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Notes -
Who has been following the drama around Disco Elysium? Disco Elysium, of course, is the 2019 CRPG that has received numerous accolades for being the savior of Western computer role-playing gaming, the best game in a long time etc. I've played it through, and it deserves the accolades; many here have played it as well, and it is not surprising that a forum like this would have many aficionados for a game that basically consists of reading vast oodles of texts about one drunken failure cop's personal psychodramas and politics and a well-realized fictional somethingpunk setting, and so on.
The game was been made by ZA/UM, an Estonian developer / art collective, around a world created by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, and is quite obviously Estonian-influenced if one knows anything about Estonia (starting with the fact that Revachol, the city where the game happens, is very visually remiscient of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, once known as Reval).
What's the drama? According to Wikipedia:
How Kurvitz and Rostov explain it:
I've also seen suggestions that Kurvitz et al believe that Tütreke, Kender etc. are planning to compromise their vision specifically for upcoming Amazon Disco Elysium series, presumably so that the political (anti-capitalist - Kurvitz is a self-described communist, very much a rarity in Estonia) aspect of their work would be compromised.
What ZA/UM says:
More context from an Estonian Redditor
Perhaps it's not necessary to specifically mention all the ironic aspects involved in this, and if we indeed see Disco Elysium as an art project, it feels like a fitting capstone to the project, in a way.
The whole thing reminds me of Kanye West. Both West and Kurvitz are talented individuals and such talent is always very close to mental illness. I am sure Kanye's agents and producers would love to be able to exploit the brand of Kanye West without West himself getting in the way, but alas, you can't yet plug his albums into an AI and get it to make another one.
A more nebulous brand like "the world of Disco Elysium" is much more exploitable (see what the Mouse can do with the brands it owns). You can easily get rid of Kurvitz, Rostov and Luiga and just milk the existing lore. Who cares if the new game or TV series fails to capture the tone and the themes of the original work? We're going to visit the Pale (pointing_soyjaks.png)! Look, you can buy Disco Elysium merch! You won't believe the cameo we've set up for your viewing pleasure! We won't say it's Kim, but you know it's Kim, right, right?
And Kurvitz? Der Mohr hat seine Arbeit getan, der Mohr kann gehen. Unstable creative individuals are hard to work with, it's not a secret. When they start to get in the way they can always be labelled problematic or even toxic, and the label won't even be completely wrong.
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