The Making of Disco Elysium - Part Five: Collapse

0:01 (Ambient music) [DANNY] Hello!

0:09 and welcome to the fifth episode in our series on Disco Elysium.

0:12 As you likely know, the goal of our work here

0:14 at NoClip is to shine a light on how games are created,

0:17 so that players can get a better

0:19 understanding of how their favorite game was made,

0:21 and so that other developers might learn

0:23 from what went right and what went wrong.

0:25 We just spent four episodes largely talking about what went right,

0:29 but undercurrents of dissatisfaction and stress

0:31 were only building as production moved forward.

0:34 Friction within the writing team would only increase when the decision

0:38 was made to split them up between Estonia and the United Kingdom,

0:42 but before that happened,

0:43 the programming team– mostly folks who had never released

0:46 a commercial game before– were having struggles of their own...

0:51 (Looming orchestral chords) [JAAGUP IRVE] I think the whole development

0:58 room was being passively observant of the deadlines or feature creep.

1:05 It took a toll on us, of course, but on the other hand, it was also like,

1:11 you could feel that the art team was making their greatest art

1:17 that they could while we could do

1:22 really mediocre programming because of that [laughs].

1:26 [ROBERT KURVITZ] The thought cabinet was done by Markus Rondo.

1:29 I hear he didn't really like menus [laughs]

1:32 at the end of that, and then he was a really,

1:35 really cool programmer to work with.

1:37 A lot of the very basic movement stuff

1:39 in the beginning of the game was done by Veljo Hagu,

1:41 and then a lot of the cinematic programming was done by Mikk Luige.

1:46 Yuan Zhang, the VO producer who later pulled out the VO,

1:49 came in to help with the sound and Andrus Laansalu,

1:53 the sound engineer and designer, was still on the project.

1:57 [JAAGUP] We had more professional people arrive as well, like Ott,

2:03 and also Liisi– my longtime friend from university– who is,

2:09 I think, one of these remarkable programmers who can refactor huge things.

2:13 [ROBERT] Right near the ending stretch,

2:16 we got what Irv called a hardcore progajada.

2:21 "Progajada" is the programmer, but programmeress, in Estonian.

2:27 Liisi Laasik, who kind of became one of these lead programmer roles.

2:32 And that was about the time when

2:35 the game was becoming really big and feature complete,

2:39 so she kind of took over the leadership of the team.

2:43 [ALEKSANDER ROSTOV] I got to go to the show floors,

2:46 to the great PAX East, and to the German Gamescom,

2:51 and to the showfloor grind and hustle,

2:55 and really try to sell your game to all these nerds.

3:00 And it was wonderful.

3:01 It's the gift.

3:02 It's got some of the happiest memories.

3:04 First of all, oh my God, it's a trip.

3:06 You get to go on a trip with the guys.

3:08 That's already wonderful.

3:09 In some ratty-ass Airbnb in a Boston suburb.

3:13 Oh my God, America, are they going to shoot us dead in the street?

3:16 What's going to happen?

3:17 It's the scariest place on the planet, America.

3:20 But yeah, going to these shows and showing

3:23 the game to our future fans was very nice.

3:26 We learned an interesting fact there,

3:28 that it seemed to be that the core audience of this game,

3:31 who would appreciate it the most,

3:33 were of course middle-aged men and teenage girls.

3:38 [DANNY] Right?

3:39 [ALEKSANDER] Yes.

3:40 The middle-aged men, I guess,

3:41 found something to identify with, and teenage girls found

3:45 a work of art that wasn't condescending towards them.

3:49 [Laughs] My favorite thing that I overheard when

3:52 quite a young girl got off from playing it,

3:54 and then the mother who had been like watching over her shoulder,

3:59 and it was like, the girl said...

4:02 Oh my God, what was it?

4:03 "Mom, no more League of Legends." [Chuckles] [DANNY] Wow!

4:08 You did it.

4:09 You converted one!

4:10 [Laughs] One down, a million more to go!

4:20 [ROBERT] It is very hard to title games generally.

4:24 It turns out there's some kind of rules to titling them.

4:27 So the way I did it was it was called No Truce with the Furies,

4:30 which clearly is not going to work for a successful entertainment product,

4:34 and we were told, by British journalists.

4:36 And then I basically bounced words together for two years.

4:42 And then I had a playlist that I'd made

4:45 a long time ago called "Arno Van Neck's Disco Elysium",

4:49 and I took it from there, Disco Elysium, and everybody hated it.

4:53 Everybody said it was a bad title, and we've got to change it again.

4:56 A friend from an ad agency called me and said that it's embarrassing.

5:01 Our, at that time, American publishing-related friends told us,

5:07 "I don't know if you Eastern Europeans know,

5:09 but here in America Disco is dead." So they thought that we're like...

5:14 Borat.

5:15 [DANNY] Wearing bell bottoms or something?

5:17 [ROBERT] Borat is trying to say: "You guys like Disco!

5:19 We named it Disco." Literally, we had to go against almost everyone's advice,

5:24 which is one of the hardest things to do.

5:25 But it was going to work because it's kind of like an anime title.

5:28 Like, it's the same kind of logic that they have.

5:31 It Googles really well.

5:32 It's really pretty.

5:33 It's a good combination.

5:34 And it has the word Elysium in it,

5:36 so it kind of takes ownership of this very desired word.

5:40 You know, like everyone wants their stuff to be called Elysium-something.

5:43 And it takes ownership for this kind of comical indie...

5:46 the disco angle of it.

5:49 It was, yeah, some people still don't think it's a good title for it,

5:53 but it was the hardest creative job on the whole thing,

5:56 coming up with that name.

6:00 [DANNY] With hopeful release dates constantly on the horizon,

6:03 pressure was nonstop.

6:04 The writing team was still crafting characters and editing,

6:07 but progress was often slow,

6:09 and Robert still hadn't come up with an ending for the game.

6:11 Leadership was under pressure from investors

6:14 to get the game out without further investment,

6:16 and the programming team,– even with the help

6:18 of some experienced new hires– were struggling to finish.

6:21 It should be mentioned, even if I'm not prepared to get into specifics,

6:25 that the shadow of substance abuse lingered over

6:27 many of the people working on this game.

6:30 There was no shortage of personal ghosts

6:32 being fought during the development of Disco Elysium.

6:35 I believe that we should respect people's privacy when

6:38 it comes to issues of alcoholism or drug abuse.

6:40 They are, after all, victims too.

6:43 But to not mention this element would be to ignore

6:46 something that did have a meaningful effect on production.

6:50 Many of the people I talked to specifically brought

6:52 up drugs as a destructive factor within the team,

6:55 either used recreationally or, more worryingly,

6:58 as a means to get through the production.

7:01 Many of the people who worked on Disco Elysium during

7:04 this period suffered greatly due to drug abuse in particular,

7:07 and some of them have sadly never fully recovered.

7:10 The project was not running well,

7:12 and with Robert at the creative centre– burnt-out, overburdened,

7:16 and still clawing onto creative control– some

7:18 of the team felt that change was required.

7:21 But for at least one member of the team,

7:23 the broth had already been spoiled, and it was time for them to leave.

7:31 [MARTEN RATTASEPP] It was a weird time.

7:34 Like I said, in the second year especially,

7:38 the whole development process had started to get more frustrating,

7:43 and there were strange things happening in the back end somewhere that I

7:49 wasn't fully privy to, but some sort of weird internal strife, and...

7:56 Something was happening, and things were more stressful and unpleasant,

8:00 and delays were happening,

8:02 and people were not getting along as well in some aspects.

8:07 So like, I don't know, at some point– really,

8:09 over the summer– I was just feeling like, this is...

8:12 It's not enjoyable anymore, and I have done,

8:17 basically, my stuff that I was tasked with.

8:20 I know that getting a game finished is very difficult,

8:24 but this wasn't fully that.

8:26 It wasn't like you're just kind of struggling,

8:29 or even crunching to get something done.

8:31 No, this is more like, there is some weird power plays,

8:35 or whatever, happening, and people are doing weird stuff to each other.

8:40 So I don't know, I just didn't really feel it at the point anymore.

8:45 I don't want to deal with this weird stuff.

8:48 I have a very vague sensation of like, something is going in a poor direction,

8:55 and I don't want to be a part of this anymore, because I don't see this going...

8:59 And the delays, and the weird stuff, it started feeling like a dejection.

9:07 Of like, "This project is never going to come

9:09 out." I'm just like wasting my time here, spinning wheels and just getting paid,

9:14 while this thing is getting delayed, and redone and delayed and re...

9:19 There is a point where you're not polishing the stuff anymore.

9:22 You're just redoing things that is already finished.

9:26 And months go by and it feels like this is never going to come out.

9:29 and it feels like, "This is never going to come out.

9:33 "And, maybe I can do other stuff with my life.

9:36 I don't like need to be here." [DANNY] While all this was going on, Kaur Kender,

9:45 an original ZA/UM Cultural Association member,

9:48 and the executive producer who was

9:50 responsible for getting funding for the project,

9:52 was embroiled in a controversial court case,

9:54 regarding the contents of a novel, he may or may not have written.

9:58 In 2017, Kaur was acquitted of charges and decided to move to London,

10:03 to start up a satellite studio.

10:05 Okay, it's probably time we explore who exactly was running ZA/UM at this stage.

10:10 We already mentioned the investor, Margus Linnamäe, who bankrolled the project,

10:14 and owned 83% of the original company, Fortress Occident.

10:18 But Margus is a busy man and, as one of Estonia's most successful businessmen,

10:22 he had little to no involvement in the day-to-day running of the company.

10:25 It was Kaur Kender who owned the remaining 17% stake,

10:29 but he himself sold it to another investor,

10:31 Ilmar Kompus, when the studio was renamed to ZA/UM.

10:34 At the time, Kompus's investment group,

10:36 was co-owned by a man called Tonis Haavel,

10:39 who himself was embroiled in an investment fraud case in Estonia,

10:43 that would eventually lead to his bankruptcy, at least on paper.

10:46 Much of the details of these financial machinations were covered

10:50 in detail by our friends over at People Make Games,

10:53 so we're not going to spend too much time on them here.

10:55 But while Ilmar Kompus was essentially absent

10:57 for the duration of development, at some point,

11:00 his investment partner Tonis Haavel began coming

11:03 to the Tallinn studio to help out.

11:05 He attempted to get to grips

11:07 with the tools the team were using– mostly fruitlessly.

11:09 Clearly the investors were worried that the game wasn't getting finished,

11:13 and frustrations over Robert's leadership were part of this, because

11:16 changes from the writing team would often mean changes downstream,

11:20 to art, animation, and more.

11:22 The opening of the London studio was no doubt downstream from these affairs,

11:26 and it was the beginning of a slow but steady exodus from the Tallinn studio.

11:30 The logic was, that if the studio was housed in the UK,

11:33 it would have access to more talent,

11:34 more favorable business conditions, and the established network of marketing,

11:38 PR, and games' press that London enjoys.

11:41 Crucially though, Robert, Argo,

11:43 and Helen would also move to the UK though they would reside in the diverse,

11:48 artistic seaside city of Brighton, away from the rest of the team,

11:52 so they could finish their writing and unclog

11:54 this critical block in the game's production.

11:57 In hindsight it's tempting to analyze this decision,

11:59 especially given some of the broader financial plans happening with management.

12:03 Was this decision made to give Robert

12:05 and his inner circle more space, or direction?

12:08 Was it done to simply get Robert out of the Tallinn office?

12:11 Were there financial or legal reasons that would be beneficial to management?

12:15 In any case, not all of the Estonian writing team would make the journey.

12:19 Olga, who was point person between many of the game's teams,

12:22 would be left in Estonia.

12:30 [ARGO] Well, honestly, I never planned to make the move.

12:34 I was very much loving my life in Estonia at that point, and the idea was...

12:43 How it came to be: First of all, Kaur had the court case,

12:47 where the Estonian government was trying

12:50 to convict him for crimes on fictional characters.

12:54 After going through this meat grinder, he, as far as I understand,

13:00 firmly decided to never ever write in Estonian again.

13:03 So he moved to London immediately, days after this court case concluded.

13:09 When he first visited us, two months after the move,

13:14 he came back with this piece of knowledge that I found to be very on-point.

13:19 In Estonia, everything is easy but nothing is possible.

13:23 And in London, everything is very hard, but everything is possible.

13:27 With this perspective, I think he first realized that we are not

13:34 going to be able to finish it in Estonia.

13:37 And we are not going to be able to finish it on the writers' side.

13:41 Because there was so much distraction, constantly,

13:44 little things, and you know that, at this point,

13:47 you need to be there not eight hours a day,

13:51 you need to be there 10 hours a day and six days a week.

13:55 [JAAGUP] It was presented as a huge win,

13:57 because they could be focusing on the things that matter.

14:02 I think that is a movie production thing, when you have a hyped-up producer,

14:09 you need to isolate it from the team so the team can work,

14:12 and ideas can be filtered so that the reasonable ones go the other way.

14:16 Production-wise, I think this was what happened

14:19 and it took a great human toll on everyone.

14:22 I think this crunch wasn't easy on the London team.

14:28 [ARGO] When Kaur moved, and with this realization, I think, probably,

14:32 there was discussion between him and Robert Robert and Helen moved first,

14:35 and then I moved into the same apartment as they did.

14:38 in Brighton.

14:39 Why Brighton?

14:40 Because the British Sea Power, the band who made the soundtrack,

14:45 and won a BAFTA for the soundtrack, they are from Brighton.

14:49 [HELEN HINDPERE] I think, for me, it became difficult when we moved to the UK.

14:53 We moved to the UK, and this was, I think, a year and a half before the release.

14:58 So it was me, Argo, and Robert living in one apartment (chuckles).

15:02 We did not rent a separate office space.

15:04 There was an office space in London,

15:05 but we moved to Brighton, so maybe that was the reason.

15:08 So we started working from the living room,

15:11 and everything just became way too much.

15:13 Right?

15:14 The final year, everything just...

15:18 You can feel the pressure.

15:22 But also the fact that, you're in a new country,

15:26 you haven't really made any friends,

15:28 you're just moving from your bedroom to the living room, to work in there.

15:33 It got...

15:34 I was quite tired, but still,

15:37 there was the end goal for it, so it felt manageable.

15:40 It felt like, okay, after that we get to rest.

15:43 [ARGO] It's a weird one, because yes,

15:45 of course it's hard to be away from the rest of the team.

15:49 because you don't...

15:50 you no longer get this...

15:53 How do I say?

15:55 This creative resonance, this daily...

15:57 Rostov doesn't walk into the writers' room, you don't see...

16:01 You don't get this...

16:03 But at the same time, because at that point the work is so intense,

16:08 you don't really have time to think about it either.

16:10 [DANNY] Back in Tallinn, the remaining team was hard at work,

16:13 still under immense pressure from deadlines that seemed

16:16 almost designed to get them to crunch.

16:18 Liisi was a powerhouse for the engineering team, and given more responsibility.

16:22 Her fellow engineers loved her and crucially,

16:25 Robert did too– which wasn't something

16:27 everyone working on the project could say.

16:29 Producers Kosmos and Lembit Jürgenson would have to work even closer with Olga,

16:34 who was now the only writer left in the Tallinn studio.

16:38 [OLGA MOSKVINA] I think one of the primary strengths of Disco Elysium

16:41 is the fact that we were so much in each other's lives,

16:46 in the same space, at least talking together.

16:51 It was hard for me, because I was the only writer in Estonia then,

16:57 and so I was in the position of being the traction point between other writers,

17:04 and a lot of the rest of the team.

17:08 There were bad things going on with the upper management there,

17:12 that made it even harder.

17:15 It was not the best situation, to split the team like that.

17:21 [ARGO] And yes, initially when I moved, it was July 2018.

17:27 The idea was that, I'm just gonna be there,

17:29 we'll do the editing, and then I'll come back.

17:32 First of all, the editing that was supposed to take three weeks,

17:37 went on for four months, five months?

17:40 [JAAGUP] I was really angry at Robert,

17:44 because endgame was missing for the longest...

17:49 I think they went to London, there was no endgame.

17:51 I had a paper that had "endgame" written

17:54 in large letters onto the carpet in the programmer's room.

17:58 There were trust issues in all of the directions during the stress times,

18:04 And this this is something that...

18:08 I'm not sure if there was a better way.

18:15 [ARGO] I don't want to exaggerate,

18:17 so let's say that, the last four months five months of that nine-month cycle,

18:22 because we were supposed to release in February 2019,

18:26 when it was clear we're not going to hit that, Kaur...

18:33 I think it was Kaur who went to the investors again and said:

18:36 "Hey guys, still not ready.

18:37 Can we get more money?" Once this money came, it was very clear that this is it.

18:42 There will not be more.

18:43 So now we enter this last nine-month...

18:46 "The death march phase," [ROBERT] Josh

18:49 Sawyer has this expression, "death march".

18:52 Which feels like, if you want another level that's worse than crunch,

18:56 then there's "death march".

18:57 So that...

18:58 We basically death marched it.

19:00 Well, that was the last deadline that we were ever going to get.

19:03 That was clear.

19:04 That we're not going to get any more money.

19:06 It's gonna come out at the end of this.

19:07 And it was really gonna.

19:09 I was out of any kind of excuse to clearly win more time for it,

19:14 which is all you really want to do, as a developer.

19:17 You just don't want to release anything with bugs.

19:19 That ruins people's mood, you know?

19:21 To work on something for five years, to delight people,

19:23 and then to have it bug out on them, it's just tragic.

19:28 But because it was now finally achievable, it had to be achieved,

19:32 because there weren't very good arguments against it.

19:35 [ARGO] Never, during the making of Disco, even the crunch times,

19:39 do I remember there being pressure to crunch from anywhere else,

19:45 than from the inside.

19:46 Robert never said that you have to do overtime,

19:49 you have to be working on weekends.

19:52 I never got that vibe even from the management, but internally,

19:56 you look at it, and you know, and not only do you know,

19:59 you want to do it, because, to this day, writing Disco,

20:02 writing this stuff it's literally the funnest thing I've ever done.

20:06 I've had more fun doing this than playing any game.

20:17 [DANNY] With most of the writing team– and crucially,

20:20 Robert– isolated in Brighton attempting to finish their work,

20:23 management in Tallinn was able to take the reins on production more directly.

20:27 Many of the programming team were on contracts that were set to end,

20:30 before the latest release date extension, and so,

20:32 in an effort to save both money,

20:34 and perhaps to make sure the game was polished ahead of release,

20:37 management in Estonia made the brutal decision to let most

20:41 of the programming team go at the end of their contracts.

20:44 With five months left on the project, a white label company in Poland,

20:48 by the name of "Knights of Unity", were hired to finish Disco Elysium,

20:52 with single engineer, Markus Rondo, staying behind.

20:56 [ARGO] Oh, Markus Rondo, I don't want to ever forget Markus Rondo.

20:58 He was such a sunshine.

21:01 Even in the very last days before the launch,

21:05 when I think Knights of Unity were doing most of the developing, he was...

21:11 I think he was the last developer to stay behind.

21:13 [JAAGUP] My suspicion is this: That they wanted

21:17 the funding to continue and they needed a fall guy.

21:20 And the development team was a great fall

21:23 guy because we weren't perfect [chuckles] in any sense,

21:28 and our interface was really nasty to the leadership.

21:33 You have these conflicting interests,

21:35 and outsource provides a really nice interface,

21:38 like some guy is very interested: "Yes!

21:41 We will do this in two months," or whatever.

21:44 I went there to manage the systems administration.

21:49 They wanted an extra computer that would be able to upload

21:53 to Steam just in case anything happened, and I built that...

21:57 It was so sad there, there was a few people left.

22:01 [SIIM RAIDMA] So the moving process wasn't a single move.

22:05 It was people just trickling out.

22:07 There was a weird spot where we, I think, signed different contracts.

22:13 I didn't really know what was going on, because I was...

22:17 In hindsight, I was safe.

22:19 I was going on with a lot of them,

22:21 but I do understand there were some people being let go,

22:25 in not the most correct way, I guess.

22:29 And I don't really know what was going on there.

22:31 At launch date, half of the dev team was already in the UK studio,

22:38 and we had a little party in the Tallinn studio before giving it up.

22:46 [DANNY] While Robert says he was shocked by the way

22:48 in which the engineering team was let go,

22:50 I should mention that others have disputed

22:52 that he would've had no knowledge of this happening.

22:55 It's also crucial to mention that several others told me that the management

22:59 above him were already making decisions designed

23:01 to erode his influence at this stage;

23:04 giving directions that directly opposed creative decisions that Robert had made,

23:09 something that frequently put these developers in impossible situations,

23:13 and led to incredible amounts of stress and distrust.

23:17 The toxic manner in how this team was managed cannot be understated,

23:20 and it's part of the reason that it's taken so many of these people

23:24 several years to truly come to terms with what exactly was going on.

23:29 For me, the story of Disco Elysium 's internal combustion

23:32 is not one of a singular smoking gun but the pervasive

23:36 erosion of the faith and belief that had bonded

23:39 so many of these people together in the first place.

23:43 A few days after the programmers were sacked,

23:46 producers Kosmos and Lemps were also let go.

23:49 Olga remained in Tallinn– but by now, a large number of the people who are

23:53 responsible for creating this game had been cast aside.

23:56 This is perhaps the most underreported aspect of the story of Disco Elysium,

24:01 because most of this happened long

24:03 before the game gained its international notoriety.

24:05 But it's these fractures and tensions that would

24:08 lead to problems further down the road.

24:10 The power dynamics between Robert and management,

24:13 the fragility of employment, the direction of the company;

24:16 who was in the good graces of those with power, and who weren't.

24:19 And all of this before the game was even released.

24:22 A game nobody could have predicted would go

24:24 on to be such a commercial and critical success.

24:27 Disco Elysium 's death march did, eventually, come to an end in October of 2019.

24:32 The game was released,

24:33 and over the coming weeks and months word would slowly grow

24:37 about this incredible new cRPG that had emerged from the Baltics.

24:41 But for the people who had made the game,

24:43 those who were fired and those still remaining– who had toiled for years,

24:46 and experienced brutal crunch to get it out the door– there was no parade.

24:51 The shellshock of their labor had left them shadows of their former selves.

24:59 [HELEN] I remember that the release date was incredibly scary for me.

25:04 I was so anxious.

25:05 But I just remember not being able to go online, to do anything.

25:10 It felt like a grieving process, as well.

25:13 Because you're suddenly...

25:14 you have finished work on it.

25:16 So it was a really difficult time.

25:18 Our marketing was so small, because we had no budget for it.

25:22 So I think it also took a while before the reviews started coming in.

25:26 And before there was some kind of a consensus.

25:29 [ARGO] When now, suddenly this tension dropped,

25:32 cortisol levels suddenly go all the way down.

25:36 Then, first of all, I think we all got sick of course,

25:39 obviously, because the body has been postponing this sickness for so long.

25:43 But the second thing was, that this incredible numbness came over.

25:48 As you see these positive reviews and awards roll in, The crazy thing is,

25:55 that you don't really feel it.

25:57 You feel it as if it's happening to a fictional character somewhere, or like...

26:03 Really, honestly, it took years.

26:04 It took watching YouTube essays like

26:08 Noah Caldwell-Gervais's essay on Disco Elysium,

26:11 for example, to actually start feeling this triumph of it.

26:17 [ROBERT] It was two days after release, where I was like:

26:19 "I'm gonna have to go on metacritic.com now." It felt,

26:23 to me, like God was giving me a number.

26:26 And I was finally gonna find it out.

26:28 And if it is going to be less than 90, then God made a mistake in making me.

26:33 Like, it was that important to me.

26:35 I had promised to the investors I'm going to make a 90+ Metacritic game.

26:39 [DANNY] You're kidding.

26:40 [ROBERT] I promised.

26:41 [DANNY] Wow.

26:41 Many times over.

26:42 You should not make that promise, but I promised it.

26:45 And then, when I saw it was 90+,

26:48 I didn't feel a single sliver of happiness, or even relief.

26:52 I only remembered the, kind of...

26:56 adrenaline...

26:57 paralyzing me.

26:58 [HELEN] And I think it didn't hit me until the Game Awards show,

27:03 that we'd really become big, because it just seemed that...

27:06 Okay.

27:07 We've released this super indie game.

27:09 We definitely did not have super many players, in the first few weeks.

27:15 It was something that gained momentum, and built up later.

27:19 So when we went to LA, I remember sitting there, going for the Game Awards,

27:25 and then the producers there would come up and ask me, "Oh, you're Helen?

27:31 Make sure you're sitting here,

27:33 make sure that you aren't leaving anywhere, you know?

27:36 Things that I now realize are very clear signs you're about to win something.

27:41 But I didn't understand anything.

27:42 We hadn't even prepared a speech for it,

27:45 because why would you prepare a speech if

27:47 you're so sure that you're just there for networking,

27:51 and just being there and having the experience?

27:53 But you're not going to win anything.

27:56 I think this was the evening where I realized that, oh okay,

27:59 Disco Elysium is actually something big.

28:01 Much bigger than we ever dreamed of.

28:06 [DANNY] For many, this is the moment the story of ZA/UM came into view:

28:10 An exciting new European studio creating groundbreaking new work,

28:14 helmed by a cabal of talented artisans.

28:17 But this was obviously not the full picture.

28:19 The studio would get to work on a new version,

28:22 of Disco Elysium, entitled Final Cut, creating new scenes,

28:25 porting it to consoles, and crucially,

28:27 adding full voice acting for a game with two bibles' worth of text.

28:31 This is the version of Disco Elysium that the majority

28:34 of people will come to know and love.

28:37 The work to create Final Cut would be arduous, and the firings weren't done yet.

28:41 Tensions, both within the team and coming down from management,

28:44 would grow to a point of no return.

28:46 While the world rejoiced over this game,

28:48 many of the people involved in its creation would continue to suffer.

28:51 A handful of them would be eventually ostracized from the studio,

28:55 and the future of the franchise would be cast into doubt.

28:58 In our final episode, we'll provide new insights into these tumultuous times.

29:02 What it was like for Robert, Helen, and Rostov,

29:04 when they were cast from the world of Elysium.

29:07 And what it was like for the rest of the original team

29:09 to look back on one of their greatest achievements with so much pride,

29:13 and so much heartbreak.

29:14 As ever, an early cut of this episode is available now for our patrons,

29:18 and we look forward to sharing it with the rest of you quite soon.

29:27 [SIIM] So, to be brutally honest, during the whole of development,

29:32 I was hoping that Disco Elysium would be like an underdog cult hit.

29:40 That didn't do so well on release.

29:44 Kind of like Lynch's Dune or something.

29:47 It wasn't critically very well received,

29:50 but it's a cultural pivot point, I guess.

29:55 And I was hoping for Disco Elysium to be culturally significant,

29:59 and not necessarily, I guess, financially a success.

30:06 But it was.

30:07 It was so well received...

30:11 and I'm gonna have to play it again one of these days,

30:15 to see what what the fuss is about.

30:18 [ALEKSANDER] Yeah, it was quite surreal.

30:20 We were shipped off to Las Vegas,

30:25 to receive the accolades and all of these veteran

30:30 industrists are shaking your hand and giving you,

30:34 maybe slightly weird, sly winks.

30:37 and, "Welcome to the industry!" as if it's a bit of a challenge or something?

30:42 I don't know...

30:44 But, yeah...

30:46 showered with praise.

30:48 As they say, it is not good for the ego of the artist to get all that niceness.

30:54 But it is, of course, sugar-sweet.

30:59 [Laughter] (Ident clicks) (Click)