Star Citizen: Calling All Devs - Death of a Spaceman

The idea of Death of a Spaceman is to try to get some kind of meaningful consequence to dying in a game. Most games you play, modern games anyway, you die, you respawn back a few seconds before you die and you keep on doing it again. So it doesn't really feel like there's much consequence to dying, and a lot of times your gameplay approach is pretty sloppy. I know when I'm playing a standard FPS shooter in the story mode, I just keep blasting in at people. I don't really think about it. I die. I start again. Whereas if you play a game like, say for instance, Demon's Souls all the years ago and all the ones past it, there's real consequence. You die, and you've got to fight back through all those enemies. You've lost all the experience that you've gained, the souls in the case of Demon's Souls. But the thing with Demon's Souls, it was one of the things I was playing, it reminded me of the good old days in the 80s and the 90s when you'd make games, and dying had a real consequence. You wanted to finish your level before you died or else you had to do the level again, right? And consequently, when you finished the level or achieved something, you really felt proud and happy, which is definitely, I think, one of the mechanics that makes Demon's Souls and its subsequent games both infuriating and rewarding when you manage to do it. So the idea was, what kind of consequence can we have in our persistent universe in terms of how do we encourage the players to stay alive? We don't want people to just go, "Oh, I got a scratch, I'm just going to respawn in a perfectly pristine state for the character or the ship." And so Death of a Spaceman was sort of an idea to give an association with your player character in the game in terms of: this is who you are, and you want to keep yourself alive as much as possible, and identify with your avatar as an actual real person and character that you care about and you want to keep alive. And then finally, when you've had one too many close calls or lost one too many battles, you no longer can be resuscitated and you have to pass on, essentially, to your next of kin, which you will call out basically when you're doing your character creation. And that idea is, whether it's passing it down to your son or your daughter or a relative or a friend or whatever it would be, you call that out, and when that happens, your possessions and reputation kind of pass down, but not all of them, right? So there's inheritance tax, and the sins of the father aren't fully invested on the son, but there's a little bit of that. And so the idea would be you would want to live as long and healthy a life as possible before you pass on to your progeny or whatever. And so that was the inspiration of Death of a Spaceman, to really give a sense of close association with your avatar and your character. And if at the end of the day you've got to be there at, essentially, the God view of the funeral of the character that you spent a year or so venturing around Star Citizen with, there should be a tear in your eye when it happens. So that was the goal. And so it was really a mechanic of how can we do that inside the game, inside our science fiction setting, which was coming up with this concept of: in the future, with all the medical science we have, in states where you may consider you would be dead now, you would not be able to be brought back to life or repaired, potentially we could do that in the future, but maybe we could only do it so many times. And so in some ways it's a little like the old school of you've got so many lives, right? And once your lives are done, the game's over. And the concept was that maybe the worse the death, you're in some big fireball, that's more serious in terms of the lives you lose off your character than it would be if you were down and bleeding out and someone came and got you and managed to repair you, fix you up in the medical table or a hospital. And the idea would be you would want to not run out of lives, and potentially there could be things you could do over time, go get some gene therapy or whatever, that maybe add a life back to you. I'm talking lives in a game sense here, but in general we're trying to put it inside the fiction of the world. But the idea is to have real persistence to your avatar and wear and tear. It's also one of the reasons why we've got things like wear in the game. It's essentially one of the things that we have for equipment; we're going to have it for characters. You're going to get older, things are going to get old, and all of that. We have parts of that in the game, but it's not fully working, but that's all systems that are on the plan or that we need to turn on properly, because that's part of the problem with what we're doing right now: we're building this incredibly complicated, interconnected simulation system, and not all the pieces are there quite yet. So even though we've built some of the pieces and we can functionally do stuff with them, because the other pieces aren't there, the whole system doesn't work yet. And that is actually one of the challenges of building a game the way we're building it, while people are playing it. Death of a Spaceman is a good example, because it's something that I talked about at the very beginning as a core concept. It's always been a core concept, but we're only just now getting around to starting to implement the actual functionality and gameplay features that will enable it. And I think when you have it, that will make people behave very differently in the verse, which is going to be super cool.

Well, we've already kind of started. Body dragging was the first feature that we released that gave you the premise to be able to manipulate dead bodies. But as Chris calls out, death is going to be a really important factor in Star Citizen. Now, there's kind of three deaths along the spectrum. There's what we're calling the downed state. So that's when your health has gone to zero and you're there. And when you're in that scenario, you'll be able to choose to stay there and be like, "OK, I need my buddies to come and rescue me. I need the law enforcement to come and help me," or maybe I pay for some insurance that rescues my body or something like that. Then there is the kind of you've died in terms of you've given up the ghost. Nobody's coming. You're like, "OK, that's it. I'm leaving that body there and I'm going to go back to a hospital and be revived." But that's kind of part of your DNA. That DNA is going to be re-impregnated into essentially a clone of you. And then you'll be able to go back to your location and you'll be able to see your dead body there. And as long as nobody's been there, you'll be able to retrieve your gear and so on and so forth. And then the third aspect, in terms of you passing on to your next of kin and that kind of thing. So what we're actually evaluating now is how this is integrated into the core healing gameplay and the actor status. So we already did some of the actor status with temperature, in terms of hypothermia and hyperthermia, and things like starvation. And what we want to do now in terms of the next iteration of this is what we call the healing and actor status T1. And what that will do is introduce drugs. So you'll have a blood drug level and you'll be able to manipulate things, but it will also introduce all the different statuses that are surrounding you as a character. So for example, when you're in battle and you take a really bad wound to the arm, you might say, okay, I've got a fracture, so my arm, I've got a permanent fracture. I'd have to go back to the hospital to get that repaired. Otherwise I'm going to start to suffer some status effects surrounding that. But if you keep taking damage and you keep taking more damage, that fracture might turn into an actual break. And then it might turn into actually coming out of your arm kind of thing. And the level of that status will dictate the level of care and level of healing that you need to go and basically get that healed. So you can go to a med bay and get them repaired. But it also allows other people to act as support roles and come and help you. Let's say you've got a really bad broken leg, which means that you can't walk anymore, because you haven't just fallen over and taken a little scratch. You've repeatedly taken damage in your leg and you've not gone to heal it, because MediPens, for example, will no longer just be like, "Oh, I'm a MediPen, I'm full health." You will have these permanent statuses like hypothermia and hyperthermia. And those will only be able to be removed when you go to these locations, either a medical bay in a ship or a medical bay at these hospital locations. So when essentially you go into that downed state, that's where body dragging will come in, so that people can come in and drag your body back to the medical facility. We're going to have obviously the medical gun in terms of the multi-tool attachment; we'll be able to inject essentially the material that's inside the MediPens, but a stronger version of that. So the MediPens will basically turn into something that is stabilizing you in the moment. You'll still be able to replenish your health, but if you've got a bleed or something like that, it'd be like a clotting agent that stops that bleed. And that allows you to get back to safety. And at that moment in time, you can then go, "Okay, do I want to go on and push on? But I've got this status effect." If I go back to the fractured arm, my weapon's now swaying more, similar to how we have the eyeball effects with the other things. And that progression of the actor status T1, in terms of the different limb statuses that you're going to have, in terms of whether you've got a traumatic brain injury, whether you've got leg injuries, whether you've got arm injuries, whether you've got internal bleeding in terms of your organs, the level of those statuses will basically go up and up and up to the point where you're like, "I can no longer function now and I need somebody to come out." And you'll have plenty of opportunity to back out. So it's not going to be something that's going to be like, "Oh, hello, you've broken your legs and that's it." It's going to be something like the other actor statuses, where you're going to have junction points where you can make a decision: should I go on? And it's that moment like in the Arctic: I'm close to the edge, but I might lose my toes. So essentially what we're working on right now is that healing circle and that healing gameplay. And it also allows that cooperative gameplay, that when you do go into this downed state, which covers the first of the three death states, that's the state where you really don't want to go to the next stage. Because as soon as you go to the next stage, that is what Chris touched on in terms of, it's almost like the DNA integrity, because you're going to go to the hospitals. When we release this, hospitals will be live in the locations. You'll be able to go to these hospitals and almost download your DNA matrix into the hospital database and say, "OK, if my body is unrecoverable or my friends can't get to me, then I'm going to die and have to be recloned into this body. My DNA is going to have to be re-imprinted into this shell." And during that process, that's the process where your DNA can kind of fracture or lose some of its integrity. And that is what Chris touched on in terms of you're losing a life in gameplay terms. That is what's happening as it's being imprinted into you. And depending on the manner of your death, and depending on, "Oh, if you've just been ignoring all of these statuses and all of your arms don't work and your legs don't work and you've got a brain bleed," some of that DNA integrity, as it's being injected back into your body, can be re-inherited from those systemic statuses that you've had. And that means that you might come back in your body with a prosthetic arm, or you might come back and your eye color has changed, or you're not as tall as you used to be, because there's something that's gone wrong with that DNA imprinting. That's kind of what we're working towards now in terms of that hospital healing gameplay loop, actor status, the extension of the actor status system that we went live with before, and obviously body dragging and all of that, setting your spawn point in game terms and the lives. That's the stuff that we're working on right now. And to be honest, that's going to be a significant change in how people play the game, because when you go to the third stage, where you're shedding your tear... I'm not shedding my tear at the character I've lost, I'm shedding my tear at the inheritance tax that I've just been levied. And it's at that stage, that permanent death where you're having to pass on to a next of kin, where it is the sins of the father. You're still going to have some of your reputational statuses, but they may not be as high as they were, because it's like, "Oh, your dad was part of X, Y, Z, but you're going to have to prove yourself." And that kind of loop is a really unique aspect in terms of an MMO. And that really ties into death having a real meaningful consequence. Like in Demon's Souls, the amount of times you get to the boss and you get to that 1%, and your palms are sweaty and you're moving the mouse and you're like, "No." That all of a sudden changes when you get to the edge of that cave and you're like, "Yeah, I'm just going to go in there, and if I find something in there that's not friendly to me, then I'll just respawn." Now it's going to be like, "Well, if I respawn, what happens to my ship? Am I going to lose my gear? I'm going to have to come back to it," because obviously physical inventory ties into it. "And then, oh, will I lose some of my DNA integrity?" And all of a sudden, it changes the choices you make along the journey that you're going on. And that is critical.

Yeah, one of the other things we're doing is that we're not going to be despawning player bodies anymore. So when you die, the body that's there and all the equipment will stay there. So if you end up having to be recloned, you could essentially go back to where you died and recover some of your stuff and see the skeleton of your previous incarnation. But the other thing I would say is that the cost of the new life, basically, and you're only going to have so many of these to degrade, is much more than getting rescued or having someone come and grab you and fix you up. So there will also be an economic incentive to live, to essentially not just go, "Oh yeah, I'm just going to respawn," because A, you're only going to get a very limited number of those, and B, they're going to be very expensive. So you would prefer to have other players or your friends or a service come and get you and fix you up. And I think that'd be really useful and important, because even in gameplay like that, okay, if I'm now exploring in a corner of the universe that doesn't really have a lot of people, my level of risk there is much higher than if I'm in the middle of a really well-traveled area of space. I think in terms of gameplay, things like finally getting around to the full health, Death of a Spaceman setup and the physical inventory, the gameplay potential and just what's going to happen and the interplay with players... there's not other games that I can think of that quite have all this stuff all together to do this at this level of detail. And personally, I'm super excited to have these come together. We've talked about them for a long time. Obviously it's taking a while, but that's because we're building something incredibly high fidelity with all this detail, but with all the scope. But it really will change a lot of the gameplay mechanics. A lot of how people are playing the game right now, you just wouldn't want to do. It just wouldn't make sense. And I think that's super exciting.

And hopefully you can see some of the method to the madness of the development. Because it's not like, "Hey, overnight we go, let's just add this cool thing." It's like, okay, it's underpinning these things. So when we add actor status, when we add eating and drinking, when we add physical inventory, when we add the ability to hold things in the hand from grenade throw T1, all of that is tying into the bigger picture of what we want to achieve. And that core gameplay loop of: I'm not just stepping into my ship and flying into space and I could just open my PMA and have access to everything I want. There's no consequence, there's no feeling that you're in the world, because you have access to this infinite bag of holding. This consequence of: I'm going on a real adventure. The things that I take with me are the things that I have access to. The ships that I have dictate how much storage I have and what I have access to inside those ships. Do I have a kitchen that provides me food and drink? Do I have a medical bay? Have I got room to take a buddy with me? Is he going to wear support armor that allows more replenishment of the medical gun that can revive me when I'm down in the cave and we can get out together? All of a sudden that becomes not just a single player "Oh, I've just got access"; all of a sudden those shared experiences are the things that make it a true experience. All of these individual systems in isolation, they're really cool, and we put a lot of effort and a lot of heart into them. And they're complex because we want scalability on the size of Star Citizen. But when you pull them all together and they start talking to each other, and they start, "Okay, have you got space for the amount of food and drink you need? Have you got space for ammo? What guns are you taking? Am I going to take the grenade launcher? Well, I can only fit so many magazines of that. Well, maybe I should take an energy rifle because that recharges." All of those different decisions tie into making it... That's when all of a sudden you go, "Hold on a minute, the game was already there. We just needed these systems to start talking to each other."

I feel like at some point we need to rebrand this to the Life and Death (and Taxes) of a Spaceman. It would be more appropriate.

Ultimately, we do joke a little bit about it, but the goal with Star Citizen is, essentially, it's a virtual life. We are trying to simulate, obviously in a more primitive state than the real world, all the things that would happen. Naturally you would think, okay, if I'm going to go to the Antarctic, I've got to bring my supplies with me. I've got to worry about if I get hurt, and all these things that I think create great gameplay opportunities and also great cooperative gameplay opportunities, right? So there's a lot of things that we talked about where clearly, if you're going to be adventuring in a dangerous place, having equipment and having people with you is probably a good thing, because otherwise something goes wrong and you're by yourself. And there's been a lot of engineering just on the very low level and some scalable stuff that we have to do to enable a lot of these systems, but over the next year or two years, we've got a lot of this stuff coming online. And I feel like when they all start interoperating together, then it will be an experience like no other. I don't know another game that does it to the level. There's some games that do some really nice... Red Dead Redemption 2 is great. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that does elements of this, but I think not to the scope and the level and the detail that we're doing. And that's one of the reasons why it's taken so long. It's definitely taking longer than I'd like it to. And it's part of my frustration when people are like, "Wow, where's my gameplay loops?" And I'm like, "But it's going to be so awesome. You've got all these elements." I know the big picture and how they're all going to pull together. And it's just one of the things that, when you're making a game live, developing in front of people, people experience what you wouldn't normally. Normally, most game developers will tell you, in the old way, certainly when I was making the Wing Commanders and all the rest of stuff, and Richard probably can opine on all the ones that he was making, that the game really only comes together near the end, right? So you work on all these disparate parts, and you do it for years, especially in today's world; people work on it for years and years and years, and then it really only comes together sort of... We're kind of in that alpha to beta stage. I know we say we're alpha, but we still got a lot of features to come, and normally a traditional alpha would be you've got your features there but you don't have all your content polished, and then beta is all content and features are in there and you're working on the bugs. So a lot of it doesn't... Like Wing Commander, you weren't playing through until a couple of months before we released the game, and it was all in different pieces. In the way we do Star Citizen, people see us develop all these pieces in different parts, and they go, "Well, why have you got that? That just seems silly that you're focusing on this aspect over here, where I don't even have this other thing over here." Well, we have a plan. We're working on all those pieces, and when they all come together, it's going to be a great experience. Already there's elements of it now, so you can go around and run around the verse, and yes, there's going to be a lot more, but there's already fun stuff to do, and there's the social aspect of it. I see amazing videos every single day. It's one of the funnest things for me, to see cool videos by whoever; there was one that Tarada just did on 3.11 that was shared around here. The point is, this is really cool stuff that people are doing with the sandbox we're building, even though the sandbox isn't finished. But whether it's me or Richard or Todd Papy or Tony Zurovec, we're all operating at the level of: we see the matrix, we just haven't built all the elements of the matrix yet, but we know it's coming together, and when it's done, it will be this amazing simulation. Our only frustration is... it's not like me and Richard are like, "Oh yeah, guys, take longer." It's like Richard and Todd and everyone else are like, "Is it really going to take you that long to do that feature? Are you sure you can't do that in half the time?" We're always on that case. I know everyone out there is on our cases, but some of this stuff just takes time to build, to test, and also to do it when you're doing it in a live game, right? Because we are building in a live game, so you can't just break everything by introducing a new feature. You've got to make sure the old features work as well. But to be honest with you, it's actually a fun way to do it, because a lot of how we're doing it also informs our development as we go along. Because yes, we've got our big plans, but some of the feedback we get helps tweak how things are coming in or what areas we'll address, or what things worked well or what things didn't work well that we need to adjust. And if you were doing it the old way, you wouldn't get that feedback. You'd just basically put it all out there. It'd be your best shot at it. And then you'd be like, "Oh shit, well, we've got to fix this thing or improve this thing." So I like it. And also just people experiencing what we're building so far is awesome for the team as well, because the team get all inspired when they see cool stuff that the community is doing. So there's upsides and downsides to what we're doing, but I wouldn't change it for the world, because I think it's one of the funnest things I've ever done in games, and it's awesome.

So what we're planning on working on in the future, relatively soon, shall we say, is the hospital groundwork. So the hospitals in the locations, the ability for you to be able to go to those hospitals and download your DNA as your save point, or the area where you would be respawned. We already obviously have body dragging in and some of the medical bays in there, but what we'll be introducing is actor status T1. So that will be drugs. For example, we'll be introducing some drugs as part of that, like adrenaline. I think we've already got some black market drugs in there that will tie into this, but also alcohol. So if you go to the bartender, you'll be able to get drunk, and we'll have the relevant animations and locomotion sets that tie into that. Because obviously then there'll be a risk-reward, that you can't just keep MediPenning, like you can't in real life. You can't just keep popping paracetamol. All of that will tie into it in terms of that blood drug level. And if you keep taking drugs, you will eventually overdose and you'll need to be revived. So you'll have to manage that on the actor status side of things. And we'll also be introducing the healing loop, in terms of being able to revive you from a downed state, and obviously the DNA integrity side of things. So as you go and die, you'll be able to be battlefield revived, so we can bring you back in the same body. And obviously you may come back with permanent visuals, but that won't be part of T0, the visuals, just to be clear. But yeah, that's what we're working on: that core gameplay loop, actor status T1 and hospital locations. Those are the three main big areas that we're trying to push forward on. And hopefully alongside physical inventory, which we're also actively working on. I've done multiple talks on it; I think every patch we do something to do with it, either updating the UI, and all of that is along the journey. We've just been releasing small bits, but that will tie into it. So healing, actor status, hospitals and physical inventory, those things will hopefully come as one thing to be able to deliver that experience. But if they don't, then we'll make it work as they come. But that's the stuff we're actively working on right now.