Songfacts®:

• This song was recorded by Bring Me The Horizon for Kojima Productions PlayStation 4 video game Death Stranding. Ludens is the name of Kojima Productions' company icon and mascot.
• Inspired by Kojima's innovative approach to gaming, Sykes calls here for "a new leader" to tackle the issues of the world. A pressing dilemma he wants the "new Luden" to resolve is environmental degradation.
  
  Do you know why the flowers never bloom?
  Will you retry or let the pain resume?
  I need a new leader, we need a new Luden
  
  And, the decline in person-to-person communication created by social media.
  
  Form a connection when we can't even shake hands?
  You're like the phantom greeting me
• Bring Me The Horizon were touring Eastern Europe when they got a call from their manager saying Kojima wanted a song for the Death Stranding: Timefall soundtrack. There was one problem: The developers needed the track in just five days, and the band was on the road. Despite the time constraint, vocalist Oli Sykes and keyboardist Jordan Fish still wanted to do it; they were able to grind out the tune by setting up a studio in hotel rooms between gigs each day.
  
  While Fish created the instrumentation with his laptop, Sykes penned the lyrics. The singer told NME he wanted it to be connected to the video game, but not directly. Sykes started looking into Hideo Kojima's whole ethos, and after loading up his website it announced, "We're not homosapiens, we're homoludens."
  
  "It's Latin for 'player' and it's all about how he believes that our creativity is our greatest asset and the biggest hope for mankind," Sykes explained. "It said something along the lines that even if all the flowers die and the world is at an endpoint, there would still be hope if there were humans on the planet because we find ways to adapt."
• The futuristic video flips between a fervent performance from Bring Me The Horizon and clips from Death Stranding, which stars Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon).