Will Weissbaum · Lead Writer

Benny Henge is a great example. That was player-inspired, from all the big Big Benny's vending machine collections, and then we wanted to do an homage to that. We always try to really bury stuff in the narrative of the game, so it wasn't just building this fun site that was cool. We had to think of why someone would do this. And so we came up with a story, spoilers for people who haven't discovered it, of this eccentric artist who was trying to make a name for themselves, who met a slightly tragic end out there. And so that was all inspired by this back-and-forth conversation between the players, the game, and the designers. So that was pretty neat.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

There's another good one too. This was years ago, but I remember, I think it was Consolidated Outland. We came out with an ad, and there was an org that had a logo that was very similar to the Consolidated Outland one. So they tried to send a cease and desist letter to Consolidated Outland. And so we organized a response, and we shut down their org, or said that they were locked, because they were under investigation from the Advocacy for libel. And it was just a little fun back-and-forth thing. I always get a kick out of doing stuff like that.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

I imagine Jumptown could be, as a direct response to a lot of player input.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Oh, Jumptown, yeah. That was fascinating to see, how that all came together, and how there were people that were trying to game the system and people just trying to do runs, and it created a whole...

Adam Wieser · Writer

Yeah, and we literally folded that back into the lore also, regarding Crusader getting into trouble for basically playing with their crime stats, basically saying crime is lower than it was there. And so the head of Crusader had to go in front of a Senate subcommittee and testify about improving their security. And one of the points that came back around was, oh, well, what about this place called Jumptown, which is a very notorious drug-running location in your system that you're doing nothing about? We know about it here. So it was because of the popularity of Jumptown, and people sharing the information and doing the runs there, that we then folded it back into where it became a part of the lore itself, that it had become so notorious it was known in the Senate and throughout the universe.