So the question when you roll a handful of ones and twos is how do I make something out of my day?' Luck is so much harder to mitigate when you are living on the edge of poverty or homelessness. 'For a gig-worker this feeling is even more extreme I think, as the support structures other jobs have just aren't there. 'We've all had days where we feel like we have woken up having rolled 'all ones': nothing goes right, and fate itself seems stacked against us,' Damian Martin says. 'The communities I worked with, the sense of mutual support and care, and the experience of being outside of routine structures and the conventions of office work kept me alive,' Martin says.ĭamian Martin has even attempted to convey this crucial sense of precariousness through the gameplay mechanics where each ‘cycle’ begins with a roll of dice, and the numbers the player ends up with shape their decisions.

Citizen Sleeper is partially a game about their experience doing 'incredibly difficult' gig work in the past, for low wages, with 'a constant fear of not making rent, and the need to drop your plans at any moment to take a shift.' Citizen Sleeper will capture that bleak reality, but also the more positive experiences that came with it.

Damian Martin explains that this line is partly inspired by anthropologist Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins with ‘ruins’ here representing 'what is left after capitalism has moved on.'ĭamian Martin uses the word ‘precarity’ often for a reason. The description of the game mentions that it’s about ‘roleplaying in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism’, which is perhaps the most overt sign of the game’s interest in politics. They add, however, that the game 'is not meant to be a metaphor for these experiences, but an exploration of the conditions and logics created by such a system.' Trans people are legislated against in order to restrict their access to healthcare we would otherwise consider a human right.' 'Children of refugees are born with no nation or official identity. 'In our society we also legislate who qualifies as a person or citizen,' Damian Martin says.

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