Citizen Sleeper and the stars in my eyes
James Guthrie
You know the worst thing about living in the city for a country boy? Its not the huge crowds or the traffic or the general loudness, but the absence of stars. Where I grew up, every night was full of stars; it was a game to find Orion, the great and little bears, Gemini, Leo, Taurus for my little brother (I was always jealous that I couldn't see Cancer, my own sign). In the city, light pollution leaves the sky in this always dim grey and brown that's, frankly, ugly. I wouldn't change living here for anything, but I do miss the stars.
Citizen Sleeper is a game about making a new life amongst said stars. You, the titular Sleeper, start the game on the run, tired, hungry and alone on a floating hulk of a space station called The Eye. You will, within the space of one playthrough, face many problems: a corporate hunter sent to recover you, dead or alive; your body degrading, a failsafe built into you to prevent exactly the escape you have managed; a lack of food; a lack of money; a lack of home, and a lack of anywhere to feel safe. Barring the first two, this feels remarkably similar to real life a lot of the time, as does the horrendous stress it causes me.
I don't really know what home is. For much of my childhood, it was never a place I wanted to go back to. When I was a teenager, it felt like I had found a balance, but didn't really belong anywhere. As an adult, my childhood home often feels like a cage of regressive habits, but my own flat constantly reminds me that it isn't mine, and I live here only at the discretion of someone I pay a lot to let me do so. I am a paycheck away from going back to a cage, but I never really have a consistent feeling that I'm home regardless. I simply am. My life revolves around trying to find something to keep me going, whether that's the next piece of media or paycheck or my friends or a night out, it doesn't really matter, so long as I can enjoy myself.
At a point in Citizen Sleeper, my gameplay became a reflection of this. I had built myself a neat little place in the residential area of the eye to sleep, I could self-repair just enough to stave off the manufactured decay of my physical form, I had a couple of reliable friends who would help me if I needed it, and I had jobs, enough money to get by, ways to get food I needed and resources others needed. I initially was so stressed and caught up in the desparation of my situation that I had, without realising it, built myself security to such an extent that I had game-ified survival. I moved through the motions of life simply because it was what I had to do to keep living. What were initially gameplay hooks became patterned behaviours, what were initially interesting plots became crafted security.
This is not a criticism. This game understands deeply how cyclical life is, how the systems of governance and power and wealth put us into positions where we do what we must to survive to the point it becomes our only priority. We live to work, to have friends, to eat, to provide, to be able to go out, to reach our goals so we can create more cycles that better our chances of survival. It is a depressing, endless loop of living just to keep on living, with little hope to move up from your situation into a better one.
However, to say this is one thing; to understand it is another. We do not live just to survive. We live for joy in the little moments. Minor spoilers incoming, but Citizen Sleeper understands this too. A kind chef shares stories with us of a life no longer his; a bartender finds new friendship while fulfilling her father's dreams; a mechanic and his daughter see a chance at a different life we help them reach; an old woman sees new life bloom all around her; a doctor gets a chance at love while finding their redemption. This game understands that in the endless cycle of living we have to find and make our own joy, whether that be in feeding a stray cat that just happens to live nearby or in looking out into the endless sky and just enjoying the view. We are more than just worker drones going wage to wage, event to event, cycle to cycle; we are people. We are stars burning bright in each others’ lives with a thousand possibilities of who we are, where we came from, what we could and will be, and what we are together.
We do not need homes to be. We simply are. And there is so much joy to be found just in being. Watching a thousand stars go by is worth a couple of bad loops through the game we call life, and there is so much comfort to be found in that. “To the next cycle”, whatever that may be. We will find happiness in it regardless.