ZA/UM expanded from 30 to 100 employees following the release of Disco Elysium
They had some success with their little over-hyped game, so they thought they had found an infinite money glitch, more than tripled their staff, and managed it into the ground. Apparently learning nothing from the hugely public failures of... 95% of every tech/gaming startup? I guess it's good news for whoever picks up their overpriced office furniture at surplus.
I'm no middle manager, but I don't understand why a small team, intimately familiar with how their success was earned, would immediately think "let's spread this windfall as thin as possible across people who did nothing for it."
Why not just give everyone a fat bonus and use the rest of the cash to give yourself a slightly longer dev time on the next project?
B) Commies are the biggest "capitalist pigs" around, but absolutely retarded about it.
Seriously, the reason commies think the world needs communism is because commies are some of the sleeziest, greediest people around, and think everyone else is like they are. They're the greedy fatcats they warn us about but, again, retarded. Of course they manage their shit into the ground.
yes, to actually believe in communism you must ignore or not understand a few very core, intrinsic traits of human nature. they're already detached from reality so of course managing anything or doing anything useful in the real world is beyond their abilities.
also, as you said, they're lazy and greedy. but also lack any humility, honest self-reflection, or real understanding of their own capabilities. they all think they will be the shot-callers and not the slave splitting rocks in an open pit mine. which is where they belong.
You've also got those that don't ignore those intrinsic traits, but believe that a governing entity is somehow immune to the pressures of those traits. It's why they believe those traits can be tamed/eliminated, if only they had the right system in place.
I noticed this in all my coworkers and old friends who turned commie. They're just spiteful and jealous that others have more than them, and they refuse to perform any kind of charity without being paid for it.
Middle management thinking is "With X resources, we created Y content in Z time. With 3X resources, we can do 3Y content in Z time or Y content in Z/3 time." This fails to consider the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and the pitfalls of team member overspecialization.
I see you too are familiar with The Mythical Man-Month. But yes. This is how managers think. If 5 people made a great product in a year, then 150 people should be able to make the exact same product in a month with the same margin. Then we can get the same ROI in 1/12 the time. Not only will that compound, we'll be profitable every quarter!
Middle managers have a lot in common with commies when it comes to understanding work and productivity.
yeah. but also part of being human is hubris and ego. solipsism, especially if women are involved. over-estimating our own abilities in fields we do not have any expertise in and under-estimating the value of those in fields that we don't really understand. It takes someone with just the right amount of humility and an understanding of human nature to make successful teams work out, long term.
look at our national economic system and their love affair with MMT (modern monetary theory). which boils down to, "It's different this time, guys! It's different this time because us boomers are uniquely intelligent, beautiful, and wise.".
I've worked manufacturing at a few companies and we had a saying about adding more people. "If a job takes one man three days, it will take nine days with three men."
Its just funny to me how developers who publicly thanked Marx and Engels on stage for their shitty game end up having issues like this. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.
They were planning a sequel and it seems that got cancelled from this.
Some amusing (and deliciously ironic) quotes from the article:
In late 2021, three of Disco Elysium's most senior developers, including the setting's original creator, Robert Kurvitz, lead artist Aleksander Rostov, and Final Cut lead writer Helen Hindpere, left the company on acrimonious terms. The ousted artists have alleged financial malfeasance on the part of company management, with much of their ire focused on Tõnis Haavel, a producer on Disco Elysium who had previously been convicted of investor fraud in the developers' native Estonia in 2014
ZA/UM studio management, meanwhile, insists that the three were fired for refusing to return to work and creating a hostile environment.
(The company's internal consensus about the sequel they were developing)
They also thought it was "exactly the sort of game [ZA/UM] needs to put out," and that it could "reassure fans that ZA/UM is not a husk, that the IP is in safe hands and that the studio is full of talented people with a genuine love for the world of Revachol."
"In February 2022, I left my job as an academic physicist and space mission scientist in order to work on Y12, the sequel to a masterpiece, Disco Elysium," Klindžić said of this time. "Upon my arrival, I was told all the leads were gone and replaced, but this was framed as a good thing, a healthy thing. Four months later the project was shelved overnight. I began raising concerns, as I felt I had just abandoned my entire life and career only to end up in a studio where the people I had come to work with were fired, and the project I was meant to work on shelved with no reason given."
"We were set up to fail from the start and it was impossible to catch up," said Klindžić. "Whenever we raised concerns about this and expressed we needed more writers if the deadlines were to be met, we were accused of not wanting to do our jobs."
And we'll never get to play X7, a follow-up to Disco Elysium masterminded by one of its principle writers, produced by a team that hit a major milestone and impressed its peers despite what they describe as a scrambled and untenable working environment. The livelihood of that team has been completely upended, and some developers' immigration statuses have been imperiled by their layoffs.
"For a supposedly 'leftist' company, this is a real mask-off moment," one current employee told me. Another mused that "We're not the first studio to go through that, it just feels worse when it's ZA/UM."
They've been a dumpster fire for a long time, I guess now they've finally folded.
God that game is so overrated, dialogue reads like a second-year lit major's odiously tryhard pseudo-intellectual slop. And whenever I see someone with a Disco Elysium pfp, I know that I'm about to deal with a colossal douchebag, so I guess at least it works as a red flag.
iirc the founders got kicked out soon after Disco Elysium came out and the ones that took over immediately tried to expand and have been taking Ls ever since
I have it, and I'd say not to waste your time on it. There are some very fresh ideas for the point and click adventure game genre, ruined by fairly shit storytelling and an obvious commie agenda. By obvious, I mean "conversations lead to a list of answers about political affiliations that are written in such an obvious way that the more leftist it gets the more obviously "good" in the game world".
Also the game world is a shithole but I'm sure that's just "late stage capitalism's" fault and TRUE socialism/communism just hasn't had a chance to fix it.
Fresh Ideas I liked:
Skill points based on decisions you make changing your options later in the game.
The way time moved forward during conversations but not just exploration
Worth playing if you liked the flowery language and complex dialogue trees of Planescape Torment (I think DE even uses the same font) and if you're interested in a prototype of a similar experimental game, but with no combat and all the progression carried out through dialogue-based skill checks, written by commies.
I say 'prototype' because it's way too short and you barely ever leave the single town district map except to go into various interiors. Much of the world-building dialogue references locations you never go to in game (and based on the news, I guess never will). I hardly ever see this criticism of DE but it was a big one for me.
As for being written by commies, defenders will say that there is no agenda and that it makes jokes about all sides of the political spectrum. This is only true for the kind of political illiterate who, for example, can't tell that South Park is obviously written by libertarians with a big sympathy for Mormonism. The writers might have tried to make jokes that prod in all directions and keep their sympathies low key, but they just can't help it seeping through. The story itself is a murder mystery, character study type deal with occasionally intriguing buildup, but all the barely camouflaged political proxyism tangles up the gears. The game will let you play as a raging fascist, with only token snidey criticism (albeit moreso than if you play a raging commie), but it's only because like true commies, the writers actually hate 'traitor' commies and neolibs most of all.
I'm glad I played it to sate my curiosity and check the RP mechanics, but also glad I paid pennies for it (or got it gifted, can't remember). The mechanics were genuinely promising and the world lore itself is interesting, but it's crippled by length and ideology. But I have less of a problem with the devs (who at least were open about everything) than I do with the commie shills or retard normies who insist it's 'not political' or talk about it like it's a full-fledged RPG without mentioning you'll polish it off in 20-ish hours, which to me is like a third of a good RPG at best.
Buried the lede so deep.
They had some success with their little over-hyped game, so they thought they had found an infinite money glitch, more than tripled their staff, and managed it into the ground. Apparently learning nothing from the hugely public failures of... 95% of every tech/gaming startup? I guess it's good news for whoever picks up their overpriced office furniture at surplus.
I'm no middle manager, but I don't understand why a small team, intimately familiar with how their success was earned, would immediately think "let's spread this windfall as thin as possible across people who did nothing for it."
Why not just give everyone a fat bonus and use the rest of the cash to give yourself a slightly longer dev time on the next project?
A) Commies.
B) Commies are the biggest "capitalist pigs" around, but absolutely retarded about it.
Seriously, the reason commies think the world needs communism is because commies are some of the sleeziest, greediest people around, and think everyone else is like they are. They're the greedy fatcats they warn us about but, again, retarded. Of course they manage their shit into the ground.
yes, to actually believe in communism you must ignore or not understand a few very core, intrinsic traits of human nature. they're already detached from reality so of course managing anything or doing anything useful in the real world is beyond their abilities.
also, as you said, they're lazy and greedy. but also lack any humility, honest self-reflection, or real understanding of their own capabilities. they all think they will be the shot-callers and not the slave splitting rocks in an open pit mine. which is where they belong.
You've also got those that don't ignore those intrinsic traits, but believe that a governing entity is somehow immune to the pressures of those traits. It's why they believe those traits can be tamed/eliminated, if only they had the right system in place.
I noticed this in all my coworkers and old friends who turned commie. They're just spiteful and jealous that others have more than them, and they refuse to perform any kind of charity without being paid for it.
Middle management thinking is "With X resources, we created Y content in Z time. With 3X resources, we can do 3Y content in Z time or Y content in Z/3 time." This fails to consider the inefficiencies of bureaucracy and the pitfalls of team member overspecialization.
I see you too are familiar with The Mythical Man-Month. But yes. This is how managers think. If 5 people made a great product in a year, then 150 people should be able to make the exact same product in a month with the same margin. Then we can get the same ROI in 1/12 the time. Not only will that compound, we'll be profitable every quarter!
Middle managers have a lot in common with commies when it comes to understanding work and productivity.
Imagine if the majority of people understood...basic fucking shit.
Utopia. Literally, utopia.
yeah. but also part of being human is hubris and ego. solipsism, especially if women are involved. over-estimating our own abilities in fields we do not have any expertise in and under-estimating the value of those in fields that we don't really understand. It takes someone with just the right amount of humility and an understanding of human nature to make successful teams work out, long term.
look at our national economic system and their love affair with MMT (modern monetary theory). which boils down to, "It's different this time, guys! It's different this time because us boomers are uniquely intelligent, beautiful, and wise.".
They think that 9 women can make a baby in a month if they just work together
They can if they use "The Force"...
I've worked manufacturing at a few companies and we had a saying about adding more people. "If a job takes one man three days, it will take nine days with three men."
Its just funny to me how developers who publicly thanked Marx and Engels on stage for their shitty game end up having issues like this. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.
They were planning a sequel and it seems that got cancelled from this.
Some amusing (and deliciously ironic) quotes from the article:
(The company's internal consensus about the sequel they were developing)
Honestly this was a goldmine of an article, kek.
They've been a dumpster fire for a long time, I guess now they've finally folded.
God that game is so overrated, dialogue reads like a second-year lit major's odiously tryhard pseudo-intellectual slop. And whenever I see someone with a Disco Elysium pfp, I know that I'm about to deal with a colossal douchebag, so I guess at least it works as a red flag.
It's a great identifier for leftist midwits.
Both. Probably both.
lol, lmao even
You love to see it!
Rest in piss, commie faggots.
iirc the founders got kicked out soon after Disco Elysium came out and the ones that took over immediately tried to expand and have been taking Ls ever since
Disco Elysium worth playing?
I have it, and I'd say not to waste your time on it. There are some very fresh ideas for the point and click adventure game genre, ruined by fairly shit storytelling and an obvious commie agenda. By obvious, I mean "conversations lead to a list of answers about political affiliations that are written in such an obvious way that the more leftist it gets the more obviously "good" in the game world".
Also the game world is a shithole but I'm sure that's just "late stage capitalism's" fault and TRUE socialism/communism just hasn't had a chance to fix it.
Fresh Ideas I liked:
Worth playing if you liked the flowery language and complex dialogue trees of Planescape Torment (I think DE even uses the same font) and if you're interested in a prototype of a similar experimental game, but with no combat and all the progression carried out through dialogue-based skill checks, written by commies.
I say 'prototype' because it's way too short and you barely ever leave the single town district map except to go into various interiors. Much of the world-building dialogue references locations you never go to in game (and based on the news, I guess never will). I hardly ever see this criticism of DE but it was a big one for me.
As for being written by commies, defenders will say that there is no agenda and that it makes jokes about all sides of the political spectrum. This is only true for the kind of political illiterate who, for example, can't tell that South Park is obviously written by libertarians with a big sympathy for Mormonism. The writers might have tried to make jokes that prod in all directions and keep their sympathies low key, but they just can't help it seeping through. The story itself is a murder mystery, character study type deal with occasionally intriguing buildup, but all the barely camouflaged political proxyism tangles up the gears. The game will let you play as a raging fascist, with only token snidey criticism (albeit moreso than if you play a raging commie), but it's only because like true commies, the writers actually hate 'traitor' commies and neolibs most of all.
I'm glad I played it to sate my curiosity and check the RP mechanics, but also glad I paid pennies for it (or got it gifted, can't remember). The mechanics were genuinely promising and the world lore itself is interesting, but it's crippled by length and ideology. But I have less of a problem with the devs (who at least were open about everything) than I do with the commie shills or retard normies who insist it's 'not political' or talk about it like it's a full-fledged RPG without mentioning you'll polish it off in 20-ish hours, which to me is like a third of a good RPG at best.