#martin luiga

[inlandempir]

post on one of the dev forums for disco elysium, titled "THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD". text version beneath the cut

There's been a lot of art and tech talk so far, it's all kinda dry or saccharine. I think it's time to juice it up by throwing in a proper essay.

THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD

The world of No Truce! (we do have a proper name for it, but we’re shy) is not what you’d call “a generic genre world”. It is not pseudo-medieval stasis, as Forgotten Realms was, nor is it Fallout’s campy barbarism with guns. It is also not a Harry Potter/Batman/vampire fantasy world, which is basically “our world with a secret/special world within it”. Neither is it the tech-obsessed ‘punks’ of steam and cyber. It’s a modern fantasy world, a fantasy world in its modernity, which roughly corresponds to the middle part of our XXth century. Now that kind of thing opens up an array of new possibilities. It is a world with a promise of non-staticness, meaning, things appear undecided — they could go one way or the other. It is close enough to our own world for things to have meaning in it, it is a proper frame in which to explore themes relevant to our own society such as bigotry, power relations, politics, bureaucratic apparati, geopolitical relations, philosophy, ideology, religion et cetera. A pseudo-medieval world is not a proper frame for truly exploring themes of, for example, sexuality, for it lacks 1) a proper concept of sexuality, 2) an actual idea of societal progress and 3) a clear ideological dominant, which would be the place where values come from. All you can do in a static, societally unstructured world is give out-of-place shoutouts to present day communities for cheap popularity (“this is exactly my sexual orientation, how did they know?!”).

We find the ideological dominant missing because the western world is traditionally culturally critical of ideological dominants – critical of both state and religion. Anyhow, a classic fantasy world would feature two main ideologies – the “good” and the “evil”, of which the former is selfless and compassionate, but the other one is selfish and cruel. The attempts to overcome that have given us the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is an asshole and pessimism rules the day. Unsurprisingly, Grittywelt is also static as hell and meaningful change is foreclosed from it. It is a “protection from false hopes”. As such, it is heavily unrealistic. Much more realistic would be people living in super gritty conditions, but not looking the part, that is, not really noticing the abnormal harshness of their conditions, because they don’t have much to compare them to, and being hopeful towards the next day, because surprise! This is how you do it. Survive, I mean. Being depressed is a luxury. In a way, I’d say we’re trying to create the obverse of the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is empathizable, sort of a hero of their own story.

The modern era is also a fitting vessel for anachronisms – do we not have actual cyborg limbs and donkey-pulled carts operating in the same world at the modern era? Capitalism can also contain little feudalisms in a way, in which a single man or single family controls the entire economy of a town or a village and profits from it. And at the same time, it can also contain little socialist utopias, scientist villages, in which everything is provided by the State. Aside from being a basic feature of reality (anachronism is nothing more than time failing to fit the stereotype about it), it is also a lovable creative tool, allowing for a plethora of what-if-scenarios. Imagine a modern world, only without television; imagine a modern world in which there never was a global war, imagine a world in which fossil fuels are less available. Now, if you will, imagine one which has forgotten its antiquity, and one, in which there is not just water between the continents, but something worse as well — an anti-reality mass we call “pale” (also more on that later). Now imagine one, which has a legitimate and operative “religion of history” in place, which seeks for people it deems special enough to be the “vessel of progress”. (This is not an alternate history thing, by the way. An alternate history takes place in our world quite recognizably and has no more than one divergence point from history as it happened.)

One might ask, why would we not create an even more modern world, if we wanted to maximise our possibilities? Well one of the answers is that it would have destroyed the necessary element of escapism, another is that we cannot create a good alternate Information Era because we ourselves fail to understand the Information Era (More precicely, we have the information era in its infancy and it works via radio relays). We are too close to it and it is too new to understand it, it is “in progress”. The third reason would be that technology is not a fascinating subject for modern science fiction. It’s become a natural part of our reality. We don’t believe it’s going to save us anymore – it has failed to deliver for too long. I am of the belief that the themes of science fiction today are societal, political and psychological (one could maybe add aesthetical to it, for we also love the world for its beauty). All fantastic or sci-fi elements are means for best exploring those themes.

I have filled my page. That’s all for the time being. Thank you for reading.

Martin Luiga Writer

[stushixstushi]

Nobody asked for this, but I just had to get my thoughts out there on People Make Games' recent video about Disco Elysium.

I hope it's clear I'm coming at this in good faith, and that I was able to put into this video properly what I saw so many people express. TL;DW, you never gotta hand it to the capitalist.

[yellow-yarrow]

"I am hereby presenting you the first ever novella to be published in the Elysium world — in fact the first ever anything to be published in the Elysium world (12./11/2012). I also have to warn you for its content, which includes slurs and nihilism, it portrays some kinds of edge lords, and ZA/UM itself can also be said to have consisted of a variety of edge lords and ladies, which was in fact rather uncommon for that geographic region for this era."

[sledgehammer-to-a-discoball]

Source: https://twitter.com/minervanine9/status/1759384876044992913

[baolinagasy]

“I see the capital making statements and thus I am compelled to make statements in turn, which gives me a wonderful opportunity to discuss the story, the ‘making of’ of the game, the characters and destiny central to it in a more sombre manner than may be customary for the industry.

[...]

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 blamed on Robert. I have seen a similar situation before. The idealist workaholic does not pay attention to people’s psychological needs as the conspirator does and thus he will at most times be outplayed.

[...]

What happened to Robert was what happens to most talented people that get any recognition in our age — he got manipulated by psychopaths. And the people that have been railed up against him and his entourage, they have also been manipulated by psychopaths so it doesn’t really make anything much better if we get mad at them. Robert trusted people that got him fired completely before they got him fired. He thought they are his friends. This is a major ‘red check failure’ really. 

[...]

To end on a more positive note, Robert said some months ago that he is confident about one day writing Elysium again. I would take him at his word. Many have also asked me how they could contribute. There are two main resources any person has, which are time and attention, and any ‘Disco fan’ has already chosen to give them to the game and its creators, the situation around the game. Be confident that you will do what needs to be done when you see it.

Revachol forever.

The full article is very interesting to read, I just tried to highlight the most “important” information, but really the whole post is worth a read.

Also Kaur Kender and Tõnis Haavel are directly mentioned by name.

[mortispoxi]

Luiga was tweeting with fans about the video yesterday. Amongst saying other things he believes the video defo played into Kompus’ narrative.

Really? Well I’m glad I came to a similar sentiment to the person who is close to the situation while still being able to willingly talk to the public. Luiga truly has nothing to lose or gain by sharing his thoughts so to me having my opinion about the PMG video be shared with the likes of him feels significant.

[ambrosiohagiamira]

Reality is like a lighthouse whose light can in no way be buried or destroyed.

[sygneth]

i have a very important question here how come everyone is talking about Jean writing and nobody is talking about Jean drawing

source

[klaasje]

the jean enthusiast iceberg tiers go something like -> hating the angry man who yells and hates you -> annoyed at the angry man who yells and hates you -> lesser jeanification (second playthrough) -> greater jeanification (third playthrough) -> jeanjeanification (un jour je serai de retour by leoandsnake)

[inmirova]

he was so real for this

[lovesickgoose]

my fucking god. lilienne better hide her twins otherwise they're gonna be double yefreitors before the day is out

[morgue-xiiv]

[yellow-yarrow]

I was looking for something else and came across this written by Martin Luiga on his Medium

and I was like HUH! because Paul street boys is a book we read in elementary school for hungarian literature class, and I wouldn't have thought that this has connection to d.e. of all things lol

its super interesting to compare station 41 to it

of course this is about failure again! what else would the theme be

[brainrotdotorg]

Alex..

I'm hearing you out. but please imagine my sighs as I do

IM. i dont have any good explanation for myself and maybe its just my love of DE thats endearing me to all these characters but. i like chester hes a funny guy and that art of him that those tags were on was . well it was good. okay. like. absolute fuckshit comic relief idiot (and of COURSE his heterosexual life partner dont think im forgetting about torson here) is fully my MO!!!!!

like youre talking to the gal who has an affinity for NPCs that barely get like,, any screen time,,, i wrote a 7k fic about fuck and piss,,,, we barely know a single thing about these dudes and baby that leaves A LOT OF REAL ESTATE . hes an idiot he has internalized homophobia he has hidden depths he had to go to the lazzarth bc he got really bad fish poisoning once he and his best friend are iconic buddy cops hes a funny guy

even when i say all that hes like. B tier for me lmao (which should really demonstrate just how fuckign. obsessed i am with my SSS+ tier blorbos)

[ikeameatballspoisonedme]

Thinking about Chester and Mack's unrevealed lore from the TTRPG campaign :(

[mortispoxi]

I believe the workers who say Kurvitz was difficult to work with, especially Argo since he’s known the guy for a long time but now I have to wonder if those people now regret speaking in it.

Do I think they regret what they said? I can't say for sure because a) I cannot claim to know, let alone guess, exactly how they feel about this mess since I am not them, and b) unless someone decides to come forward about it we likely will never know.

But what I can talk about is what we do know for certain.

I've spoken on this before in a post I made about the misgivings I had with Chris Bratt's take on the ZA/UMa (ZA/UM drama) where I expressed that I felt like the video overexaggerated some of Kurvitz's behaviors and actions to make him appear like some kind of villain when we know he was slowly being frenzied by the investors for months on end. Now despite that, it still does not excuse the fact that Argo Tuulik, Kaspar Tamsalu, and Petteri Sulonen were hurt by him regardless of the circumstance (which they will resolve with him on their own time if they so choose). But as you’d also know, Tuulik has stated in his interview that even though he has his personal gripes with the man, he still greatly admires and respects Kurvitz which is a sentiment Kurvitz has echoed about all his former colleagues in an interview with Jacobin.

I can 100% understand where Tuulik is coming from in his statements about Kurvitz. It's always going to be a difficult adjustment when the person who you've been friends with for years becomes your boss because it suddenly creates a power dynamic that didn't exist before. At least in Kurvitz's case, who obviously didn't have any experience in leadership positions, it's no surprise he became such a shitty boss towards his friends and coworkers since the man clearly had no clue how to properly lead a team, was demanding perfection from everyone, on top of his stress levels being exacerbated from constant conflict with the meddling investors.

Now, if I were to speculate on this issue knowing all this, I'd say at the very least Tuulik probably feels like he's in the same boat as Kurvitz given the similarities of how they were dismissed from the studio. Whatever comes of this, whether it'd be reconciliation between the two or officially parting ways for good, is up to him. Honestly, I just hope he isn’t feeling guilty for bringing up both the good and bad about working with Robert Kurvitz in his interview. It was very brave of him to do as well as provided us outsiders with a window into the dynamic he had with Kurvitz. He couldn’t have possibly known the investors would one day retaliate against him and anyone else who voiced their dissent against their authoritarian rule of the studio. His only mistake was blindly trusting the people who spent years systematically othering Kurvitz and co in order to split the group apart so that they could be further manipulated by them.