One of the things that set Summer Eternal apart from the crowd of not-quite-successor studios to Disco Elysium when it was announced was the unique way in which its creators – most of whom were former ZA/UM members – went about structuring it .
The word “cooperative” was the word (or two abbreviated words combined together) of the day, and in Summer Eternal’s structure, 50% and 25% of the company’s shares were owned by the cooperative, for full-time and independent employees, respectively. Meanwhile, 20% of that amount will be held by an investor-funded LLC, and 5% will go to a nonprofit organization whose goal will be to give gamers who play the studio’s games a say in what the studio is doing.
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How does all this impact one of the biggest challenges in creating games that are especially collaborative? Well, in an interview, the main part of which you can read here, I asked the developers themselves how they might respond to potential criticism that the egalitarian focus of the studio structure could make it arduous to deliver a tight, focused vision for their game if there are differences of opinion between the different sections of Summer Eternal.
“Committees are factories of compromises, incapable by definition of setting artistic standards, in the sense that compromises are the average of everything and the peaks and troughs of nothing,” replied Argo Tuulik, the last writer of the original Disco Elysium, who left ZA/UM, “” Driven artistically, creatively, owned by employees and players,” reads the words of our (burning) house, and we will make compromises everywhere except the artistic vision.
“Creative decisions will always be made by the core team of artists who, after agreeing on what they want to create, select one to take responsibility and spearhead the project. Game director, if you will. Ideally this is Role Rotation, project by project. And while there’s no doubt that our first project will be narrative-driven, it’s interesting to imagine a project led by visual and/or audio artists, “Primal,” “Samurai Jack” -. This type of search comes to mind.”
Former ZA/UM writer Dora Klindžić added that the way Summer Eternal deals with the “artistic project of creating a creative work” is something the studio team actively has internal conversations about, in which “often references to Bakunin’s quote: “In this matter of shoes, I rely on the authority of the shoemaker…”.
“Just because there are no capitalist bosses doesn’t mean that a creative project won’t have some seniority structure, a division of decision-making power, and some degree of project management and accountability,” she continued. “The difference is that such structures should be supported by the real things that matter in this world – skills, knowledge, experience and talent – rather than dictated by money and perpetuated by fear of economic uncertainty.
Klindžić then used a quote about the scientist Mitis from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel “The Dispossessed” as an example of what “social power” exercised by Summer Eternal’s leaders might look and function. It reads as follows: “There has always been a kind of psychological clear space around Mitis, like the absence of clouds around the top of a mountain. The absence of any improvements or strengthening of power made the reality clear. They are people with innate power; some emperors actually have clothes.”
Finally, she added: “I have seen speculations whether our decisive and uncompromising political approach to the organization of the studio is a sign that we will pursue our artistic project without the nuances and literary ambiguity that are typical of us. I think we alleviate these concerns as we show more of our work, because the work of what makes a good story in fiction involves showing much more moral complexity, ambivalence, nuance, and sociopolitical conflict than one necessarily wants to *live* personally, writing history.”
For more from my chat with Summer Eternal, be sure to check out what the developers told me about their approach to expectations for continuing work on Disco Elysium and how they currently see opportunities for improvement for developers in the gaming industry.