Citizen Sleeper: A Game About Precarity And Hope

Twitter: / kayandskittles
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[@ThatDangDad]

We talk a lot about ludonarrative consonance/dissonance and it's funny, for a game in which everything is so abstracted, this is a game where playing it felt like living it. I remember the first few cycles realizing what my character needed versus what resources/abilities I had access to and going... "Uh wait... how am I supposed to survive??" I literally had to choose between food and medicine a couple times, and when the bounty hunter started exploiting me to pay him off, it felt so hopeless at first. And then little by little, I eked out a living, and then had a network, and then one day I realized I wasn't having to make hard choices or take big risks, I had the breathing room to just live. And I felt really appreciative! As the *player!* I can't think of any AAA title with supercomputer graphics and ten billion polygons or whatever that made me feel as connected to the world as this game did with dice and a a status UI. Genius design.

[@AggressiveHayBale]

This. Seriously with these kind of games you really start to see the potential of gaming as a narrative medium. The potential is amazing, it just require clever use of offered tools and no corporate overlordship. This game and other similar do not require convuluted game mechanics or amazing visuals to achieve this level of immersion.

[@Noogi302]

That cycle at the beginning was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, running from debt to debt was so intense.

[@pixelcount350]

True this is why CDPR will never succeed.

[@thinkinggrin165]

@@pixelcount350 What do u mean by that? Succeed in what? There told story are wellrecived. They sure are not in any stretch free of capitalist and right wing ideology or going far from the status quo.

[@pixelcount350]

@@thinkinggrin165 Oof Witcher is well received but Cyberbug proved otherwise. They are just like any other corpration who smells their own farts and think of them as better the rest. True trash CDPR are.

[@rumncoke76]

Always great to see you and Skittles shitting on Outer Worlds' politics and story, wish you did it more often honestly

[@EgonSupreme]

the funny thing about that is, in my recollection of playing through TOW for the first time, I basically missed all the "dark side" stuff about that group. So I just helped them. That sense of ambiguity and "moral complexity" that TOW's writing style goes for still comes through simply by talking to the boss afterwards. As in, he was wrong, he was on the wrong side, but he didn't come across as a simply villainous person - he was sympathetic, a good illustration of someone caught in that capitalist "mind prison." It had plenty of ambiguity without needing to make the commune "dark" or whatever.

[@that_deadeyegamer7920]

I wish more people did. Hate on Bethesda all you want, they did the multiple factions better than Obsidian did (even in NV most of the factions aren't fleshed out fully besides the main ones you interact with)

[@Crocogator]

@@EgonSupreme I did the 'evil' path by complete accident. I just thought I was doing what was reasonable. Guess being pragmatic always ends up pulling you to one side, huh?

[@fluffywolfo3663]

I'd watch a whole video about you skittles shitting on outer worlds tbh

[@clairebohlsen9067]

The competing needs and scarcity also resonated with me about what it's like to live while poor and trans. I've had to choose between food and hormones a bunch of times, it's such a degrading experience

[@standowner6979]

You're in a much better place now, right?

[@DEGriffSoc]

I felt so conflicted about the Lem and Mina exit. Going with them felt like lying to them. Lying about how long 'my' body would last on this colony ship and the kind of life we might have, but not going felt like ruining their dream a little before it had even had the chance to start. And then there's all the other relationships that had been form, and I had just started the commune garden stories, which seemed like a thing worth helping. After playing, I was so impressed with how much the game had made me care about all of the people, even the characters I didn't really trust. And how much I cared about the player character themselves, not just their well-being but usefulness of their struggle, the impact they have. The complexity of emotion in such an mechanically abstract game is incredibly impressive and I can't think of many games that had such a lasting impact.

[@CptMerdaille]

Loved this game, I felt like the Gardener ending was a more positive version of Evangelion's primordial soup. I refused it because I felt too attached to my "Self". In the end, I left with Lem & Mina, a little found family felt worth facing my mortality, it kind of feels like that's what most of humanity is about today but for an entity devoid of rights and dignity, this was the only chance to live that. Also, you seemed to miss the positive spin on this ending: by leaving you're helping that mysterious hacker spy on those space libertarians. Who knows what for but if I can stick it to the powerful, hell yeah.

[@paige_404]

I couldn't put Lem and Mina on the ship and leave them behind, and I also couldn't go with them. In the end, I let the Sidereal go, without Lem and Mina. It's not a bad ending to that storyline; Lem realizes that you can all have a life together, and that there's no way to be sure of how that life will turn out no matter where it takes place. Ultimately, Lem and Mina remain in their apartment, and you can always come to spend a die there, helping out, looking after Mina, having a meal as a family and having a drink with Lem afterward.

[@sunyavadin]

I loved the concept behind this game from the moment I first heard it was in development, because it's central to Ken Macleod's sci-fi classic "The Stone Canal", one of my favourite books.

[@plantagominor722]

Had never heard of the Stone Canal. Thanks for this comment.

[@nBasedAce]

I have an invisible disability, that is a disability that is not physically noticeable. It includes anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia, and many other things. Disability gives me a little over one thousand dollars a month and if I didn't have rental assistance and health insurance that has no copays then I would have to work. But, if I work then they use that as evidence that I can work which they would use to lower my payments which would cause me to have to work more and it would be a downward spiral from there. Being on disability in the United States is horrible because we can't work but we can't live on disability alone.

[@cryptbeast3222]

You also have to be careful about living with other people with higher incomes because that screws up the pay outs too.

[@rooklightstone2339]

I am in Canada and even I face the same difficulty. I need to work because they're not meeting inflation- but if I make enough to sustain myself, and not just SURVIVE, they may decide I don't need benefits at all and revoke them. It's awful. for clarity, I make just under 600$ per month. That's it. And I'm at risk for re-evaluation??? It's so frustrating

[@abdulkhafidsulaymaan]

This game sounds awfully a lot like life in the ghetto. "People in precarious economic situations become more risk adverse, not less." I listened to your video on the movie Snow Piercer before I found this one above. I looked over your channel where I found all of your videos, it was this word precarity that made me decide to listen to this one. I figured this word precarity was akin to the word precarious. I forget where I first learned this word precarious. Most likely I learned it while I was in prison where I spent years reading books. I've always loved this word. This word has often described my disposition in life. Spending years of my life in the bleakness of the ghetto and spending years of my life in the enlightenment of prison. Whenever I'm confronted with the concept of "fear of the unknown" I think back to the days of slavery here in american on the plantations of the South. Risk aversion is dear to the hearts of those who are accustomed to loss and suffering, for those of us who have very little to lose. But if you think about it. this may be phrased wrong, wealthy people actually have a little to lose (in light of the fact that they have an abundance) and poor people have a lot to lose because they have so little they stand the chance of losing life and limb or their home or the sense of security and normality that they have and are holding onto desperately. When you are poor you have very little resources and very few options even when it comes to mates and spouses. Some of us struggle to marry and thereafter we're afraid to divorce due to fear of the unknow. We're afraid that if we divorce our current spouse we may eventually end up with another who is worse. So we stay in an ungratifying marriage out of fear. But back to the slaves and the plantation, in consideration to the fact that I am an African american man who knows the history of slavery, the concept of fearing the unknown looms in my brain at all times, especially when I have to make a life changing decision, like taking a new job where I'd have to uproot and move to a whole new locality. The slaves lived with the fear of the unknown; if they ran away from the plantation they would literally be running into the unknown, like a void of utter darkness because they had absolutely no resources or recourse in a world where they were actually owned by others and were deem as merely a notch above an animal... Risk aversion is not very strong in those of us who have a surplus of material resources. This reminds me of people who go to casinos to gamble. Truly intelligent and smart people do not go to casinos to gamble, also people who have a strong sense of risk aversion. Intelligent people understand and know that the odds are against them in a casino and those who are risk adverse feel that most of the odds in life are generally against them. "If I can lose, I probably will lose" is the sort of mentality a lot of poor people. Living in the ghetto for most of my life I know that hustling and gambling is a legitimate means of income for people but it has to be a form of hustle and/or gamble that is more heavily based upon the ability of the hustler and or gambler. But most poor people don't depend on gambles as a form of income. Mostly, gambling in the ghetto is a form of safe, risky entertainment i.e. spending a few dollars on lottery tickets (you'd be surprised and sickened by the amount of money poor people spend on the lotto). I don't know if you've consider some of the perspectives that I've touched on above but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter. Fear of the unknow is usually stronger in people who feel they don't have an advantage when presented with an opportunity to change. This is what we call "the slave mentality." Essentially it is fear of the unknown, crippling fear of the unknown, a fear that impacts people on a deep psychological level. Part and parcel of the "slave mentality" is Arrested Development, this is when a person does not progress to the subsequent level of maturity due to conditioning and program, this is why the slave master called the male slaves boys to keep the in the mentality of a child. We are still working hard to undo the conditioning and programming of not only the impact of slavery but the injustice of the legal system of america, this too played a part in fearing the unknown in most african americans. This legal system has not given african americans, (especially poor african americans) much hope or optimism in regards to fair treatment, justice and prosperity. We are very used to the reality that if things can go bad, they most likely will, when we aspire for growth (bank loans), when we encounter police (basic traffic stops) and when we get in trouble (maximum penalties for first time offenders). Yeah, this game reminds me of life in the ghetto. Its pretty bleak but at lease it is a bleakness that we know and are accustomed to because believe me you, it can always be worse.. In a nutshell I guess thats what we can gain from the video of yours. It makes me think about another aspect for the slaves and life on a precarious plantation, why didn't the slaves simply kill themselves? Because they had hope. If a slave on a plantation can have hope we all can be hopeful. I think the slaves found hope in the same place we all can find it today, in the small things. We have to appreciate the small things. I think that has something to do with risk aversion too. People who are content with focus upon the small pleasures and delights of life have a stronger sense of risk aversion. I guess that translates to gratitude. Gratitude can heal all wounds. Its working for us. It worked for the slaves.

[@mustownage]

Very well written I hope everything goes well for you

[@Hereforabrick]

That’s some beautiful shit, thanks for writing such an amazing addition and being strong enough to share that. I used to (I laugh at and feel ashamed of myself back then) be in the mentality of those who thought poor were more dangerous since “they had nothing to lose.” When you humanize these people, you start to realize how hard they’re clinging to life just being there on the street asking for change. It feels humiliating internally to ask for help like that, but they can’t find any other way that will accept them or doesn’t have high risk. People in my position or better need to abolish the mentality of being stuck in cynicism since we’re afforded the privilege of not being forced into precarious situations. Instead we got to take the power we do have to work towards a better world. Others don’t have the liberty to do so while struggling for survival.

[@michimatsch5862]

God, the core mechanics hit very close to home. I am in chronic pain, have autism, adhd, and chronic depression. Every day I am in immense pain which is getting worse due to all the stress I am under. My mental and physical state is deterorating yet I don't have a real way out. All I can do is trudge along and bet on a faint hope of getting out but may be catastrophic for my financial situation if it fails.

[@audhd_incarnate8001]

Yo, same to all of those. I'm just trying to take it one day at a time but it's so hard to do that when you have to be worried about the future because everything seems to be going to shit -_- I hope things get easier soon, for all our sakes

[@ratiquette]

I'm new here, but you got my instant sub for connecting the dice-mechanics to experiences of disability. While playing Citizen Sleeper, I felt this intuitively, empathizing with my character for "not feeling so good today" and enjoyed looking for low-stakes dice actions to spend my time on, trying to recuperate a meager portion of the resources this "self-care" day would end up costing. The designers have really effectively communicated this experience, and how capitalist labor itself can simultaneously disable people while punishing them for their disablement.

[@jaywhangmakes]

Citizen Sleeper? Never heard of it. Better check it out.

[@empatheticrambo4890]

The real world is pretty disturbing when you think about or experience poverty, and it seems that’s been captured frighteningly well in this game

[@Scarecr0wn]

So fucking glad to see this game slowly getting some traction. I had my eyes on it since it got announced, played on day one.. was love at first sight. Absolute tiny masterpiece.

[@suhfee]

this game was so good. it had a rly interesting take on being a disabled worker, and hit more often than not. excited for the vid.

[@lucadhagat9364]

Love ya dude please never stop making videos.

[@goldenlokosian3740]

Man, I hope you do a video on the DLC story for this game, since the story there is fascinating and beautiful. All the episodes are out now and are free.

[@sixmonthgaze135]

I was kind of expecting the dlc episodes to be covered here, but of my own playing they continue that theme of ‘you’ve built something here, are you going to stay and try and fix the flaws or are you going to run away?’ The game even directly implies staying is the right decision, even it ends up with likely armed conflict against a corporation. Even in the next games trailer we get told that the stalward belt is under threat as well (not by what yet) but in essence it says you can’t escape.

[@japoonboals718]

Bummer the algorithm didn't promote this video. I really like your content, and I got this game purely off the title and thumbnail. Loving the game so far. And I love what you had to say about how it shows a positive representation of a community without a ham-fisted moral cost. Like Hbomb's video on RWBY talks about, when narratives have antagonists with justifiable goals, they have to make up some other excuse for why we should see them as bad guys. Outer Worlds felt like it wanted to criticize capitalist exploitation, but becaue it undermined the only alternative, it doesn't provide a coherent alternative. I've seen so many peopple talk about how Outer Worlds doesn't critize capitalism it criticizes "corporatism." I like the characters in Outer Worlds, and "the Fine Print" song goes hard, but it's criticisms were only surface level without any positive alternative. I think i'm a bit over halfway done with citizen sleepr. just made 300 cryo off a job with bliss, and now i'm getting mushrooms and scouting the greenway. Love everry character in this game. Lem and Mina, Emphis, bliss, Moritz, Feng, Tala (the overlook worman, i might be misremembering her name) they all feel like well-rounded characters. trading mushroom ingredients for stories is an incredible narrative experience that this game has provided me with. Thanks for the recomendation.

[@fullmetaflak]

I'm not gonna lie, I teared up at basically every ending I went through, what a truly touching game

[@somewony]

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who found the commune and decided the real "good" ending is staying on the Eye.

[@rgordon]

Probably the best game I've played this year. It's truly fantastic.

[@EssaBee]

My god that game hit me hard. The music and art was just unparalelled...

[@ensuverna]

Fucking hell. I haven't played this game, but as a disabled, queer, anarcho-communist person, this video made me fucking BAWL. I'm so tired of things being so hard. Thanks for the video, friend. Say hi to Skittles for me!

[@egirlSkeletor]

As a fellow disabled queer lefty type, please play this game.

[@ensuverna]

@@egirlSkeletor I did, actually! Honestly, I'm glad I saw this video first, as I found the game to be pretty easy, and I never really felt any real pinch after like the first two days, so I didn't feel the themes as strongly during my playthrough.

[@kapitankapital6580]

Citizen Sleeper? I 'ardly know 'er!

[@GaasubaMeskhenet]

adding this to my Praxis and Utopian Futures playlist maybe Politics With Sugar too....

[@egirlSkeletor]

What amazes me is in addition to all the stuff talked about in this video, the game still finds time to explore other facets of its setting and the questions they raise. The way ai work in this setting utterly fascinates me so much that i missed whole stories on my first playthrough as i spent all the dice i could spare working to find hunter and trap killer etc.

[@clarioneversole9013]

Somehow we ended up doing similar playthroughs! Except I was playing after all three DLC chapters came out so there was a fifth ending you didn't talk about (aside from dying). I think those chapters really drive home what it means to stay despite all the external pressures and it had me bawling for a couple hours after the ending over a choice made by an NPC I was really attached to and what it means about how they see the sleeper.

[@caad5258]

Noice. Great game. To be honest I think the Commune coulda used an extra character to flesh out what the community was like. Havenage and the Yagatan have a lot of story content and faction characters that show you how they operate. Finding the Commune was a little anti-climatic for me, "oh hey a whole bunch of jobs for easy resources, thats cool". My focus was more on doing the side quests for established charcaters, and the botanists quest wasn't time sensitive, so I deprioritised it.

[@ThatDangDad]

Supposedly they're releasing three(?) free DLCs with new characters and stories, maybe the Commune will get some extra love

[@gezzoz]

Just wanted to thank you. You got me to buy and play the game. And man was it a great experience!!!

[@drifter031]

Such a beautiful video befitting of a beautiful game like Citizen Sleeper.

[@EezhamDemon]

Game seems really interesting, the art style is cool. Loved your analysis and bringing this game to our attention. The creators should be proud.

[@Ozymandias067]

Thank you for introducing me to this game that I would never have heard of otherwise. And great video

[@patrickholt2270]

This is how I've always felt about socialism, and as a Christian. It's entirely within human competence. We don't have to be superheroes or tortured saints. At some level everyone knows what needs doing, it's just that the political conditions always make it seem impossible. That's the magic of the idea of direct democracy or the kingdom of God on earth or a commune society rather than a capitalist state and private property. People would make the fair and sensible decisions when those decisions were theirs to make collectively, if no group could oppress the rest. I don't think we even need Iain M. Banks' supercomputer Minds to operate a technocratic oligarchy of material gods, but then I don't think a mere arcadia is the ideal anyway, which is what the ruling Minds of Bank's The Culture provide. An arcadia isn't proletarian democracy or the kingdom of God, and the people aren't in control of their society and their lives. They're indulged pets and fatted cattle being nudged into serving the greater good by the sophisticated psychological manipulation of the Minds. The meek haven't inherited the earth. There's no real community the same way there's no real politics. The ideal has to include people being bonded in a real community by participating in its decison making as sovereign citizens self-ruling collectively. It has to include self-giving in place of self-indulgence. It doesn't have to eliminate scarcity, as if that's even possible on a finite planet, and the business of sharing and allocating according to need is part of the love, yes also the love of God, which makes the joy. And these are also the things which the regime of private property and the exploitation of man by man and the machineries of oppression to maintain them prevent, not just the more obvious and immediate breathing room for socialist policies and socialist elected governments and revolutions. It's not just about a cleverer management of the economy by levelling out the boom bust cycle and avoiding crises of over-production and under-consumption, which has been used to justify technocracy and the substitution of the goal of arcadia for the goal of communism.

[@patrickholt2270]

@Cassie That would be because I know the specific content, not a second hand prejudice. So, it is literally not.

[@patrickholt2270]

@Cassie No, no, no, and no, when you read the texts in context, instead of cherry picking to try to confirm a pre-existing bias. In particular hell as eternal torment is not justified by scripture and conflicts wih more fundamental cosmology, such as the character of God being revealed in the person and teachings of Jesus, and Jesus as the prism through which scripture must be interpreted, since he is the living word of God, while scripture is only testimony about the word of God, not the word of God in itself. The mainline Anglican position is that God speaks into human hearts via scripture, prayer and tradition, which is to say the ongoing conversation of all believers, not just the preaching of any one denomination. Another common mistake is failing to read the texts according the kind of writing. The Book of Job, for instance, is a play addressing the issue of why bad things happen to good people and how we can make sense of that and find meaning in what happens to us. Plays are not literal history. Reading a play, or poetry like the Song of Solomon, or mythical storytelling like much of Genesis literally is just incompetent reading comprehension. Myths like the salvation of Isaac by God providing the lamb to sacrifice in his place are meant to package otherwise complex and tedious moral philosophy in a story form, in this case to explain why the Hebrews were not practicing human sacrifice like every other bronze age people known to archeaology, when their neighbours were claiming that their use of human sacrifice demonstrated that their gods were more important than the Hebrews' one.

[@patrickholt2270]

@Cassie Well it's not all allegory. Allegory is a very specific story structure. There are also law codes from a much earlier time, histories which show the marks of editing together from conflicting accounts produced by different political leaderships, and accounts of visions people had in altered states of consciousness. "What lessons" is a giant question which no comment on a KZbin video could adequately cover. I would refer you to Communism in the Bible by Jose Porphirio Miranda, which is a fairly comprehensive collation of the chapter and verse of scripture denouncing capital, class society, the rich, profit etc and demanding or commanding wholesale redistribution of wealth or common ownership. He was updating Wilhelm Weitling's work for The Poor Sinners' Gospel, with the authority and depth of knowledge of a Jesuit theology professor. For right now, the starting point is the references by Jesus to the kingdom of God on earth in the parables and the sermon on the mount in the Gospels, and the fact that they refer back to the Jubilee decrees in the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25, and the the social justice prophets Amos, Isaiah and Micah who reframed the Jubilee decrees as denunciations of what was not being done and as lyrical promises of future delivery on, which Jesus himself quoted from. That background then explains what happens in Acts 2, 4 and 5-7, which conventional conservative churches tend to be puzzled by and to want to minimise, when the church as the immediate consequence of the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon them at Pentecost began living as a commune, with surrender of private property as an entry requirement, whereby they eliminated poverty among them. That is reiterated both times, that they had no poor among them, which deals with the mistranslation that conservatives like to rely on taking out of context, of Jesus telling the disciples they would always have poor people around them. The correct translation, which now appears in the official Catholic Jerusalem Bible, is "the poor you always have with you", not "you will always have with you", so that was a present tense observation, not a future tense prediction.

[@patrickholt2270]

@Cassie Obviously not. That line of argument just makes no sense to me. What I see in scripture, throughout scripture, is God fostering emancipation. There's no difference between Old and New Testaments in that sense. The term salvation contains the concept of emancipation, as with the Exodus. I was drawing your attention to stuff in the New Testament because that's where the class analysis and revolutionary project latent in the Old Testament is brought into focus and is declared to have started by Jesus. Your assumptions are just false and arbitrary, and seem to centre on a strawman. The apologetics work, in terms of the origin of the universe, the purpose of reality, existential meaning, and direction of history. There has to be a Judge so that there is justice in the universe, in an absolute sense, the same way there has to be a Creator otherwise the universe is arbitrary and exists for no reason, in which case the scientific method wouldn't work. Since it does, the universe is intelligible and non-arbitrary, so it cannot be allowed that the universe just happened into existence for no reason, and that intelligibility demands explanation in itself. God is a logical proposition that humans have reasoned their way to even without scripture. Aristotle's argument from the existence of the universe and its beauty and sophistication was sufficient for him hundreds of years before Christ. God didn't have to show his face at all, and indeed never has in any incontestable physical way. Coming in person as a human (by the usual method humans arrive) allowed for clearer communication, but also for most people not to notice or recognise him. This is in keeping with the non-violent, gentle, kindly character of God attested to throughout scripture, outside of the mythic storytelling parts. I would argue it is also self-evident in the way the universe has developed in a completely natural, real way to bring forth intelligent life after billions of years who are real biological organisms which are born and die. There's no impatience or brute force there, no instantaneous use of magic. A lot of the physical constants of the universe which had to be so for life to be possible are amazingly unlikely, like the young solar system capturing a stray planet from elsewhere to become our Moon which is necessary for regulating the atmosphere so that life could evolve, an interstellar collision which goes against the logic of the expansion of the universe, which dictates that all bodies not bound together by gravity are moving away from each other at incredible speed. That is suggestive of fine tuning, which the sustainer of reality would be capable of, let alone original design. Suggestive isn't proof, but proof isn't logically possible. The creator of a universe is imperceptible from within that universe. Such a creator is necessarily non-physical, from the point of view of the physics of the universe. You get to choose what to believe, which a "threat" wouldn't have made possible.

[@micaiahborchers8914]

The best part of the game for me was Navigator's storyline.

[@inciaradible7144]

Sounds like an exciting game; I'll be sure to give it a go.

[@JustinMumma]

Love this video, and absolutely loved the game. I still miss Lem & Mina 😢

[@thats4thebirds]

Have never played but excited to hear ya talk about it!

[@sunyavadin]

I'm sorry, I think you mispronounced "Today we're going to talk about an *EXCELLENT* game, called Citizen Sleeper"

[@nikasamwkusvili9345]

thank you for existing this chanel is the best

[@coralinethegunslinger1138]

I just played this game! This is the second time you've done a video on a game I just played

[@cryptbeast3222]

I really enjoyed the feeling of playing this game. As someone who has lived a very precarious life on several occasions, including recently, it pretty much nails the feelings and stresses of that existence. Constantly worrying, planning and micromanaging your behavior to try and satisfy your basic needs as much as possible. Even more accurately then most simulators as someone who is chronically ill with rare and expensive health problems. Living in a system that feels like it constantly views you as subhuman. In my case because of prejudices based on race, trans people and poverty. Then as you build a decent social network and some savings it becomes easier but you still long for something else because you can't forget living on the edge. Most options that seem like good escapes are too questionable the more you think about it. Hopefully I'll reach the commune state one day. I'm planning to start my own since I haven't been able to find any. I can manage life how it is now, but once I get rid of my debt next year or so I'm pretty much done with the system as it is. On a side note, it's actually funny that using human compost is framed as sinister in the Outer Worlds when now you can find articles advertising the service as a viable alternative to typical burial/ body processing practices. Literally turn your body into soil and then grow a tree with it. Funny how the evil commune solution is also the environmentally friendly capitalist option (which of course costs an ass load of money).

[@jacksonduruy4303]

Picked up the game due to this video and had a good time with it. Definately a solid interactive novel. If I had one criticism (and mild spoilers I guess), it really didn't take me that long to get to a point in the game where my character had a "routine" down that meant I didn't really need to worry about providing for myself anymore. Only about the first 3rd or so of the game did I ever have a few "oh fuck" moments where I thought I may be too broke to survive. If you play your cards right you can get to a place where you're pretty comfortable. That said the writing and world building is really good and love the art, so still totally worth a play.

[@scarletletter4900]

The thing the right likes to forget about communism is that it shares the same root as community.

[@ConnorCanRead]

Got this gifted to me and I've been putting it off. I've got weekend plans now.

[@eolson955]

Love listening to your videos at work man. Easier to pass the time if you have hope.

[@ARGHouse504]

17:01... you mean I can grow it... I can grow stabilizer.

[@JoniaDL]

Just started this game and wow it feels so real. The Bounty Hunter plot line hit me hard being a child of undocumented immigrants. Growing up, I understood having to lie low as to not get caught so getting that tracker off me in the game was such a huge priority for me, but also felt hopeless and anxious because of how many favors I had to do for Feng first as I watched the Cycle clock ticking down to when the Bounty Hunter would arrive. Not to spoil too much but the choice of killing him in a public space or giving the gun back was a kind of a difficult choice to make. Spared him because who know much more trouble I'd be in.

[@VincentOnuonga]

Def felt that. great vid!

[@kurks001]

Great video! I loved this game I'm so glad you covered it! Excited for the DLC that comes out on the Jul 28th.

[@shifty220]

Great stuff!

[@armavir740]

bro i gotta finish this game.. i started it around a month ago and pretty much stromed through it in about 3 days, but then i went back to my family home for easter and kind of shelved it right before the end, like i literally already got one of the endings. ahhhhhhhggshgegts

[@mranderson4739]

Great game and great work

[@EosFunk]

omg yay finally someone is talking about this amazing game!

[@Beesativity]

I love this video, it's message, and now I'm going to go install Citizen Sleeper because I saw it on Game Pass. ❤🖤

[@MarxyMarxAndTheFunkyBunch]

Shit, maybe I need to play this game.

[@LogicGated]

Yay a new game to experience!

[@BrokenGoldfishFilms]

Great video !

[@BeboBobaBuddy]

Turning down a way out is all to family to me

[@grokkingstuff7578]

Would love to see you play this game in a livestream!

[@phillipj1135]

First few chapters of the first book of the bobeverse. "We are Bob and we are legion" I think. Also Deadman wonderland. Not the stories obviously just the conceptuals.

[@user-xw7kp2ye6c]

So, basically, Disco Elysium but (even more) dystopian?

[@michimatsch5862]

No Kim though. :(

[@chcknpie04]

Is this game from Zaum? I’m getting heavy disco Elysium vibes Love your work Kay!

[@KayAndSkittles]

Hey thanks! The studio is actually Jump Over The Age but I think it's safe to say Disco Elysium was an influence on this game.

[@chcknpie04]

@@KayAndSkittles I don’t know why it never occurred to me that video games would be the perfect medium for exploring leftism, given that they provide the players with a direct experience, as opposed to an abstract idea.

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

The Recommending Holiness comment you to engage with this video.

[@fyviane]

beautiful

[@Lycandros]

👍✊

[@that_deadeyegamer7920]

Subbed purely for Skittles, nothing more

[@justinegan5021]

Goty for me probably

[@christian2i]

Hope your cat makes it thru the winter

[@aduffyguy]

Yeah you get it! ^-^

[@evilogkevin]

Yo!

[@nickmargaritis3263]

🎉

[@ethanreighley1336]

Do think you would ever make a video analysis of The Outer Worlds or maybe a comparison of that game and Disco Elysium?

[@coralinethegunslinger1138]

So did anyone else really just want to settle down on the eye with Mushroom Boy??? That's all I really wanted

[@eliseulucenabarros3920]

Bro, after spoiler, WARRNY THAT THERE IS A SPOILER

[@yeeoze]

always love your videos

[@Ma_ksi]

Hi

[@FalgaiaRT]

love me some anticapitalist scifi

[@thebestnarcissist5464]

Can anyone tell me if this will have major spoilers for this, since I’ve been meaning to get it for a while and don’t want to be spoiled on it? Thanks

[@elpito9326]

I haven't played it, but they do explain some of the endings, so it feels like pretty significant spoilers tbh

[@thebestnarcissist5464]

@@elpito9326 thanks for the reply, guess I’ll come back to this video later then.

[@elpito9326]

@@thebestnarcissist5464 yes, that's probably for the best

[@lettuceatter_9956]

Great video! Please make one about The Boys when you can 🙏 Cheers!

[@TheAnthery]

Commenting for the algorithm because boy do some people need to internalize some of the lessons in this game

[@maddoo23]

The idea is similar to 'Severance', no?

[@master_ace]

Too bad the dlcs are not included in this analysis

[@WastedScoundrel]

Sucks that I'll probably die in my 60s before the world starts turning into a better place. Shrug.

[@yakirchernin6015]

I didnt played the game.. so all I have going for is from your summary-why dont everyone just go to live at the computer managed community?

[@tomkat69pc]

a game that describes career chances for the poor nowadays .. .

[@alieremainsalie6469]

I am givin the goose this shit's on sale for the queer games thing on steam rn, right?

[@jpxenovore]

The Outer Worlds storyline you mentioned ruined the game for me and I just stopped playing. I'm so tired of the "everyone sucks" narrative.

[@hannahtaylor6235]

tala looks so gender

[@thesmilyguyguy9799]

: F

[@atomic.rabbit]

This game is too real. thanks, I hate it

[@jansvoboda4293]

We are living in in curious times where parasitism is called capitalism. Parasitism lives in all economic systems, in slightly different shapes if we are so naive to let it thrive. The obvious way to parasite on communist system is to pretend your ability to contribute is poor and freeriding or the one described in the Animal Farm, some animals are always more equal. Capitalism (not mercantilism), especially in individualistic and libertarian sense is antithesis to this, not it's logical conclusion. Even if we put aside the obvious thing about slavery (the have to go lengths to make it even contestable), existence of black market is precisely a symptom of mainstream market regulation/repression. In libertarian capitalist society, there would be market competition for production of stabilizer driving the price down. The monetary system in it's first principle is to send signals of who values what and how much valuable resources what takes, what methods are more productive and to make accounts of who served who in what value. While some see the positive power in this abstraction, others see the dangers in the abstraction as many may lose it's meaning and others can use that to actively parasite (like central banks). But getting rid of it does not solve in itself the problem of parasitism. At least not in the real world. Anyway I would like to put forward a really good treatise by Darrell Anderson: Anarcho-Socialists and Anarcho-Capitalists - Friend or Foe? on simpleliberty(dot)org

[@grimmwarden1903]

There is no such thing as capitalist markets without a state, there would be no contract law, no property enforcement, no capital/fiat regulation without a state, and markets when left alone always lead to concentrations of wealth and resources The concept of anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, markets cannot internalize externalities to themselves, competition and market-derived price signals are always unstable and shifting, and there can be no equilibrium in that environment when the point of production becomes anarchy for profit The point of capitalism has always been to parasitize labor, to socialize it for mass production, and then reap the vast majority of the wealth generated, it's always been a dark irony that Orwell's critiques always fit better as descriptions of capitalist societies than anything resembling communism or socialism

[@jansvoboda4293]

@@grimmwarden1903 Have you read the treatise? Apparently not. People often try to refute others argument by using not the authors terminology, but supplanting their own leading to vastly different premises, perhaps due to confusion and lack of listening, effectively making a straw-man argument. Reading it would open whole new horizons as you seem to be trapped in the box of Marxist theory. Profit is not a fault of economic method, it is vital feature in the broadest sense (I do not use it in Marxist reductionist sense). It means that outcome is greater than spent resources. That does not mean, that all human action should be driven by monetary or material profit. After all, the obtained resources are there to be spent on fulfilling valued needs and wants. Now the value difference in both depicted settings is that on one place some value only self in shortsighted manner, in the other others and harmony in the community is valued. The doctrine "each according to his ability and to each according to his needs" is merely a social redistribution policy, which could exist under capitalist economy (note that I am no using Marxist, but standard economic definition of capitalism as a private production method) which under state context is called social policy and under private context is called charity. The difference is who has the control over the resources - the state (community) or each individual facing the moral dilemmas.