In this post:
I “think out loud” on Lethal Company.
I don’t think I’ve talked a lot about the fact that I play video games quite a bit. To this day, I aspire to one day create a video game… but let’s get to the topic.
Last October, the game Lethal Company was released in early access. The product of a solo game developer, Lethal Company is a cooperative multiplayer experience where the emphasis truly is on the fun of a game.
In this game, you and your teammates are contract employees of the mysterious Company, charged to travel to mostly abandoned moons of some extragalactic system and retrieve seemingly useless scrap materials.
The “mostly abandoned” qualifier for the moons naturally alludes to dangerous entities that make your team’s ventures less predictable. What might have been an uneventful retrieval of 700 credits’ worth of scrap may become a hasty escape with an abandoned rubber ducky worth 4 credits because one of your teammates fell into a dark hole and your other teammates ran into unfriendly, gigantic, eyeless dogs.
Every three days, your team will sell your collected scrap to The Company which requires that you reach a specified quota at threat of being fired. Every time your team successfully meets quota, the quota rises for the next three days.
Eventually, your team will fail to meet quota and your team will be fired.
…So, this is a blog generally focused on leadership – what’s the point of this?
It’s just introductory framing!
What nuggets of perspective might be valuable to take away from playing Lethal Company?
Knowledge is critical, but Uncertainty is inevitable.
My friends introduced me to Lethal Company in January and it near-instantly became our regular Saturday activity of choice. But, starting out, I had no understanding of what to expect besides a horror game with random stage-generation elements.
Every moon consists of an exterior playable area (usually referred to as Outside) and an interior playable area (usually referred to as Facility or Mansion). Each of the 8 unique moons has a non-random exterior: Every time you land on the moon March – which is not a contributing factor to this month’s post, by the way – its surface will look the same on the outside with minor differences, such as random boulders or random weather effects. The interior section, however, will vary on every landing.
As a new player, it took me a few nights to consistently know how to get from the ship (which always lands on the same spot per moon) to the main entrance of the interior section. Once I understood how to go from ship to Facility, I started needing to understand how to deal with the entities.
Entities are how monsters in Lethal Company are referenced. They include the likes of the virtually harmless but initially intimidating Spore Lizard and the extremely dangerous Jester abomination.
When first encountering a Spore Lizard, I ran away, assuming from its appearance that it would want to bite or otherwise maim my character. All they do is hiss at you, maybe deal 5% of your health as damage if you get too close, and most likely just expel a pink cloud to try to scare you off. The only way you die directly to a Spore Lizard is if you stand too close to it for too long.
The Jester seems harmless enough at first, albeit certainly a creature from some obscene nightmare. It looks like a jack-in-the-box with two humanoid legs and a humanoid arm. The Jester will follow around the first player it finds for a bit. After aggressively following this player around for a bit less than a minute, the arm begins to turn the large crank on one of its panels, playing Pop Goes The Weasel from who knows where. All players within the facility must escape the Facility before the song ends, or else. I’d recommend you play the game or reluctantly suggest Youtube to find out what else.
While it helped to learn that these Entities behave as described above – “I can safely ignore the Spore Lizard and continue collecting scrap for The Company!” or “I better alert my team that there is a Jester here so we can start getting out of here…” – the situations these Entities are encountered in might not be conducive to a straightforward plan of action.
My teams have had hilarious deaths because a desperate Spore Lizard expelled an obscuring pink cloud that prevented us from seeing a land mine and killing two of our essential employees. Jesters have caused nervous players to jump into unseen holes in the Facility or blocked players into inescapable rooms (players cannot simply walk through each other or Entities).
This leads me to my next point:
Communication is Key, even when it isn’t Perfect.
One of the roles available to a team of Employees is that of Terminal Overwatch.
Using the ship’s computer terminal, one player can toggle through a bird’s eye view of and to some distance around each player whether that target player is Outside or Inside. They are also able to see items and enemies represented as triangles and dots on the radar.
After earning enough credits, teams can also access Walkie Talkies, which enable single-frequency radio communication, and a Signal Translator, which allows a Terminal user to send a message to all surviving team members.
Naturally, the game presents these gifts with limitations: Walkie Talkies consume a battery charge and require one of an employee’s four inventory slots, reducing their capacity for precious scrap. The Signal Translator only allows for 9-character messages to be sent while taking a substantial amount of time to even use.
Furthermore, Walkie Talkies cannot be used if a player is holding a two-handed item, and drafting and sending messages on the Terminal can be deadly if an Eyeless Dog hears it and decides to investigate the noise.
The primary issue here is that messages must be kept short and, especially since the Signal Translator is slow to deliver messages, quick – both to still be relevant in a game where milliseconds can change the dynamic of a situation, and just in case the noise from typing on the Terminal attracts Eyeless Dogs.
Finally,
Roles and Responsibilities matter.
I play with two different groups regularly. One of them is much better at video games in general and both recognize and enjoy the importance of developing specific skills when it comes to maximizing output for The Company. The other group tends to prefer a more laid back approach to the game – which is perfectly okay – but it’s an excellent demonstration of a team without standards.
There have been many instances where I bring a Shovel (our singular purchasable melee deterrent against Entities) into the Facility and require another player (with a flashlight!) to follow along with a Flashlight with the expectation that I will likely kill any lurking Entities with assistance from the other player’s flashlight, only for that player to run away in fear.
My first group tends to leave someone on the Terminal just in case Overwatch is necessary. The second group has finally begun to understand that someone needs to stay on the Terminal, but they lack the requisite knowledge to be very effective Overwatch.
The first group has a logistician that manages support equipment between runs, and a clear director who makes definite decisions when one must be made. The second group has a lot of passive actors (which often leads me to just suggesting a path forward).
The first group tends to have much more consistent success reaching higher quotas, and it does so more quickly (though we all must be fired, one day…).
I’m sure I could pull out a lot more mini-nuggets from Lethal Company if I took the time, but I think three is a solid number to share.
Any experience – fun, arduous, or anything – can be a source of perspective-defining opportunity, whether reading a book, watching a show, living through the struggles, surprises, and joys of life, or playing sports or video games.
What are you consuming, and what are you getting out of it?
72 Airman's Writings 