A Horror Game About Isolation Reminded Me Why I Left My Old Career Behind
Still Wakes the Deep is set on an oil rig. That used to be my job. But today, I'm a family man. But a lot of people on those rigs are family men, too.
I’m open to running—and paying for!—more pitches at Crossplay, even from those without a byline. I’m more interested in life experience than work experience. Drop me an email. -pk
Still Wakes the Deep is not a game to relax to. Set aboard a North Sea oil rig in the 70s, the story quickly enters Lovecraftian horror territory as the crew drill into something unknowable, instantly killing some crew members. Others are stretched into horrific distortions, who hold only enough of their former selves to carry out work tasks or hold old grudges.
My personal history meant this game struck me a bit differently. For a period in my early to mid-20s, I worked on a variety of rigs, mostly in the UK and Norwegian North Sea, but also in Ghana. I was poised to work on the first BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deep Horizon oil spill, before I left my former employer to pursue a masters.
But time has changed me, and I am now a father or two young girls and have transitioned totally away from the oil industry. But Still Wakes the Deep, fleshy monsters and all, transported me back to an old way of living, one that I came to realise I now never want to go back to.
Playing along with my wife has proven to be a revelatory experience for her, too. She had heard me talk about working on rigs, but to actually see the structures, the heavy pressurized doors, what the rooms look like, how the living quarters connect directly on to the drill platform—it was like visiting a small part of my past.
At least, until the cosmic horrors turn up. Even without the fleshy monstrosities, my wife was happy I no longer work offshore.
I spent years trying to get back into the industry following my masters, without ever quite making it. In the end, I had to accept it wasn’t going to happen and change careers. For a long time I regretted that. I’d spent time and energy building up experience, contacts and qualifications, including the aforementioned masters, which they were certainly not giving out for free.
Have you ever had to manually calculate seismics?
Still Wakes the Deep’s playable character is Cameron "Caz" McLeary, an electrician who has got himself in some kind of trouble with the police back on land. Rather than face the heat, he takes a job on an oil rig, following a suggestion from his best friend, who is also the cook for the rig.
This theme of running away underpins the narrative. Caz is constantly flashing back to his wife, lamenting his cowardice in committing a crime that could take him away from his young family, but then also running away to the rig. He also remembers happier times, when he and his wife were falling in love.
Rigs provide an escape for many people—mostly men—to escape the pressure of their onshore lives. You are working 12-hour shifts, but you also don’t have to deal with bills dropping through the letterbox, partners asking you to complete tasks, children looking for attention, or even cooking for yourself.
A rig is one of those rare environments that most people have heard of and can envisage but have zero lived experience of. You are provided with some amount of creature comforts, but it’s still a working environment and most companies will cut down on those comforts as much as possible. You’re there to work, not enjoy the view. Imagine working and living in a corporate office—but also you can’t leave unless you fancy a 50-meter drop into a freezing cold ocean.
There are TV rooms, for example, but they are split into smoking and now smoking, sometimes literally by a collapsible wall. The end result being that even the non-smoking room stinks of smoke. Pirated film and TV downloads and traded like candy. There’s also usually a gym, but the extent of it will vary greatly. The first rig I went on required you to walk across the helipad to get to the gym, meaning if a helicopter was landing, you were stranded until it left.
Some perks, though: Norwegian rigs always have a sauna, and ice cream is plentiful no matter where you are.
Still Wakes the Deep does an excellent job of recreating a UK sector rig, especially because most of them haven’t been updated since the 70s. Caz’s accommodations matched my experience entirely, except his version looked newer and cleaner.
I clearly remember one of my bosses telling me he had missed a friend's funeral due to offshore commitments. It was said almost with an air of pride: “This is what it takes to do this job.”
Today, though, I am a father. When I’ve been away on business for three days, I’ll come back and feel like something imperceptible has changed. I’ve missed some growth spurt that I can never get back. What would I miss if I went away for a month?
The money was good. I didn’t mention that you get paid a day rate, on top of your base pay, for every day you are offshore.
Yet, it would simply not be worth it. My wife repeatedly told me how relieved she was that I was not working offshore anymore. This was especially true, as I explained how lifeboats launch in an emergency, where your last line of escape was either jumping into the sea and hoping you weren’t folded into a ball by the velocity—or literally climbing down ladders on the legs of the rig.
These days, I don’t have anything to escape, and I have a lot to lose on land.
Ben Monroe-Lake is a Business Journalist and father or two unexpectedly ginger girls. Despite doing multiple degrees studying fossils he now rites about supply/demand dynamics while trying to pretend to still be good at Halo.