I know that now is not the time to put together a Star Citizen wishlist, but let’s face it: every SC player has one. Most of them are probably “I wish the game was at 1.0” or “I wish they’d stop adding new stuff before the old stuff is complete”, but I was on the tram in Area 18 the other day and found myself staring at a poster on the wall of Imperator Laylani Addision thinking that nothing really came of the in-game period when CIG was pumping out stories about the election.

I know that the extent of CIG’s story-bound content is currently limited to “shoot and loot”, but I hope they eventually consider other avenues through which they can deploy not just more lore, but more and different gameplay systems. I think that the narratives around the Imperatorship are ripe for such systems.

What is the Imperatorship?

In the Star Citizen universe, the dominant governing body is the United Empire of Earth. As the top position’s title implies, the UEE is modeled very much after ancient Roman society. The name “Star Citizen” alludes to UEE “citizenship” which is earned through service of some kind…traditionally (and as a narrative shortcut) military service. Squadron 42, which focuses on such service, is kind of like a primer for initiating players into the Star Citizen universe so when they complete the single player game they can segue straight into the multiplayer version with a sense that they have “earned” their UEE citizenship.

According to the lore section of the Roberts Space Industries website:

Every ten years, the Citizens of the United Empire of Earth come together to elect the next Imperator. Security, economic development, military spending, alien affairs, general ethical and moral views of society will be heavily influenced by the Imperator and their plans for Humanity. (link)

There’s nothing special about the idea of lore-serving elections in persistent online games, but I don’t think Star Citizen has really deployed the results of the last election (in 2020) in the game world. I think this is excusable considering how many fish they have to fry just to finish up a world worth influencing.

What Could it Mean?

Of course, my go-to model is the “Powerplay” system in Elite Dangerous. Elite is a totally different game with totally different boundaries, so a 1:1 port would not be possible. Still, it shows how a game of scope can include systems which aren’t about blowing shit up.

Frontier Developments dropped a bunch of headshots into the game and divided up the core star systems (the “Bubble”) among them. Players can pledge their allegiance to one of these scions, take missions, and — most importantly — alter the boundaries of the Bubble which effects how players from opposing factions are treated, prices, and availability of certain goods and perks for those loyal to the controlling faction. This works for Elite because of the staggering number of star systems and the more-or-less kinda-not-really equal footing of the leaders of these sects which amounts to a lot of clay to work with. Players can pick who to align with based on what the faction provides (practical), the territory they control, and, for those who are more RP minded, the ethics espoused by each leader.

Participating in Powerplay is optional and has consequences for players whether they participate or not, such as a sense of relative safety in certain systems, and access to certain goods. Through specific missions, players can also influence other star systems, moving them from unaligned to aligned, and players can even destabilize control of star systems belonging to other factions. Of course, these are not single-player efforts, and require a whole lot of people to agree to work together within certain systems to move the needle faster.

What Would it Mean?

Star Citizen can’t do anything on this scale because it’s universe isn’t anywhere near as large and the in-game lore focuses on a single elected official, but that doesn’t mean that CIG couldn’t implement a system which lets players direct a significant narrative shift. When the elections were happening, CIG put out a series of articles highlighting the candidates and their positions. Characters have espoused ideals ranging from pursuing advanced AI research (Addison) to more Capitalistic plans (Costigan, LeSalle) to Empire-upending changes (Ngo, Sharrad). There were a whole slew of in-lore articles such as candidate debates and news dispatches that provided a sense that this election was a Really Big Deal.

I think this could and should be a Really Big Deal (eventually). In a post-1.0 world, if CIG has a series of potential narrative arcs on the board they could assign each one to a candidate and let the players vote by proxy for the content they want to see. The current structure of an Imperator election is a year long process, which gives CIG some time to gauge the sentiment of the players and plan for the future:

The Imperator election is similar to the Senatorial election as only Citizens have the honor of voting. The year-long election process begins the previous October with any UEE resident allowed to enter the primary. In January, a Primary Vote whittles the candidate field down to ten, and a Secondary Vote in April further reduces the number of candidates to five. The final five then have until October to convince Citizens to vote for them during the two-week long Final Vote which begins on Citizen’s Day (October 10th).

Another good reason for such a system is that it’s pretty low-rent for players. As the quote above states, Citizens vote in January to narrow the field, then again in April, and then a final vote is tallied in October. This year-long process keeps the activity in front of players, allowing CIG to beat the drum that players get to decide what kind of narratives they might get in the next 2/4/whatever year period, and that “if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” if players don’t like the content they’re given. Everyone would only have to vote three times over the course of the year, which is hardly onerous and lends itself to a feeling of inclusion and influence that players are always looking for in their games.

There is one large problem as I see it, though, and that’s the Imperator’s tenure. It lasts for 10 years and based on CIG’s current treatment, that’s either a dodge so they don’t have to think about it until 2030, or it’s a sensible application of lore to allow the current Imperator to Get Things Done. If the selection of an Imperator were to drive CIG’s priorities, a 10 year real-world window is an excessive amount of time to devote to a storyline, especially since CIG (nor any developer, really) could never create enough content that mimics the various policies of a political leader across as similar time-span. Maybe if they reduced the tenure to two or even four years, and committed to a singular or small-batch narrative arc within the same time things might work.

What I would not like to see — but which I would absolutely expect from CIG — is for players to “pre-influence” the elections. I don’t want there to be stories about kidnapping a candidate, or “pirates threatening participants” or anything typically CIG. I think the election can stand in as cover for player participation in the ongoing narrative and feature-set of the game instead of opening doors that drive players to Spectrum to berate and scream at developers for choices they might claim are arbitrary, hostile to the players, and “made in a vacuum”.

Additional Reading

If you’re not familiar with Star Citizen’s Imperator arc, here’s a few articles from the RSI website that can provide some insight into how CIG handled their first-ever election cycle.