Disco Elysium and the need for collective action
jacobin.com
jacobin.com
I highly recommend this documentary about the whole tale from People Make Games, it’s 2 and half hours long and I enjoyed every minute of it despite not really even being into video games!
These are two completely distinct stories (IMO). The only way they connect is that the CEO who wrested financial control of the IP uses the difficult personalities of the creatives to justify firing them. So the conflation is: was it legally and morally justified to gain majority control over the IP vs. was it legally and morally justified to fire a difficult employee. It is a strange/absurd way to find some kind of journalistic balance and it just felt extremely amateur to me.
Kurvitz and Rostov legitimately sound like a nightmare to work for, as is often the case with single-minded and purpose driven creatives. They probably should not be in management positions. But there is almost no way anyone could say they didn't get finessed out of ownership of their creative work. I have no idea if it was legal but I do not see anyway to see it as moral, no matter how bad of a manger they were.
Whether or not creative artists should unionize (I'm generally anti-union but the game industry working conditions seemed so screwed up I think it's needed) this wasn't a dispute between employees and owners, but a dispute between two owners. One of which was a sophisticated unethical CEO and the unsophisticated creatives owners who built the game.
I had some limited business dealings with them that were super shady. Weird nepotism rules where people get their sons/nephews hired. Generally pay based on seniority not skill. Makes it really hard to fire bad actors or people bad at their job. (see teacher's union/police union) Leads to incredibly weird inefficiencies about who can do what. If unions were in software a dev couldn't update a Jira ticket except under very specific circumstances. Generally makes it harder to get a job.
If it just increased pay that'd be awesome, but it tends to have a lot of knock on effects. If the U.S. was completely unionized I think we'd all be poorer for it. I think there are better tools in the policy toolkit to make sure people who are struggling in the economy are taken care of.
Are you against business owners coordinating too?
There's actually a plot point in Disco Elysium about this exact problem - when you're talking to wheeling dealing Evrart Claire. Look at his character portrait closely - he was drawn to look like a grinning fat toad.
what incentive mechanism could possibly facilitate this? because without one, it's not going to happen, whether you or anyone thinks it "should" or not.
this is an open question that seems to be rarely if ever discussed. when presented with any sort of "anti-x" organization (for example), I always wonder: why should I trust this organization as having the definitive position on whether their stated goals have ever been achieved? it seems brazenly obvious that, without any sort of incentive to the contrary, they'll just keep moving the x goalpost such that they can claim x is still an issue, worthy of there being an "anti-x" organization to fight it. this seems like quite the predicament, because obviously sometimes there are xes that need to be opposed by organized groups of people—but how can they possibly be held accountable for remaining on-mission, and, more importantly, for being an authoritative source on societal progress with regards to x?
Unfortunately everything living is afraid of death, and these organizations will come up with an ongoing need, real or not.
what we really need to do is to change that relationship. unions can't help with that. instead a completely different model to run a business is needed, like for example worker cooperatives.
Most people are fairly reasonable, but all it takes is something such as an unexpected divorce to completely unravel someone's decision-making to where they will suddenly be justifying any and all actions to take control and extract money for the good of their future self.
It's a game set in late medieval/early mordern Bavaria and you try to solve a series of murders in a town over the period of 25 years.
It's very different from Disco Elysium but it's really rich in both themes and art. No other piece of media has made me experience the weight of history like this one. It's about how history is about what we choose to remember and how we choose to interpret things. It's about how small nudges can alter people's lives and how we co-exist with the stuff and stories of the people that came before us.
It's extremely well researched, one of the only games I can think of with an actual bibliography in the credits.
Most importantly it moved me to tears on multiple occasions, and it really made me appreciate both history in general and the history of my own local environment in particular.
Highly recommended, it's not that long and it's easy to pick-up even if you aren't that familiar with games.
There isnt really anything like Disco though. Just 'if you like x you might like y.'
Unfortunately its age definitely shows when you see the complicated controls and such. (I grew up with consoles and prefer controllers. Sue me.) Maybe this is a reason to dig out my old Steam Controller
Specifically, I would love to hear about more games that actually reward role playing.
In Disco Elysium, you adopt beliefs ("thoughts" in your "thought cabinet") and then are rewarded for choosing dialogue and performing actions consistent with those beliefs. You can have a wide variety of experiences with the same exact story in DE based on the beliefs you choose and adhere to.
The art, writing, and worldbuilding in DE is excellent but what really sets it apart for me is that actual and literal role playing.
In a lot of other games the reward for roleplaying is getting to roleplay. But thinking about it from another perspective, games where the mechanics reinforce and contextualize that, you might like Caves of Qud for the reputation system, Tyranny because the whole thing is just framing for the kind of role you'd play in this particularly fantastical setting, and Fallout New Vegas because its fun going into it with a character or concept in mind and just going nuts with it.
None of them come close to DE in what I understand you to be looking for, we could only be so lucky.
None of them come close to DE in what I
understand you to be looking for, we could only
be so lucky.
I'm surprised they haven't, especially considering DE's success, particularly with indie fans and creators. I thought DE might spawn sort of a mini-genre.
It's possible to play a "boring cop" or a "sorry cop". But the game portrays that the character you're playing was ... not really that.
[1]: https://rpgmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Ruina:_Fairy_Tale_of_the_Fo...