Of all of the studios that form what I’ve come to refer to as the Disco Diaspora – the gang of four (at current) studios outside of ZA/UM that have all seemed to vaguely be vying for the title of Disco Elysium spiritual successor – Longdue is arguably the one that’s been most active in marketing its game that way.
“Team members that worked on the original Disco Elysium and its unreleased sequel” were cited in Longdue’s first announcement of something Disco-like last October. “Longdue Announces Upcoming Crowdfunding For Disco Elysium Spiritual Successor” was the headline of the press release from January that properly revealed the game the studio kicks off a crowdfunding campaign for today – Hopetown. Both that January release and the most recent one have also made a key point of name-dropping folks who had a hand in Disco and are now working on Hopetown, first Piotr Sobolewski and last week Martin Luiga.
So, in a recent interview with Longdue technical lead Sobolewski – who’s listed in Disco’s credits as having provided ‘additional development’ on Disco as part of external studio The Knights of Unity – and Hopetown narrative director Grant Roberts, I asked the pair to paint me a picture of how things look in terms of the ex-Disco devs currently at Longdue, and what they’re working on in Hopetown.
“We’ve had a lot of people that have worked on the Disco franchise either pass through here, or still stay here, or collaborate with us and then move on,” Roberts told me, “Martin, as you know, is the newest addition who has a connection to [ZA/UM]. He was part of the narrative staff there. I actually don’t know the full roster of people who worked on the story and narrative for Disco, but, I mean, you look at all the names that are attached to all the Disco [successor studios]… the key creatives behind Disco have all have mostly left ZA/UM and gone to these other studios.
“Those other studios, I think, are touting those names. I don’t really want to talk about them, because I prefer to talk as little about the weird Disco Diaspora and drama situation as possible. I just want to focus on making what we’re making, but we’ve got people who have worked on all kinds of things at ZA/UM that have been a part of this.
“There have also been people who worked there who are not keen to have their names mentioned because people feel so passionately about this. The internet is a terrible place for fandom at times, and so they want to stay out of any controversy that’s attached to this, which I don’t blame them for. So yeah, there are some people that were a big part of Disco, and a big part of Disco’s narrative, that have been a part of this and have moved on.
“Now we have a new narrative team that is forming. Like Piotr says, you don’t need to have made Disco Elysium to make something great. Especially in this genre; there was a long list of games that were amazing before that game existed, and they did do something they did do something amazing at ZA/UM in Estonia, but we’re not running around with a bottle trying to catch lightning.”
Roberts referenced that Sobolewski believes “[Disco’s devs] pretty much opened a whole book and created a canvas for games to be created [on], like a new genre”. Meanwhile, the technical lead has raised some eyebrows in terms of his connection to the original Disco, due to his LinkedIn profile citing him as a “co-creator of the highest rated PC game of all time (according to Metacritic)”. That game is Disco Elysium. Since our interview, the bio has seemingly been changed, and now simply reads “World-class IT Advisor”.
“Well, I think ZA/UM mentioned multiple times that the Knights basically saved the game,” Sobolewski responded when I quizzed him on this. “So, for quite a long time, we [were] the core development team behind the game, and many of our ideas landed in the game. I’m mentioned in the credits. You can check the credits of Disco Elysium, there is my name. I played some little part, but not gonna jump into details because I was just the CEO of the company [The Knights of Unity], not anyone who was working directly [on] the game.
“So, I’m not bragging that I co-created [Disco Elysium]. I’m gonna check this line [on LinkedIn]. I think that I am entitled to say that partially I co-created the game, because I pretty much created the company that co-created the game – and I also had some ideas that landed in the game, so why not? I have never worked in ZA/UM, that’s true, but I’ve known them for… I think we started working together […] many, many years ago. And yeah, I think it was quite popularly and quite openly said that the Knights of Unity pretty much saved Disco Elysium. Every person from the Knights of Unity who worked on Disco I would call a co-creator, definitely.”
“I would say judge us by the work that we’re doing, not by the marketing or what we say,” Roberts told me when I asked him what he’d say to the cynics that are demoralised by all of the messy Disco Elysium fallout, and the drama around its would-be sucessors. “We’re making something that we’re going to be very proud of, and we’re making it with a team that is very diverse when it comes to levels of experience in the video game industry, their demographics, their experience in what they’ve done in their careers before this.”
“We are looking to make something new that can stand alongside Disco in this new era that Disco helped to usher in.”
Longdue’s Kickstarter campaign for Hopetown kicks off today, March 17.