The disco that once sounded in the ragged whirling hotel will continue to sound.
On October 1st, Martin Luiga, the former screenwriter of “Disco Elysium”, suddenly announced the dissolution of ZA/UM.
This “ZA/UM” is not the ZA/UM studio that developed “Disco Elysium”, but a cultural group established earlier than the studio, and the brand development of “Disco Elysium” will continue.
But for players who love the game, it doesn’t make a difference. Because the game’s lead designer and screenwriter Robert Kurvitz, art director Aleksander Rostov and screenwriter Helen Hindpere all “involuntarily” left at the end of last year and no longer participate in the development of the sequel.
This result quickly caused a lot of discussion among players. Some people are sad about the bleak prospects of the sequel, some people complain about the injustice suffered by several main creators, and some people say that this is a very “disco Elysium” ending: a game that criticized capitalism, but also failed to escape losing to capital. the doomed ending.
As Joyce, the character in the game, said, even if it criticizes capital itself, capital can make these criticisms a part of itself. It seems that the main creators of “Disco Elysium” have ended their songs, as if they were doomed from the very beginning.
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At the 2019 TGA awards ceremony, the creators of Disco Elysium, who won the best independent game of the year, thanked Marx and Engels for their ideas in high spirits.
But a few years ago, few of them would have expected the subsequent success.
Screenwriter Helen Hindpere speaking at the TGA Awards
Before it developed into a game studio, the cultural group ZA/UM was just a group of like-minded young artists and writers, and the group had always maintained a loose state of semi-official operations. They create music, paintings, and books together, play Dungeons and Dragons when they have nothing to do, and rarely think about “making money” as far away from them.
Before it became the game “Disco Elysium”, the world that was facing the threat of being swallowed by the gray domain at that moment did not show much potential to be liked.
The “Elysium” of “Disco Elysium” comes from the world that Robert Kurvitz, the former chief designer who has left, imagined in his mind many years ago. In this different world inspired by the French Revolution, he replaced the dwarves and elves in traditional fantasy with ordinary people in suits and hats; the brilliant collision of swords and magic was replaced by a silent confrontation of various consciousnesses and concepts .
Except for a few friends around, no one is optimistic about this alternative fantasy world where the lead singer of the rock band is always chattering. But with the encouragement and help of his friends, he still spent 5 years writing this world into the novel “Sacred and Terrible Air”, which is also the blueprint for the adaptation and construction of the world of “Disco Elysium”.
Even with preparations for wrestling in advance, the dismal 1,000 sales hit Kurvitz hard. Just when he was alcoholic and depressed because of his works, it was the like-minded friends around him who encouraged him and gave him an idea he had never had before – making it into a video game.
When he pitched the idea to Aleksander Rostov, the former art director of Disco Elysium, he looked him in the eye and said, “We failed at a lot of things, let’s fail at making video games too. .”
Only this time, they succeeded.
“Disco Elysium” has not only become a big winner in the two years in terms of word of mouth and awards, but the sales of the game are always combined with the word “far exceeding expectations”, and it has become an excellent game representative with both fame and fortune.
But the climax of the atmosphere does not mean the end of the story, and the unexpected success of the game may just be the beginning of a turning point.
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After the success of Disco Elysium, ZA/UM, which has established a game studio, naturally started a series of new actions.
They quickly translated the otherwise difficult text into more languages and brought it to more players. In order to meet the different needs of players, they have launched a director’s cut version containing more content, and a physical collector’s edition for players to collect.
The official also opened an online peripheral store, selling clothes, cups and other game peripherals. To meet demand as the studio grew, they began recruiting staff from additional locations around the world.
Although there has been no news of a sequel to “Disco Elysium”, in their new job posting in July this year, they can already see that they have a lead environment artist position “understanding science fiction, architecture or urban planning”. A semi-official sci-fi themed new work is also in line with the “broader Elysium” picture mentioned by the main creator Helen in the interview.
The good news for the Disco Elysium franchise continues, and everything seems to be thriving. But at the same time, ZA/UM studio also has a lot of commercialization initiatives, which has attracted criticism from players.
In addition to the usual merchandising, they have also opened a unique art store in London. Many of them are very “Disco Elysium” style, but the price of thousands of yuan makes many players complain that they can’t afford it.
Foreign media Variety also reported that “Disco Elysium” has sold the film and television adaptation rights of the game, and will cooperate with dj2 Entertainment to develop a series based on the game content. But in addition to some players who are optimistic and looking forward to it, there are also many people who worry that the adaptation of the series will overturn, or complain that the game is not suitable for film and television adaptation at all.
In the most recent recruitment, players also found that one of the positions was “Sales and Monetization Specialist”, which is a position that often appears in the development team of card-drawing mobile games or service-based games. It sounds similar to Disco Elysium is completely irrelevant. So players can’t help but associate it with NFT and other things, and worry about whether ZA/UM studio will also go the wrong way.
The post is still listed on their website
But in general, these voices only stop at worries and complaints. They don’t have much skepticism about the rise of an indie game studio.
Until Martin Luiga’s announcement earlier this month, the “involuntary” departure of the three core creators was announced.
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This disbandment announcement came very suddenly in the eyes of the players.
Before that, apart from some netizens who found that Helen had closed the official account of the game, and that Kurvitz could not be found on the board list of ZA/UM Studio, there were not many signs that several core creators had left the studio. .
Therefore, in the first time, in addition to venting their dissatisfaction and regret over this announcement, players may only be able to find various clues in the past to speculate the possible truth. Among them, the version of “Disco Elysium, which criticized capital, finally lost to capital” is undoubtedly the most talked about by netizens.
In an interview with foreign media Gamepressure on October 6, more additions from Martin Luiga seemed to confirm this.
He mentioned that although he couldn’t reveal much because of a possible nondisclosure agreement, he determined that the three creators were fired on “false premises” and that the whole thing was very painful for them and those around them.
3 people may continue to make games in the future, he does not know more about it. As for the sequel to “Disco Elysium”, he doesn’t think the current ZA/UM studio can do it, because he is not sure how many people are still involved in the production of the previous work in the current studio.
Group photo of cultural group ZA/UM
Now the actual powers of the ZA/UM studio are what he calls kleptomaniacs: instead of stealing a lollipop, they painstakingly manipulate dozens of people and then take what belongs to them. It was also mentioned that among the two current helmsmen, one of them had a criminal record of economic fraud, so he had to make it clear.
Under the reporter’s questioning, he admitted that the disbandment announcement he issued could only serve as a symbolic meaning to the loosely structured cultural association ZA/UM. The reason for this is that he wants to let fans know the truth of the matter.
However, most of the inside story that pieced together the “truth” came from Martin Luiga alone. Neither ZA/UM studio nor the three main creators who have left for nearly a year have made any further responses except to confirm the fact of their departure.
Rostov made a joint confirmation on Twitter on behalf of the 3
Martin Luiga has been emphasizing the damage of capital to the studio in the interview, just as directly as “Ward No. 9 of Tallinn Psychiatric Hospital” in the address of his announcement.
He said that if there was one comforting fact to be found in this, it was that Kurvitz was like predicting how it all played out. The phrase in the game “capital has the ability to absorb all criticism, even those who ‘criticize’ capital, will in turn ‘strengthen’ capital” is extremely applicable to the present.
But the ending of “Disco Elysium” beside Capital is really doomed from the beginning?
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At least at the beginning of this story, the answer is no.
In Martin Luiga’s interview, even though he always emphasizes the capitalist attributes of the current ZA/UM studio leaders. But he admits that the project would never have happened without the commercialization of the studio and the insight of the original investors.
In his version of the story, Kaur Kender, who represents the capital, is not full of copper smell at the beginning, at least.
One of the current leaders of the ZA/UM studio and a former member of the cultural community ZA/UM, he and Kurvitz met 10 years before the game “Disco Elysium” was launched. In addition to being the executive of a large company, he was once a well-known writer in Estonia.
His novel “Independence Day” is well-known in Estonia. In 2017, his new book “Untitled 12” received allegations of “child pornography” in the mainstream media, and he also received the solidarity of many in the Estonian literary community. In the media reports at that time, his image was still a writer who dared to fight against mainstream persecution and dared to criticize society.
As mentioned in the previous story, the friend who encouraged and financed the release of Kurvitz’s novel “Sacred and Terrible Air” was him; he was also the friend who proposed to adapt the novel into a game; He was the one who raised the funds and sold his sports car.
His relationship with several main creators was undoubtedly like-minded at the time. We can make music, write novels, and enjoy drinking together all night, instead of being separated into two ends of a disbandment announcement.
Kurvitz once said of Kaur in an interview: “Once we got Kaur on board, everything really started to flow because Kaur has superpowers in capitalism. He understands money.”
At that time, while criticizing capital, the creators also opened up a possibly not spacious embrace to it. But now, something has changed.
This change may be that the capital swallowed up the ZA/UM studio before the gray area swallowed the Elysium. Or maybe after having tasted the idealism full of momentum, they also want to take a ride called capital. Or the fact is simpler than we imagined, just because of the conflict of creative ideas, after embracing the business operation, the two groups chose different paths.
Before getting clearer facts from the mouths of several parties, the outside world has no way of knowing what has changed. All we can see is the disappointment of players who are looking forward to the sequel, the death threats from irrational fans to the remaining employees of ZA/UM studio, and more speculation about the broken truth.
Among the remaining employees, there are still many people who stay in ZA/UM
But we also all know that there are still many things that will not change.
Just like every “failure” that the ZA/UM members have been prepared for, the music, paintings and novels they create at will, like Disco Elysium, freeze themselves. In addition to the Isulindi stick insects waiting for players at the end, there are many others who have been watching us.
At least before the end of the song, a disco sounded in the ragged whirling hotel, and it will continue to sound.
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