For large swaths of its playtime, Citizen Sleeper 2 is more or less a book. Dice rolls or no, you spend the bulk of your time in-game reading. For me, that rules, especially because developer Gareth Damian Martin is, for my money, one of the best writers in games right now. I love their evocative exposition, describing not just the physicality of a fully imagined cityspace, but the ways in which it plays on the minds of those who inhabit it. The story explores questions of migrancy, liminality, and scarcity with finesse. The writing is so strong, in fact, that a question occurred to me: Why isn’t this a novel instead of a game?
A version of that question has been asked in less charitable terms, I’m sure. To borrow a phrase from viraltrendingcontent alum Justin McElroy, there are undoubtedly those out there who see games like Citizen Sleeper 2 as “books-level boring.” But, for those among us who love books and games, the question I’m posing here isn’t so much “Should this have been a book?” and more “Why is this a game?” That is, Martin could’ve easily taken all the text here and fashioned a very good book out of it. (OK, maybe not easily. Writing books is hard.) Is so much gained from dice rolls so as to justify the extra creative labor?
To answer that question, here’s a hypothetical reimagining of the beginning of the game. Without spoiling anything, the opening salvo launches the protagonist into a kind of forced migrancy, demanding that they never stop too long in one location lest a certain antagonistic force catch up with them. As far as plotting goes, this is an effective way of not only setting up the stakes of the story — that is, the tension of being pursued — but also a central theme: of flight, terror, and the desire to stop running.
In a novel, there are certainly ways one could communicate these exact themes. You could show the protagonist in transit, describe their creeping dread as they spend one cycle too many in a single locale. You could describe to the reader the method by which they are being tracked, and the potential consequences for being caught. You could abruptly cut off a bit of dialogue mid-scene as a character realizes that time is running out. In the hands of a great writer, this imagined novelization of Citizen Sleeper 2 would still, in all likelihood, work. But would it work as well?
Image: Jump Over the Age/Fellow Traveller
Let’s stop with the hypotheticals, though. Citizen Sleeper 2, as a game, not a novel, has additional tools that serve to benefit its story. One of the things the game instills in the player is the feeling of desperation that comes with being a migrant worker attempting to outrun an antagonistic authority. To do this, it deploys some exposition, as a novel might do, about the means by which you might be caught, but after this, a countdown timer mechanic kicks in. Instead of describing to the player that time is running out, a small wheel on screen ticks up with each cycle (read: in-game day). If the wheel fills up, you’ll be found, and you do not want to be found. To reduce that wheel, you need to pilot your ship to another location. But in order to do so, you need fuel. And in order to get fuel, you need to work. But work takes time. Work takes cycles. And so, what started as written exposition has turned into a systemic evocation of a theme.
If this all sounds stressful, that’s because it is — intentionally. As Diego Nicolás Argüello wrote in his review for viraltrendingcontent, stress is both theme and mechanic in Citizen Sleeper 2. Bringing back (briefly) the hypothetical novelization of the game, one can imagine sentences that evoke the stress of dwindling resources and the fear of fleeing. It isn’t as though video games invented the concept of communicating stress, but still I find myself of the view that by bringing mechanics to bear on theme, one can, with a game, communicate repetitive experiences like stress in a way that causes the player to embody them rather than imagine them. Being told that a character is struggling to pay for transit as unjust authorities seek them out is one thing. Being made to make that money yourself, and to risk the stress of failure at every juncture, is another.
Image: Jump Over the Age/Fellow Traveller
Playing Citizen Sleeper 2, I started imagining novels that might benefit from similar mechanization of theme. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah immediately came to mind. An action-heavy novel, its plot pits death row inmates against each other in televised, gladiatorial combat as a means by which to earn their freedom. Think Rollerdrome, but about racism and the prison industrial complex. Already intentionally video game-tinged (the characters spend Blood Points on equipment), one could imagine a version of the book wherein the player is forced to choose between corporate sponsorships, navigating battles and interpersonal relationships via branching dialogue choices. And I can’t be the only one who wants to navigate Area X from Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series, right? And here’s a weird one for my literary friends: Imagine Matrix by Lauren Groff (yes, the book about 12th-century nuns — Indika and Misericorde would have a word), but instead of a patient, gorgeous book, it’s a patient, gorgeous social sim, your choices made over decades culminating in a brilliant scene of action that you’ve either prepared for — or not.
In the end, it is, of course, a matter of artistic intention. Citizen Sleeper 2 is a game because it is a game. That it features novelistic writing and scope doesn’t inherently make it a novel any more than Disco Elysium’s word count makes it five average-sized novels in a trenchcoat. But in the end, I can’t help but feel that Citizen Sleeper 2, in addition to being an excellent video game, is also an excellent argument for writers to consider, in the developmental stage of a novel, whether what they’re envisioning might be better with mechanics. The medium is the vessel for the message, after all, and games are no lesser art form. At least consider it.
This is as much advice to myself as it is to anyone else. The final paragraph of this piece is a funny time to reveal this, but I’m a fiction writer, and though I don’t know the first thing about game development, playing Citizen Sleeper 2 and feeling in it a kindred spirit for the love of words has inspired me to consider: Is what I’m writing a book, or is it a game?
