DISCO ELYSIUM 2

I’m just asking them to redirect a tiny bit of that anger they feel for Kurvitz towards the intrigues that made sure that we might never get a worthy successor to Disco Elysium; the game that singlehandedly convinced me that our culture industry might once in a blue moon produce something that is actually… good. And not just neuron activation 10-hour gaming session slash escapism good, but genuinely valuable. It saddens me that this vast world of Elysium that has been nurtured in its creator’s heads for two decades was only able to take its first infant steps before it may now be shut down for good.

Disco Elysium, Kurvitz wrote, was always meant to be just a small introduction to the world of Elysium, and I fear that we will not see it expanded ever again, or that its successor will be made under people who legally own Disco Elysium, but not the grand, cosmic scale and the thousand-year long history of Elysium that, for most of its parts, still only exists in its creators’ heads.

Disco Elysium worked because they made sure that this vast world spirit was expressed in all of the game’s tiniest parts. And that is why Disco Elysium 2 just won’t work without Robert, Helen and Rostov – because they are major part of the iceberg whose tiny tip we see in Disco Elysium. The remaining ZA/UM employees, I am sure, are amazing, talented people, but even exceptional writers like Argo Tuulik can’t make up for the fact that Disco Elysium’s philosophy, history and, most exceptionally, its political rigor and willingness to offend will definitely not make a comeback in the polished commodity that this kind of successor would be.

“So far, we’ve only managed to show you a tiny, insignificant corner of it: the district of Martinaise in Revachol West, on Insulinde. I cannot begin to tell you how introductory it is. (“Disco Elysium” means “I learn Elysium”). It’s small. A matchbox world. It’s all we had money for.”

THE BLIND SPOT

I want to make one more point before we wrap it up, maybe the most essential of them all. I already talked about the asymmetry of having such a strong and emotional moral verdict about Kurvitz’ person but nothing of the sort for Kompus and his allies. But why exactly isn’t there one? Let’s listen to the video’s conclusion about the legal situation:

“Don't get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate that this is something that needs to go through the courts, and if anything illegal happened, as Robert and the others believe, that has to be made right. Has Disco Elysium been stolen from some of its original creators? That's a question we are hopefully gonna see answered in court at some point. Although, even then, I do worry there'll never be an entirely satisfying answer. If something illegal is proven to have happened, that's one thing. But what if that's not the case? How are you meant to feel if no laws were broken, but Kurvitz and Rostov didn't fully understand what they'd given away?”

Before I try to answer this question, I want to emphasize that there shouldn’t be a chance for what Kompus & co. did to be legal. Kompus claims that Kurvitz approved of the sale of shares and the creation of the IP company, which would make it legal. However, when Chris asks Kurvitz, he denies giving his approval and having had any knowledge of it at all. And when he asked Kompus for proof - an email, a letter, any paper trail, anything, he says that there is none.

So why does Chris make it sound like there’s a good chance of all of this being completely fine and legal? Why does the video end in such an open way where there’s no conclusion except, of course, Kurvitz being a jerk? But, let’s get back to what Chris proposes as a conclusion.

“Has Disco Elysium been stolen from some of its original creators? That's a question we are hopefully gonna see answered in court atsome point. Although, even then, I do worry there'll never be an entirely satisfying answer. If something illegal is proven to have happened, that's one thing. But what if that's not the case? How are you meant to feel if no laws were broken, but Kurvitz and Rostov didn't fully understand what they'd given away?”

Yes, what then? What if the court decides that all of this was legal? Are Kurvitz and co. to blame then, because they were a bunch of brokies who didn’t have the capital to fund their own game and thus predictably fell prey to the schemes of the economically powerful? Who now didn’t steal but legally claimed their life’s work? Would that outcome just be a very normal, politically neutral mishap without any need for further scrutiny or even moral deliberation?

All of this is really funny to me. People Make Games regularly takes strong stands against classism in the videogame industry ("Videogames have a class problem") but then seems to just brush off the clearly class-based conflict at the core of this situation.

Because what do they think creates classism if not the sheer right of economic power, in all of its court-sanctioned legality? Why do they so willingly hand over the responsibility to judge the situation to the mechanisms that created it in the first place? Do they say that it is okay to claim an artist’s lifework if you have capital and the ability to manoeuvre it through the enigmatic loopholes of financial regulations? These structures are exactly what facilitates class power, or, if you prefer: the right of the economically strong.

Ilmar Kompus can be so relaxed and smug because he knows that what he did might actually lie perfectly within the rules of the game, or at least within its equally legal grey zones. And somehow for PMG, this potential legality seems to relieve him of any personal accusations like the ones they attacked Kurvitz with. Instead, the video proposes that the courts will judge this case and that if anything illegal happened, it will be made right.

As if their whole channel didn’t revolve around scandals in the videogame industry that were in most cases perfectly legal but still outrageous. It would have been insulting to end these videos with “well, the courts will figure it out”, because they clearly didn’t. Why did they always take a stand there, but only now delegate their ability to judge to the system that enabled figures like Kompus and Haavel in the first place? If you surrender your moral verdict to the laws of financial capital, you are simply on the side of capital, on the side of the economic strongmen who bully the people who make games.

LUCKY FIND

I had basically finished this video when I stumbled across a blog post by Martin Luiga, another ZA/UM founding member and temporary ZA/UM employee. And despite him admitting that he is not on good terms with Kurvitz, he writes… this:

"In short, Robert was fired from the company whose heart and seed he was due to claims of ‘creating a toxic workplace environment’. Having worked at the company remotely in the summer of 2021 I can say things were truly not all right at the company, but I would say it is much more plausible that the toxic environment was created instead by the upper management and then blamed on Robert. I have seen a similar situation before. The idealist workaholic does not pay attention to people’s psychological needs much as the conspirator does and thus, he will at most times be outplayed. It reminds me of the Stalin and Trotsky situation, in which Trotsky felt relatively safe due to his high intellect, hard-working personality and being loved by the people, while not paying attention to the relations with other Communist Party members, while Stalin knew that those were the most important relations. Of course we also know that these same Communist Party members paid very dearly for falling prey to that smooth criminal. The price that Trotsky had to pay was of course the Abel’s price. He had something better than the others. Namely, talent and love. This is ultimately why he had his head bashed in. What happened to Robert was what happens to most talented people that get any recognition in our age — he got manipulated by psychopaths. Robert trusted the people that got him fired completely before they got him fired. He thought they were his friends."

OUTRO

If you can bear another deep dive, I highly recommend this video by Stushi who had very similar qualms with the PMG investigation and goes into it in more length than I did. I linked it in the video description. There you can also find Kurvitz’ Outro, the Mark Fisher essay and Luiga’s Blog post. Another link obviously leads you to the PMG documentary.

I want to end this video by emphasizing that I am still a huge fan of their channel. They do amazing work and I think I watched every single one of their videos. Their Disco Elysium documentary too is, as I said, an enormous achievement of investigative videogame journalism and you should definitely watch it. And even though I disagree with the conclusion of that particular video, I still genuinely hope that they win the Creator Award and that next time, they will be as hard on criminals and the structures that enable them as they are on the People who Make Games.

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Note that the video is deliberately and openly biased and that you are very free to disagree. In any case, let me know what you think! If you want to vote for PMG on the Games Awards Discord, you can do it here: https://discord.gg/thegameawards