How do you continue your work on Disco Elysium without making something too similar to Disco Elysium to be as inventive as Disco Elysium? That’s the hellish conundrum grappling with Summer Eternal, a modern studio comprised of former ZA/UM developers that has unveiled its own manifesto.
So of course that was one of the things I asked Argo Tuulik, Dora Klindžić and Aleksandar Gavrilovic from the studio when I talked to them about Summer Eternal as part of the interview, the main part of which you can read here and which you will get a bit more from this very site over the course next few days.
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“Comparisons and expectations are inevitable,” Klindžić said of the studio’s approach to the game it will create, “but the source of our work will be our current conditions, our current team, our current reality, not a past that will never be recaptured, and pursuing him is foolishness.
“Ultimately, as we build and design this game from the ground up, we will only evaluate each element based on whether it aligns with what we as a team want to create today. Of course, as the great man’s quote goes, what men do is not create their history as they please, so that our present will always be based on our past. However, we want to get rid of unnecessary baggage and focus on building the future.
“We approach this process with no intention of “outperforming” or even “matching” Elysium or competing with any other company on Earth or in orbit, or laying claim to any goal of commercial success. We leave this business to speculation. We will work as artists do, which means that both eyes will be on the work, not one on the audience, not one on the competition.”
Meanwhile, Tuulik said: “I think we’ll just wing it. “No one steps into the same river twice,” says the unknown Heraclitus (vaguely). Instead of trying to be different for the sake of difference or be the same as if there was a recipe for it, I will follow the dopamine, trust that what we create will be familiar yet modern.”
On the other hand, Gavrilovic, in his assessment of the task before him, acted like the greatest builder of communism: “When Lenin wrote about how best to climb a high mountain, he outlined an essential aspect – once you are at a high vantage point, climb higher, sometimes you have to take another path and go down. This fall is often more threatening and is always accompanied by the malicious joy of those who want you to fail in the first place. However, if we are to achieve our ambitious plan, we must take our time and first descend the mountain, and then try to reach an even higher peak, no matter how long it takes.
Summer Eternal isn’t the only modern studio to see former ZA/UM developers take on these kinds of tasks with a modern game – Longdue and Dark Math Games, announced in the same week earlier this month, will have to figure out how they want to climb Lenin Mountain.
