Here is a rant about the general world building for the game. These are my general rules/guidelines for the game’s world – there has to be some internal logic and it’s all unspoken in my head right now but there is this saying where if it’s subtle to the artist its absolutely obtuse to the viewer so I need to learn to be a lot more explicit (I am scared).

• All colonies fail. (I have more to say about this. later though.)
• Everything material is relatively standardized & modular (this dystopian future is obviously all about consumption and efficiency (not like real life lol), so everything is probably made on some asteroid and shipped out flat-packed. Even if manufacturing is decentralized chances are it will all be the same anyway to be efficient with design/engineering (again not like real life lol).)
• Faster than light travel is possible (to keep things easy for me), but there are still time dilation issues between planets because of different orbits.
• Instantaneous long-distance communication is not possible (this is a huge thing for me because I have put down books when they don’t have instantaneous communication, because the concept of an “ansible” made by Ursula K. LeGuin in 1966 is a pretty widely accepted fictional technology used in SF and makes enough real world sense in my opinion (quantum entanglement), but to make this story (as I imagine it now) make sense there need to be some communication barriers).
• There might be other things I’ll have to add them later but these are what I can think of right now.

My whole art practice for the last few years has been looking at science fiction and what in my opinion are overly optimistic views of the future. Overly optimistic in the way that some people just project the way things are now into the future and assume it’s going to be great, or look at the way things are now and don’t see the potential repercussions in the future – like time travel stories warning of the danger of changing even small things in the past, we should consider how our actions in the present will change the future.

I got to this narrative for Interstellar Illusions: The Game by thinking through the concept of tourism and leisure as it is now. (I have a lot more to say about this too but probably not now).

Billionaires are very interested in space and want to go there, making companies to visit space. Billionaires require the exploitation of other people to continue to exist. If people are able visit other planets who will be able to go? Billionaires who can pay for it yes, but there are jobs that need to be done that Billionaires are obviously not willing to do (because they are currently not doing them). So who will do those jobs? (literally every job, like do Billionaires actually produce anything through their own labour?) Will robots do the jobs? Will people do the jobs? If people, then how will they get to space/other planets? Will they enter lotteries or apply for jobs or get chosen somehow? Will they have to pay as much as the Billionaires? (considering how much it costs now maybe it will get cheaper the way air travel developed or maybe it will stay expensive to maximise profit?) If they have to pay as much as Billionaires will they have to take out a loan? Enter indentured servitude? Serfdom? If space travel is cheap with Billionaires still be interested in doing it? Would everyone do it?

The other part of the question has to do with environment/climate. Will travel to other planets be ecologically responsible or will it just be the opportunity to burn through and consume more planets after Earth, or instead of Earth? Will tourism be like it is on earth where entire compounds are essentially shipped from one place to another and built and managed with minimal interaction with the local economy, people or environment?

I have a tendency to make art that leaves people kind of unsettled in one way or another, and I think that’s fine (good even). But I do actually have an optimistic view of the future so for this story I am going to try to actually offer solutions to these problems – fictionally, I can’t figure out what would actually work. To provide possible solutions I’ve decided to include aliens. I have been pretty against ailens in my SF because if they are real, I think either they will be completely out of the realm of our understanding, or they’re bacteria. For this narrative I’ve decided to try aliens out but there are some rules for them too.

• No “saving” with miraculous solutions.
• They have to treat humans with respect (no alien overlords).
• They have their own defined borders/boundaries (no invasions).
• They are not perfect. (Some of the things they might do are bad or unfair or rude, they are not gods or angels or whatever).
• There will be no physical representation. (no Greys or anything like that, I don’t want to design a race of creature, and not only because I am not good at rendering things other than architecture).

This was such a rant but it’s my thought processes unfortunately.