretch out you can compress time or, or you can like, yeah, reposition the perspective in interesting ways.

Phil 34:03
That's interesting. I mean, I think I think another way that I was thinking about that, too, in the game is sorry, I don't remember exactly what the term is an actual game, but essentially like the internet space, like the cyberspace that exists within

Gareth Damian Martin 34:17
kind of call it the cloud, it doesn't it to be honest, it kind of has a vague name, like a few people call it different things. But yeah,

Phil 34:24
yeah, it's like, I felt like that was really intriguing too. And we're thinking about like the AI as a place that has history that existed before you, and that has influenced all the characters that you end up meeting. You know, and another interview you were you were talking about how you kind of took an approach similar to like Gibson, pre Internet of like, you know, we're making this almost psychic space or the space that that we're engaging with, kind of emotionally and mentally in addition to physically. I wonder if you get to talk a little bit about Have that I thought that was a really interesting approach for the game.

Gareth Damian Martin 35:05
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think definitely, that site definitely comes a bit from Gibson and a bit from a kind of interest in. But now magic or like the way in which technology can connect to kind of magical memory, there's a there's a thing in that Gibson said about computers being an analog for human memory. And that was kind of like the basis of his and I think one of my favorite pieces of writing that I've Gibson's is actually the very first science fiction story he ever wrote, which is called fragments of a hologram rose. And it's just this story of a guy in his apartment in a kind of post apocalyptic United States. And he's got a load of kind of tapes, but he has, but they're like tapes, which are sensory recordings of memories. And he's kind of scrubbing through these tapes. And they're all concerned a relationship that he had. But there's also he's also using this tape. That's kind of like a commercial tape of like a yogi, like meditating on a beach that you're supposed to use when you try to go to sleep, you play this like century tape, and they're kind of blending and the story is kind of blending these layers of tape. And then he becomes fixated on the fact that there's at the edge of one of the shots from the yogi tape is like the, his head moves, and he pans across the scene. And in the corner is like, a fence and soldiers. Because the beach that the yogi is on is kind of like in a private, protected gated community. And so there's like this presence of like violence in the memories and like of kind of like wider histories of suffering, but it's really just a story about how he broke up with his girlfriend. And it's, it's so good. And it's like 10 pages long. And it's the kind of thing that in a way, like, it feels like such a strong piece of cyberpunk literature, but it also feels like and it feels so relevant to us and how we experience the world. But it's also kind of like, people have stopped writing about technology like that, because it's become so banal, it's become kind of seemingly banal and boring to talk about it. And so what I wanted to do was, like, somehow, like, go back to this way of talking about technology as like a kind of psychic space of memory, and kind of the ghosts of history and the past could somehow like get in there. And that was kind of what I started to create, then in the cloud, which is, you know, like a space that both contains, like other beings that are kind of like, but those beings are, like, produced by the history of the eye, there are all kinds of artifacts as well as beings, and then at the same time, to try and to treat data not as just kind of like, a resource, but try to think about it as like a kind of a weird remnant, that's kind of like everywhere, that in a place like that, you know, kind of like imaginary, completely technological environment, right, there is nothing natural, and on the AI, apart from that, which has been brought, and even that has been modified and changed and become somehow like networked, then there's this idea that there must be data everywhere, there must be little bits of memory, you know, tucked away in corners. And if you know, in the Internet of Things where your fridge has a computer inside it, right, it's like, well, yeah, like, maybe could have aI grow there. Right? Like, if you leave your fridge alone, of course, we know. It's like, it's absurd. But that was the kind of atmosphere I wanted this feel of like, someone brought up recently that I use the word like loam, and talked about like loam and, and of data and use these kinds of words. And I think that was the kind of thing I was, I was after this sense of like, fecund and fertile technology, you know, like to go with the mushrooms, right? That like, it's all, it's all decay, and it's all kind of potentially becoming something at the same time. But it's hard to write about technology like that, if you're going to be like, yeah, Facebook or social media, right? Like, you have to, you have to find the kind of more psychic core of, of technology.

Phil 39:12
That's interesting. No, I mean, like, it's funny, the thing that I was thinking about when I was playing the game, and in relation to those ideas, which is kind of, maybe a little strange is that like, you know, a lot of my research and my MFA was around like black liberation and like, read it, rediscovering the archive, and how we can, you know, use use archival documents to, to rethink or re see histories that that are actually written and you know, somebody like Christina Sharpe with her book in the wake is something as a as a book that has kind of like fundamentally influenced my worldview. And you know, one of one of the quotes in that book is that you know, the past that is not the past reappears, always to rupture in the present and And so much of how the cloud works. I think the citizen sleeper, in some ways is like analog into that, like we have these, the internet as we see it today is kind of obscene located. But it's kind of this archive of human history that has so much that is kind of left on the margins. And it takes certain people from different positionality is to see those histories. And I think that the sleeper the way that you've written, how they engage in those systems kind of speaks to the ways in which, you know, marginalized people have to uncover histories because of how they've been rewritten. So again, not really question but just like day on your fire and find all cylinders, Gareth.

Gareth Damian Martin 40:45
I think that's a great, I mean, that's a great observation. And that's not I mean, I can totally see it. But it's also like, I love to hear this stuff. Because it's kind of like, there's something in I've heard a few things like this, when people talk about systems evil, where I'm like, oh, that's, that's really cool. Like, I love that way of reading it. And it's not that that stuff, isn't there. Because it obviously is, but it's more like, I think there's something happens when you kind of start to model these systems of like, yeah, like, this feeling of like, okay, there are big systems. And then there, there's me, and I'm kind of in the wake of the big system. And there's history, and there's, and but I'm just trying to, like, what does history mean to me when I'm just trying to make enough money to buy the next meal? And I think, yeah, like it. That's what I found, to have connected with people is that kind of feeling of like, yeah, this kind of relational quality of being exposed and being on the edge, but also having a kind of curiosity and having a trying to find ways of, of, yeah, like you say, like, bringing things up from the past, or bringing things up from from your own past and trying to kind of like build something, build a kind of, like logic and a system and a structure that could somehow be other than whatever this is, is Yeah, it feels like that's that kind of really connected with people's experiences, which is, yeah, it's really nice. I, you know, part of wanting to make this game was to want to make a game, a science fiction story about what I felt my generation was concerned about. And it's, I can't speak for that many people. So I just was like, Okay, well, what am I concerned? Like, what are the things that I feel have become, like, big influences in my life and big moments, and I think that, you know, one of the things that was written up, post it and stuck next to the thing was just precarity. And that idea of exploring all of what precarity means, and trying to have characters who would also help explore that, right, who would help give different voices there and allow for a kind of like, yeah, many different versions of that story to be told in that space. So yeah, I think that's, uh, yeah, I mean, that's already making me think like, who How can I? Like, encourage that reading? Right, like, how can I resize some of that in because that's great. Like the, the I love this idea of the archive, and there's a there's a great science fiction book called Blackfish. City. And it's about like, a, yeah. But it's about like, it was a big influence on sentence they process about about a city in a kind of, like, post climate change climate emergency situation. And it's like this floating oil platform that's become a kind of refugee city, in the in the Arctic, or Antarctic, will be Antarctic, I think, and it's about the communities that kind of grow up there, and how they interact. But there's this thing that comes up at the start of the book, where basically, there's this kind of podcast that is kind of distributed on the black market, that is just a load of stories being read by completely different voices, and nobody knows who makes it and nobody knows who if the stories are the stories of the people reading them, or if they're made up stories or their but it's become a kind of like marker of the city. And it's this like, it's this very, like slowly building archive of trying to somehow describe the city right? And it's like an impossible problem of describing the city. And it's kind of just like it's just like a kind of background thing that runs throughout the book and it doesn't doesn't have any kind of plot significance as far as I remember. It doesn't kind of like become something but I just love the idea of the Yeah, like what the alternative archive of the city like how we describe that so so I think yeah, like an alternative archive of the I would be fun to also try to construct in this space.

Ben 44:50
Garrett, I feel like single handedly you got me to re pick up William Gibson. I'm always I feel like I'm genuinely taking a lot of sci fi rx from you. And I'm like, I gotta This is what I got to pick up next. One of the things that kind of wanted to get get you to talk about and you kind of, I think alluded to it at the at the beginning. But you know, over the course of kind of this season, and the folks we've been talking to, a lot of people have talked about, again, I think this idea of precarity, and finding the space for the art that they want to create the things that they want to do, while also being alive and often having to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet and trying to make all of that work. And I'm wondering if you can kind of talk about, you know, your own situation in trying to find the space to work on something like this, while also you know, having a day to day, you know, life job, what does that look like?

Gareth Damian Martin 45:42
Yeah, I mean, in a way citizen sleeper is kind of does something kind of ironic to me about the fact that I could only make this game, having left the conditions within which like the game was born right in the crucible that the game was kind of forged in was the crucible of me being unemployed, me trying to get work as an illustrator, as a designer, me working for employment agencies and working kind of zero hour contract jobs, where you're not guaranteed work working as a game tester and having to get up get the very first train at like 530 in the morning, to travel two hours to go play games all day, and kind of just seeing all the layers of the city through all of these different processes and meeting so many people, which I think yeah, like, definitely working a lot of shit jobs is good for writers, I think it's a if you as long as you get out the other side of it, I think it's a good experience for writers. But actually, the thing that allowed me to make citizens sleeper was the success of another waters, which I began in the final year of my PhD and Kickstarter that and then got a publisher on board and they funded it. And that was kind of like I could slowly reduce the freelance work and reduce the kind of like side gigs and everything else. And then citizen sleeper has been kind of like allowed to be made in a in like, that kind of sanctified space of like, I can just do this, like I can just do this one thing. And I can focus on it. And so it's That's it in a way, like it was immediate ly the thing I wanted to do after another Waters was to make a game about the experience, because I felt like I'd been given a shot to, to do something like, in other words had done well enough to, for me to kind of like get the funding and for me to have a passive income on some level that would allow me to do this work. And I was like, Well, what am I going to do with that time? It's like, well, I want to tell this story, like this story about all of these experiences, and about how I feel it is to be in the world. And I was like I'm going to Yeah, I want to, that's the only thing I can do now have to have to use these conditions for this. And so it just came very quickly. I think like the idea of doing that it was it was kind of like an immediate decision to do it. But it's been a Yeah, it's it's been a rapid, but it's been kind of, I guess, a very driven experience in that sense. Because maybe, well, citizens if it took less than two years to make just two years from beginning proper development to launch date, almost exactly. I think that in reality, like so many of the ideas, and so much of the thinking has been in my mind for, you know, almost 20 years. So it's kind of like, yeah, it's almost like it's all built up there. And then it's like when you have the opportunity to unleash it, it's like you could just go you just go and you could do it. So that's what it kind of felt like I think

Phil 48:42
interesting. I mean, so at the top of the show, you also said that you kind of you sleeper as like a living project. And you know, recently you all have announced that you're having a couple of DLC drops in the future. I'm curious, like, if you feel comfortable talking a little bit about like, what you mean by that living project? Is this something where like, maybe you could see Imagine yourself you know, making something else that's in the world or like seeing the silly build out into something bigger?

Gareth Damian Martin 49:12
Yeah, totally. I mean, from the beginning, I was kind of like I want to begin here. But I'm I want to leave things open. I think in other words is for me, it was a game that was like one story. And I didn't necessarily care too much to kind of imagine the world around it because I wasn't interested. I was interested in this one particular story and in a way like there's one story just between three beings like just the AI and Ellery m&a And just this kind of like weird family slash romance slash kind of like scientific expedition that happens between them. But for citizens sleeper, I was like, Okay, this sleeper is this kind of model, but I want to make a space where it's like, in a way like 50% of it is the sleeper experience, but maybe even more than 50% of it is like these other stories and these kind of like wonderful It's maybe it's a Gibson thing this kind of like this is one of his books I count zero is like begins like the slam halt the slam hound caught Turner's trail in New Delhi. And he never explains what a slam Hound is. And that's something I like doing it citizens paper is kind of like introducing lots of SLAM hounds everywhere, like lots of little things that might one day grow. One because I think that's fun for science fiction, but too, because that's what I do in tabletop games, when I'm running them, right, I'm, you're constantly leaving yourself little things that you that might connect, they're like potential connections that exist in the world that you can then use if the player goes in that direction, or you could and you know, if you really love them, you might like force them back in later on. Without the player knowing or you might not, you might just drop them immediately. And so in that spirit, I think I was immediately drawn to the idea of then doing kind of episodic storytelling within the space so that it's almost like the next experiment. I think the DLC because it's, it's specifically a three part episodic story told in the space of the game, and it's, it has its own arc. And it I think, if people play it and follow along with it, it's like they'll have a specific experience. And I wanted to try and get closer to jamming for people who were playing the game, and they want to see how close I can get like, it's very rare, I think, for smaller solo developer to do an episodic structure. But I really, I think it's, I find it really exciting I love I even kind of conceived of citizen sleeper, kind of as a TV show where all the character arcs are just accessible at any time, right. Rather than being broken up into episodes. It's just like, it's like a season of a TV show where you can decide which characters you want to follow and which ones you don't want to follow. Or you can decide when you're bored with a plotline and you want to jump over cut and go to whatever's happening over there. And so, yeah, the idea of continuing that just comes very naturally to me. And so that's kind of, yeah, the DLC was kind of, it's just like an automatic part of that. But it's also part of an experiment in seeing how episodic storytelling can go and what will work for people and how this kind of story engine that I've built with the dice, and the writing can kind of Yeah, what kind of story is going to tell? And where can they go? So we'll see where it takes me.

Ben 52:24
Is this a story that you can? Are you still playing as a sleeper? Or is this someone else on the I? Yeah, so

Gareth Damian Martin 52:31
it's totally, it's just another arc in the in the game, just like if you were to pick up any of the other arcs, but the difference is, it's, it's a bit longer. Because it's broken up into three episodes, I think it probably ended up being the longest arc in the game. But it's also just that idea specifically of creating episode breaks creating these these moments. It was something I even thought about doing in the the original game is like breaking it up into session, somehow finding like a moment where I could like, drop a drop a trigger, because I really liked the idea of calling them sessions because it's a reference to tabletop games, but it's also a reference to Cowboy Bebop. And so I love that idea that like you'd have this, this kind of like session structure, but it became too it messes with the pacing too much. And I like the kind of like, totally Mad Cat pacing of citizens deeper where it's like, I actually don't know as a game designer, what plotlines you're going to do in fun. So So yeah, but this story is like a is one of those arcs but I guess that it's it's specifically oriented towards bringing new people from places we haven't seen into the eye and having them talk about those places. And having influences come in from the outside and and the player getting to witness like how does that change the eye? And what's happening in the wider system around it? And then what's happening kind of maybe in the wider universe, or like what are the big forces at work here? So I wanted to try and like yeah, just kind of like slowly pull the camera back over the course of this episodic story so that when I finish it it's kind of like we're in a slightly different position we're not down down there in the sleepers apartment maybe we'll maybe we think you know Plaza starting to think about the other places that are in the system and what might be happening there.

Ben 54:19
I can I get you just briefly to talk about some of the endings of citizens sleeper and you know, I've seen I think about three I don't know how many there there are but they all strike me as having some kind of element of escaping the I like getting away from it. And yeah, I don't know it's it struck me as I guess kind of sad I think like there's a there's a way in which like I actually ended up feeling like I Oh, I like being here and I have come to know a lot of these people and feel comfortable here. And there was something about finding that it feels like Oh, no matter what, you know, there's a kind of leaving, I have to go at the end. that that has kind of stuck with me. And I'm wondering if you can talk about why that was important, I guess in the in the different endings?

Gareth Damian Martin 55:08
I guess. So that is just what defines plotline which ends in an ending for me is any of the plot lines, which end with the choice to stay or to leave, that's the I just made the decision that that was kind of like where the credits are gonna play. Because it's kind of funny, when you make this kind of open structure, you kind of have to give people an out. And so I wanted to make sure they were out. And they were kind of labeled vaguely or at least people got a sense, and it hit them. But then also people could continue. I always aspire towards making games where people can go and hang out in them at any point. So even if they've got a finished say file, I think it's really important to allow people to go back and spend time in the game if they want to, or continue if they want to. And I try to respect people's time by not like locking them out or deleting the Save or right and kind of saying like, well, you finished you have to do a new run. And I think some people don't like that some people have told me like, Oh, I did all the endings. And I stayed and then there was there's nothing left in the game. And I'm like, Yeah, I mean, that's true. I mean, there's DLC coming back. So you could keep playing that. But yeah, like there will be an end eventually. But for me that choice between leaving and staying is so important to the story because the sleeper at the end of the day is someone on the run on some level. And I guess I wanted to leave it open to the player about what the resolution for something like that, what the resolution for precarity or risk is. And I wanted to respect all the choices as much as possible. So I didn't want to offer any endings that I didn't agree with or find interesting. I needed to be able to write them all in a way that kind of felt like yeah, okay, that's, that's worth that's worth doing. But I think the question about leaving an ending in the game is often structured around or so like, what compromises or what, what are you willing to give up? I think like, for example, if you're gonna leave, you know, spoilers, stop listening, you know, for five minutes if you if you don't want to hear this, but like, if you want to leave on the colony ship, it's like, you're agreeing to tie yourself to something much bigger than yourself, right? And you're kind of, you're either saying to yourself, I believe in their dream, and that will carry me or you're saying, I'm so small that I can hide in the underbelly of their dream, and they will never know I was there. That's kind of like that. But if you stay, it's like, you're kind of saying like, you kind of rejecting the idea of tying yourself to a dream of a new world or that anything can actually be true. It's a kind of skeptical, or realist perspective. And so I tried to have the characters like talk about that. And yeah, I tried to be discussing, I think some of the endings are really, were really tough to write the ending where you kind of like, decide to give up on your body. Right? Yeah, like combination for me of like a fantasy I've had, but also like, the worst possible thing that you could do, which is essentially just like give up on yourself and give up on being a human. And just say, Okay, I'm done. Now I'm out. And that was also really hard to write because it's such a tension point of, kind of like, yeah, the feeling of like, wanting to, to go or to be something else. And then knowing that, can you is that choice open to us? Can we actually, you know, can we dissolve? Can we become more solid or just becomes other energy moving around? Or? So yeah, I guess like the endings of the point of where I allow a lot of the it's a point where you can let it all kind of come to a head and and I guess the choice of the ending for the player is like, in a way like them choosing a thematic frame. I think, in some level, like it's there are a few different thematic frames in the game to pick from, and I think players kind of like resonate with one or another and that's where they end up kind of ending their story or continuing it which is in my set like in the game is a choice, right? It's choosing to continue is is choosing.

Ben 59:08
Yeah, I love very deeply the fungus ending that you're kind of talking about where there's an option to just leave. There was something about the description about the tiredness and like the option of feeling no longer tired and feeling no longer tied to this body. That that was just very powerful.

Gareth Damian Martin 59:29
Yeah, I'm glad. I mean, they were very Yeah, they were very powerful for me me to write. I think there's some of the most difficult things that was one that I when I was writing, I was like, I don't know if I can put this in the game, I had to find a way to write because I had to offer both choices. I had to offer the choice to leave or the choice to stay. And that means I had to do that I had to make both of those be positive choices for the player. And so I had to really kind of screw my brain into that headspace and kind of feel Like, like, what is it about this? But I also wanted to counterpoint each one with the, you know, with the other. And yeah, I was very careful with that choice to make sure the player couldn't accidentally do that had to, you know, give them a kind of like, looking over their shoulder moment to kind of Yeah, like, here's the counterpoint just in case you've been thinking about it. Because that felt, yeah, I felt like I wanted to make that indeed feel as safe as possible for people.

Phil 1:00:30
This is a interesting, no, no, this is a stupid question. But something I've been thinking about, maybe because, you know, I recently had surgery. And, like, during recovery, for the first like, week or so, I had kind of limited mobility and where I live in Seattle. It's like a very hilly region, where, specifically where my apartment complexes I'm on like, when the steepest hills in the city. And because of that, I couldn't, like part of my recovery involve, like, oh, I need to go outside. And I needed to go on walks and things like that. But because of where I live, I could literally only walk like, basically at this two block radius. Because I couldn't get up the hills. And what that meant was that like, you know, I couldn't go to the grocery store, I couldn't get food from somewhere, like I had to rely on my partner or, or gig work workers to, to get food and things like that, and groceries and toiletries. And it was a really, kind of eye opening experience. I think, for me, as somebody who isn't a disabled person, I'm just thinking about how, you know, infrastructure is set up in ways that completely disallows for people with disability to often navigate their lives. And like, the most basic way and thinking about that, and citizens sleeper, you know, all the characters in the game are so interesting. And they all have such interesting backstories and character arcs. I'm curious, maybe, why was a, you know, important for you to have this sleeper as a character who's navigating disability. And if that was something that kind of, you know, it was was was there for from the beginning, or something that as you were kind of building out all these different characters, you're like, this is kind of the story. I'm interested in telling, because it feels like something that I haven't seen a lot of in, in games, at least not like, not super indie games.

Gareth Damian Martin 1:02:43
Yeah, I think that's a really important part of what I was trying to explore. Definitely, I think, the idea of, of disabilities of all kinds and how they affect our ability to eat to even like forge relationships, but yeah, to, to just live in the world. And, but then I also Yeah, I want it to be very, I don't know, I guess I was doing that as something that came from somewhere quite personal to me. And so I kind of fell, in my case, it's a disability is connected to mental health that that I've experienced, not physical disability. But I think there's a kind of like, obvious resonance between those. And certainly I remember, during some of the worst periods of being unemployed kind of just feeling like, well, this is just unfair, because it's like, well, not only can I not get a job or like make any money, but it's like, some days I wake up and like, I can't even apply for a job. Like, I can't even get close to the point of even beginning to solve this problem, right? And it's you, you can get so frustrated at that, because you're kind of like, it just feels impossibly far. And while I didn't want to make the player feel that things were impossibly far, and that's why the game is kind of like maybe a little, it could be so much cooler, right? Like, you have to pay for transport tickets, you could have to like use your energy to move around, because you have to pay rent, right like that. I wanted to simplify things, but the Yeah, that's a core part of it. And then the characters. The characters are kind of my idea with all of the characters from the very beginning, where was the idea of like, recognizing how systems have affected them, and that in some cases was their bodies and in some cases was their psychological experience. In some cases, it was just like the way they see the world. But I wanted that always to be that kind of feeling of like, there's a yeah, that there's like evidence of the evidence of what systems do to people's bodies and they do to people in all around you like constantly in different forms. And that was just kind of The kind of characters they want to write and maybe it's also because I, I just didn't I don't know yet maybe it's just the way I think about characters because I had fun also kind of trying to think about science fiction tropes, like mercenaries and things and then trying to be like, Well, what actually does that mean? And like, what systems is a mercenary implicated in? And that was enjoyable for me. And I guess that's just what I'm attracted to. That's why I like Cowboy Bebop, because it's kind of like yeah, bounty hunting isn't like a really shitty job. And I love that it's both a joke and a serious point. It's both a kind of gig work idea, but it's also like a comedy about bounty hunters who never somehow managed to get paid, right, like at the end of every episode, somehow. There's like a technicality, or, and I think that, yeah, there's something really great about that. Because I think that speaks to something we all know. It's another game. I think the Witcher is another game that does that really nicely. There's a great quest in The Witcher were like a guy's like, Go catch up with the Witcher three was a guy in the Scalix who's like, go catch a dragon. And you can tell him over and over again in the dialogue like, it's not a dragon. It's just a Wyvern. Like, like stop saying it's a dragon. And then when you come back, and you say, like, I killed it, and you show him the head, he's like, Oh, that's not a dragon. It's a wave. And you were right. I guess you should just get paid. Like half the fee that I promised you. Is old guys just totally done you in this in this wonderful way. Yeah, I really liked those stories. I like those characters. So I was really attracted to playing those games with the player as well. And, and writing those people. I think those are just the people that come out when I when I sit down to write.

Ben 1:06:41
It sounds like you're talking a little bit about Ethan who sleeper hit in my, in my opinion about the hunter who's kind of chasing your sleeper character. I love Ethan, very deeply, as much as he's like a monster. There was something about him that I just found very attractive. And I think especially as it as it unspools itself, you know, and I think the game gives this beautiful moment where you're like, is this guy going to be with me? Is he going to be? Are we in this in this together? And then when the when the turnaround eventually comes? It's just picture perfect.

Gareth Damian Martin 1:07:17
Yeah, he was really fun. I mean, it's so funny because he started off life very much as what does what does the main character of like cyberpunk 2077 look like if you're just a regular person, like, what do they look like? If you're, if you're running the noodle stand? Like, what does this guy this total asshole with guns? Who turns up every once in a while to like, irritate you, what does he look like? Or like, what does a Blade Runner really like? What is a Blade Runner? Really? Because they're, they're just an asshole. And it's, it's kind of like, there's no way for Blade Runner to be like a good person. Like that's like the fundamentally they are like a police bounty hunter hunting marginalized people like, and so yeah, that was the kind of the starting point. And I was like, oh, yeah, this guy's uh, this guy is going to be like the villain, the true villain. And then I was running through references. And we were looking at, like character, kind of, like IPs in Memento was like a reference. But also, like, in Lyon, Gary Oldman as characters like cop in Lyon, who's like on amphetamines, I think, and he's just like, wonderful. He's kind of like charismatic, but also, he's an absolute monster. And the more we kind of got into the character design, and we were like, Oh, he's got to have this like, absurd shirt. And we did loads of different designs for this absurd shirt that he has to have. We both me and yum, were like, became increasingly attracted to this character, and will increasingly like, this guy's really like, and so we started Yeah, I started like, more of that fed into it. And I started to think about all the really charismatic assholes that I've had in my life. And the what the way that you kind of always awaiting for them for their attention. On some level, even though their attention is always bad, like when they turn their attention to you, they must treat you horribly, but for some reason, they have like this, this quality. And so yeah, I played a lot like with the writing and citizen paper as well, I tried to GM as much as possible. So I tried not to like just write a plot and then write the scenes that make that plot. I tried to write a scene, and then evaluate where I'm at at the end of the scene. And so there were times when I was writing Ethan and I was like, yeah, there's gonna be a redemption arc here. And as I worked through, I was like, No, there's not it's not going to happen. Like it just it's not going to come together for this guy. But it just kept the came naturally out of the process of writing him. So it was yeah, it was really fun. And I think that I do think there's something that happens there in the in kind of tabletop fiction that feels very, not real, but maybe earned. Is that Yeah, like you can, you can kind of feel it out and it it's it means that even when the bad thing happens, it's kind of like Yeah, we all knew that. That's what was gonna happen. Like why were we fooling ourselves? And so yeah, they tried to stick on that track with him.

Ben 1:10:04
I feel like we're, we're winding down a little bit, but I'm wondering if there's something in the course of all this, and you have done so many interviews. But is there something that, you know, hasn't been asked of you that you're like, you know, this is something that I want to talk about it relative to this, this game?

Gareth Damian Martin 1:10:22
I don't know. I mean, yeah, I've talked about it a lot. And actually, it's, you know, it's hearing other people that that kind of, it's actually the process of other people telling me how they read it, that kind of so often is the thing I haven't heard before. Because I've lived in, in my version of this, but like, yeah, seeing other people's versions of it is very fun. And it's very rewarding, because I think that was a big part of the game for me is this just disbelief in that we don't It was in this was something that I kind of explored in my PhD, but like that you don't, the idea of like collaborating with a, with a system with a procedure, procedural system, or any system of any kind, the writer or an artist is not about building the perfect system, which will, at the press of a button generate, like the perfect output. It's about this kind of this, this potential of things to mean multiple things, which in like, Texas is called polygamy like the potential of a word to mean other things. And I kind of like, tried very much in the design of citizens sleeper to have like, everything that happens in the game, be able to mean multiple things, and to be able to, like, that'd be crossed her talk between characters, even if those characters could never meet, because I'd have to build like an insane machine to replicate like the, you know, I didn't want to try to make it, it's impossible to make a tabletop game, you know, on a computer, you can't do it, because the tabletop game is like this incredible improvisational thing that you're playing with, with other people, and it's live. And it's kind of liberating in that sense. But I do think that there's, there's ways there's ways of making people feel that everything is connected, without everything being literally systemically connected. And I think in video games, people are so often, like obsessed with this systemic connection. But it's like no, everything can be connected just by theme, and by an awareness, like a tune, a tuning of everything, to have, have fuzzy edges, and to sit close to each other. And so that was all the time what I was trying to do. And I feel very vindicated in that when I hear people then coming back with like, all I played this act this thing first. And that means that like, this game is obviously this and that was like my core path through this game. And I'm like, Yeah, that's fantastic. That's not what I meant. But I it's what I allowed for, I guess, like, I want to I wanted to allow for that. So, so Yeah, the thing I haven't heard that that I want to talk about is always like, what path people took through the through the game.

Phil 1:13:07
Well, I mean, that was a phenomenal answer to end on. Garrett, thanks so much for coming on the show. This has been such a great conversation. I mean, I feel like it's kind of expanded my thinking in a number of directions. So I really appreciate you for being here.

Gareth Damian Martin 1:13:23
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was really nice. And again, yeah, I'm thinking about archives now and memories and history. And I think yeah, that's that's gonna find its way into into the world. I think somehow.

Ben 1:13:36
What are you releasing the list of sci fi novels that went into the creation of this game?

Gareth Damian Martin 1:13:43
Yeah, soon, I guess. Yeah. That's a steam. That's a steam blog post if there ever was one, I think. Yeah, I think you know, if you start with Blackfish city, and William Gibson's count zero, then you're in a good place. That was a joke. And yeah, I made earlier mentioning like fragments of a hologram rose, like the first Gibson short story, which Yeah, I think I like people talking about Neuromancer, because it's the novel that like created cyberpunk, but like that's Gibson's first science fiction story. And it's kind of like everything, is there, everything that he would ever do is just like in those 10 pages, which is yeah, he's great.

Phil 1:14:38
And that was our conversation with Gareth Damien Martin, about citizens sleeper about cyberpunk literature about the importance of visual novels and this form, really, again, this eye opening conversation, and I think that the conversation does a really good job at showing Saying ye citizens sleeper is not only going to be getting a Benny but also a filly.

Ben 1:15:06
Oh wow a Benny an affiliate I should we create a joint award? Are we going to do this separately? Like what's the situation here?

Phil 1:15:13
I think that they're definitely like dueling award ceremonies that happened on the same night.

Ben 1:15:17
Oh shit, but like what if everyone goes to the Phillies and then I'm left with like a bunch of awards sitting on my couch? This feels sad. I don't know if I want this anymore.

Phil 1:15:31
Well, maybe maybe Gareth will retweet the Benny

Ben 1:15:36
you think you can hope for I think everyone's gonna go to the Phillies and like, I'll be lucky if I get a little retweet.

Phil 1:15:41
Yeah, like, maybe, maybe what will happen is like Gareth will be at the award ceremony for the Phillies holding the award. And then like whole whole zoom in to the Benny's and do like the secondary.

Ben 1:15:54
I hate this. I don't know. Now it feels like a competition. And I don't know, didn't this game teach you anything feel about the importance of community and like helping each other? I feel like you missed the point of citizen sleeper.

Phil 1:16:06
Oh, I guess I'm gonna have to play it again. No regrets. Now, I mean, this game, this game was really, really good, I think for for all the reasons that we talked about in the show. And just like thinking about, at least for me, what I kind of was left thinking about was visual novels as a medium. And you know, Gareth's whole point about like, it started out, the first kind of conception of the idea was like this novel. And then they wrote, like, 100,000 words, that ended up being the kind of script and descriptions for the game. And then from there, you know, they started conceptualizing what the actual gaming would look like. And I think then, you know, it's no secret. So us that we've been talking a lot about, like visual novels and like interactive fiction as a medium and maybe, like that, and connection to regular, like more traditional, like novel writing and how, why this form is becoming so much more attractive to writers. And I think that, that this game, at least to me, they made a really good argument of like, damn, maybe I should consider like, more interactive fiction or something in the future.

Ben 1:17:24
Yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about this a lot, I think because I sometimes and I know that I'm a I'm just like an old man for this. But sometimes I feel like I don't really resonate with visual novels. And I'm like, Well, I would just read the book. I just, you know, why isn't it just a book. And I feel like that there was something different about this game that like, made it feel like it. Like it works. Like it worked better for me in a lot of ways. Like it felt like a game game. There was something about the mechanics that really worked and felt engaging throughout and felt important to the story in a way that I think a lot of visual novels, I just end up feeling. I am kind of flipping pages. Again, send your your hate mail to origin story dot show. And I'll make Phil read it.

Phil 1:18:10
Yeah, I mean, like one, one of the quotes that kept on sticking out to me when I was editing the conversation was Gareth, Gareth, this point about, you know, when you are living a life of precarity. You at those moments of your life, you're the most open to the concept of luck. And like luck, luck is the most visible when you're in a precarious situation. And I think that speaks so well to like, the most resonant moments of the game because of how they've designed the the dice hand mechanic where, at least for me, it is this, this game was firing on so many more cylinders than some other kind of interactive fiction projects, because of how it's kind of interested in like, you know, you're not always going to be able to do things perfectly, you're kind of given the hand that you're dealt, and that hand ultimately influences how you interact with the people in the world. And yeah, it is really, I have never really experienced that again before, at least in the same way. Yeah, and it just it kind of has really, really stuck with me. Yeah, since since then,

Ben 1:19:30
I because again, I think a lot of choice games, in some ways, I think make the altruistic choice. The easiest choice to make, like you just want to be nice and you want to move through the world. Like no matter what kind of RPG or whatever you're playing. A lot of those choices is sometimes like Well, why would I choose the evil or the hard choice? And I think what this game does well is it makes the altruistic choices costly. And you can feel that you're doing a thing that might actually end up hurting you or even better Making you and you're kind of stasis in the world. And I think there's something about making the altruistic choice. I feel like it's a it's a actually difficult one to make that makes so much of the game like really resonate. Kind of much, much more.

Phil 1:20:17
Yeah, 100% I mean, even. Yeah, you know, I think Gareth mentions in the conversation, the whole idea of like, how the trajectory of game design and enjoy space games ultimately, kind of became one of like, I forget what the term is, but like, both, both choices have to matter. And, like, both choices should feel satisfying for the player, which ultimately makes those systems so benign, right, like when you when it's like a good or evil choice, and both are gonna give you some major outcome, it does kind of become it actually loses a lot of weight. Or as I think like citizens sleeper a lot of the time, you're kind of given these choices, or like, maybe there's a choice that has a major action. But oftentimes, it's kind of like these, it speaks to the fact that we when you are a marginalized person, or, you know, especially like a disabled person, you often don't have a lot of choice. And you'd actually you often don't have a lot of like agency in terms of how you're going to navigate different situations. And I think that the game does a really good job of presenting those and I think because of that, those choices, or those, those, the lack of choice actually resonates a lot more than if it was just like, oh, you you have two very clear outcomes that are going to happen if you do X

Ben 1:21:44
100%.

Phil 1:21:48
So yeah, I mean, if you all haven't played citizen sleeper yet, I would certainly recommend it. It's

Ben 1:21:54
got a Philly it's got a Benny like it's raking up the awards. You should probably play it.

Phil 1:22:00
I'm sure it'll get even more reputable awards than than ours. But you know, Benny Benny in the Philly this this fall, it's gonna Ben, where can they find you?

Ben 1:22:14
They can find me on Twitter at sad underscore, radio underscore, lad. You can of course email us I think I'll give you about Intel before but you can email your hate mail to the origin story pod@gmail.com We're also taking as always recommendations people you'd like to hear from stray thoughts that enter your head that you want to voice to someone. You can also check out our website where origin story dot show, and our Twitter is at origin story underscore, Phil, where can they find you?

Phil 1:22:47
They can find me on Twitter at 3d Cisco. I think I forgot to mention, you can find Gareth on Twitter at jump over the age. And the their website is jumped over the age.com. From what I recall, citizens sleeper is available on all platforms as well as game paths. So definitely give it a give it a look if you have somewhere to play it. And as always, thanks to Ryan Hopper for the intro and outro music you hear on the show and to melody Hirsch for the awesome design work for origin story. I think that wraps us up for today this week. Thanks for listening

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Origin Story

Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper) On Creating More Meaningful Choices in RPGs

Episode Description

Episode Notes

Episode Transcript

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