Is Aurora A Dystopia Setting? Should it be?

[Marlon P.]

The biggest incongruity between Aurora's lore and its gameplay is its dystopic setting.

The lore has it set up that we live in the worst period of capitalism. Megacorporation's dominate society and brutalize us physically or psychologically. The SCC is an exploitative entity beyond the authority and has subsumed entire governments into its corporate apparatus. Sentient lives are just cogs in the machine where all economic activity exists solely to make a small minority of people rich.

But on station things are pretty lit.

We have free healthcare. We have homes provided to us with modern amenities. Mass transit shuttles us to-and-from work for free. Food and drink are provided. We don't have to "look busy" and can take extended breaks to socialize if we're not actively needed for something. There are safety features to keep people safe. And the most glaring and unrealistic element of the whole thing is that even Heads of Staff are held accountable by CCIA.

All of this has no precedent within lore as coming from labor agitation or progressive governments forcing the corporation to do it. Because as far as I know, "The Left" as we know it has no representation within the lore outside fringe elements. Definately not enough to justify mega-corporations more powerful than any in-character government just giving us universal healthcare. That and other worker-friendly aspects of the game - which have to exist so our players are not infuriated constantly - were provided by NanoTrasen of their own free will.

This, at best, is incredibly unrealistic. At worst it's a belief that megacorporate monopolies can intrinsically be forces of good.

This incongruity should be resolved. 

A long time ago I pushed to resolve it by representing the lore on the station. One I remember is advocating that medical care come with financial charges to our accounts. This method of resolving the inconsistency was not popular (rightly so) but nothing else really came of it.

The server needs to have a reckoning on what level of harrowing dystopia it wants to represent. All the pieces are present for "a flawed by hopeful society" that would match the elements of our gameplay flow and on-station evidence. This would also give a stronger reason for why everyone swarms Tau Ceti - if people simply wanted reliable jobs, there are plenty of solar systems that offer that. Something like the American Dream, but in space.

Otherwise something should be done, I think. It's something I've noticed for a long time, but it seems any reconciliation of this prime contradiction is pushed back against - but the status quo is really weird and shouldn't be popular either.

[Chada1]

So long as our future robotic overlords (Borgs) exist, we will always be a Utopian setting. 🤖

[Alberyk]

I agree with the station part. That is why I think living on a ship will help with this. Having a medbay, bar, kitchen and etc makes more sense when you essentially live in your workplace instead of just being something you commute to.

[Chada1]

Like, excluding my joking response, I've never liked Aurora trying to be a dystopic setting, it's fine to have dark elements, but it's not fun to have a setting where everything is dark -- People need good elements to relate to the setting, and to suspend their disbelief on it.

In this sense, I've always had an issue with people making the news ALL serious, some joking and fun news articles are fine, we see stuff like those all the time IRL.

Hecc, having our own company do something GOOD for a change would've been nice, but I'm just hoping we are ditching NT for a multi-corporate ship

Edited December 29, 2021 by Chada1

[Caelphon]

I would not equate what we see on the Aurora as what occurs everywhere. The Aurora is a very small segment of a much larger setting. Also regarding the notion of free healthcare: I do not think it exists, and likely is in the form of a fund paid by the employee with each wage. It deducts 2% of the wage and goes to a fund, which then pays for surgeries and whatever else. This fund has a limit, and when it reaches that limit said employee must pay out of their pocket for any additional medical fees throughout the year. That's how I see it. Tentatively, I think thats the way it should be until I can put it on the wiki. 

[ImmortalRedshirt]

37 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

Something like the American Dream, but in space.

There's something in this statement that got me to think about some things, and then I remembered that there is a historical precedent for this situation! After the American Civil War, there was a period of time known as the Gilded Age that was marked by a renewed influx of immigrants arriving with the expectation of accumulating wealth in this new land. The truth was that country had become a corporate-dominated hellscape and many that arrived barely made enough to get by, or worse(The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is a pretty good story that dramatizes the common issues of the time to the absolute bleakest extent.)

So does our illusion of the Biesellite Dream have to be the exact same? Absolutely not. Much of what contributed to the conditions of the time boils down to unsafe environments that have, thankfully, been much better handled. Of course, other things have been added in the time since that age, such as the expansion of media into unprecedented forms, dependence on rapidly dwindling resources, and that's not even getting into what the world of 2463 holds! Throughout all those centuries, the thing that's held true, the same thing that fuels the more dystopian aspects of the setting is the corporate desire for greater wealth and power.

As Chada said, having some spark of good in the setting is what helps people get interested in the setting. Even if I do think leaning into dystopia is what helps drive more nuanced conflicts, the essential thing that should not be forgotten is that the setting must allow the characters to enact change on a small scale. It's in the defeats and victories, the friends and enemies, the happy endings and harsh realities, that help flesh out our characters and give them reason to exist and keep going, even in a world where those above you couldn't care less. Fortunately, this seems to be the current direction.

[CampinKiller]

re: The accountability portion and workplace safety, I feel that's justified by the fact that it's much less expensive to continue to have the same workers as opposed to constantly hire new employees because of abuse, death, etc.

[Marlon P.]

14 minutes ago, CampinKiller said:

re: The accountability portion and workplace safety, I feel that's justified by the fact that it's much less expensive to continue to have the same workers as opposed to constantly hire new employees because of abuse, death, etc.

Two of our main played races (tajara, vaurca) have explicit mentions as being a cheap and disposable workforce for NT in Tau Ceti, as the reason for their high numbers here. Corporations also cut costs on safety all the time IRL because it's cheaper to replace dead and dying workers. That is why we still see in the news about people dropping dead at Amazon because corporate wanted them to work even with a tornado tearing up the warehouse, and why companies in the US lobby so hard to cut safety regulations.

There has to either be a workers safety/rights movement annoying enough to force NT into concessions or some entity forces them to do it.

1 hour ago, Caelphon said:

It deducts 2% of the wage and goes to a fund, which then pays for surgeries and whatever else. This fund has a limit, and when it reaches that limit said employee must pay out of their pocket for any additional medical fees throughout the year. That's how I see it. Tentatively, I think thats the way it should be until I can put it on the wiki. 

Good idea if going dystopic. Would it impact people's characters?

Edited December 29, 2021 by Marlon P.

[geeves]

having the setting be dark but the gameplay be alright-ish is just to not make players depressed. if everything was doom and gloom all the time, it wouldn't be fun to play

[KingOfThePing]

While I agree with both sides here, let's not forget that the Aurora is (believe it or not) a kind of elitist-ish workplace. Where the smart and brightest (again, hard to believe sometimes I know) work. So it would make sense that it has better conditions than the bieselitte sweatshop around the corner. 

[Zelmana]

My 00.02, the lore is Anarcho capitalist in many ways, not just freebase capitalism.


Given the fact that everyone and their mother smokes a pack or two a shift is reflective of the dystopia. More dystopian is always preferred.
Of course with the NBT this wouldn't be much of an issue anymore as things will be a hyper-local economy. 

I could picture having to swipe your ID to charge for the shuttle on the way out being a thing, however.

[TrainTN]

17 hours ago, KingOfThePing said:

While I agree with both sides here, let's not forget that the Aurora is (believe it or not) a kind of elitist-ish workplace. Where the smart and brightest (again, hard to believe sometimes I know) work. So it would make sense that it has better conditions than the bieselitte sweatshop around the corner. 

Yes, it's my personal view that the quality of the Medbay is justified by the presence of the Science Department. Replacing miners and security guards is easy, but replacing scientists, not so much. This is a mining and research station and the research is, at least in-universe, very important and worth expenditures to maintain.

As for the setting, I see it as a partial dystopia, but I see it as mostly an exaggeration of modern-day problems taken to a much broader scope. Inept and corrupt governments, corporations recklessly chasing profits at the expense of lives and environments, class struggles, worker exploitation, amoral science, etc. etc. The setting just dresses it up in futuristic sci-fi. It's all stuff that already exists, it's just bigger, but at the end of the day, people can still have normal and decent lives in normal and decent places. A setting that is completely good is unrealistic, but so is a setting that is completely bad.

[Boggle08]

As a whole, I don't think we are totally a dystopia.  It depends on where you go, and how it's written. Having a pluralistic tone for the setting gives players and contributors more freedom and flexibility when it comes to writing locations and designing characters. Declaring a set tone on the entire setting is incorrect given what we already have here. I would say it goes as far as to narrow creative vision. Personally, I think the lore as a whole manifests a "realistic", grey tone.

There's a divide in the priorities of the community as to why they come to the aurora, and how they design their characters. One camp wishes for conflict: within their characters, interpersonally, and against the setting. The other wants an innocuous social game. The tone of the immediate setting is a massive concession to the latter. It feels less like an ugly corporate exploitation machine, and more like a cross between a department store and a liberal white collar corporate environment.

As Alberyk said, the ship setting will fix a lot of this. The amenities on the new ship will be a reasonable concession for the kind of deep exploration we'll be doing, rather than a luxury. As for the employee friendly environment, that can easily be modified with alterations in station procedure and contextual information, like what Caelphon described with the healthcare plan. 

For the tone of the SCC and corporations themselves, We constantly see them using soft power and positive incentives to placate their holdings on Biesel, and other locations in the Spur. It might be worth putting to paper the idea that the SCC and it's affiliates are using a particular doctrine of benevolence or soft power manipulation in order to consolidate some of their holdings. Not out of good will, but to guarantee loyalty and control. This would justify a lighter tone for the immediate setting whilst preserving the corporations' amoral disposition. Make people question if they should really feel comfortable.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Boggle08

[Marlon P.]

2 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

As a whole, I don't think we are totally a dystopia.  It depends on where you go, and how it's written. Having a pluralistic tone for the setting gives players and contributors more freedom and flexibility when it comes to writing locations and designing characters. Declaring a set tone on the entire setting is incorrect given what we already have here. I would say it goes as far as to narrow creative vision. Personally, I think the lore as a whole manifests a "realistic", grey tone.

There's a divide in the priorities of the community as to why they come to the aurora, and how they design their characters. One camp wishes for conflict: within their characters, interpersonally, and against the setting. The other wants an innocuous social game. The tone of the immediate setting is a massive concession to the latter. It feels less like an ugly corporate exploitation machine, and more like a cross between a department store and a liberal white collar corporate environment.

As Alberyk said, the ship setting will fix a lot of this. The amenities on the new ship will be a reasonable concession for the kind of deep exploration we'll be doing, rather than a luxury. As for the employee friendly environment, that can easily be modified with alterations in station procedure and contextual information, like what Caelphon described with the healthcare plan. 

For the tone of the SCC and corporations themselves, We constantly see them using soft power and positive incentives to placate their holdings on Biesel, and other locations in the Spur. It might be worth putting to paper the idea that the SCC and it's affiliates are using a particular doctrine of benevolence or soft power manipulation in order to consolidate some of their holdings. Not out of good will, but to guarantee loyalty and control. This would justify a lighter tone for the immediate setting whilst preserving the corporations' amoral disposition. Make people question if they should really feel comfortable.

Good post.

It sounds like you're saying that middle ground is more or less met right now?