Gwen

Dumbass in a dumb land

  • She/Her

I was born in the late Holocene and I've seen some shit



fish
@fish

We asked how the studio culture changed at ZA/UM after the departure of most of the original writing team and the airing of the People Make Games documentary looking into the legal battle that ensued afterward. “It’s like transitioning from the Soviet Union to the fascist Russian Federation,” Tuulik said. “Wearing the dead cultural movement like a skin costume, roleplaying communism, lying for dollars and yen. PMG doc changed lots of things in the studio. Personal dynamics. None for the better.”

Last Disco Elysium writer laid off by ZA/UM speaks out

besides their video about ZA/UM, i'm not familiar with People Make Games. they might do good reporting on other subjects, i wouldn't know.


geometric
@geometric

PMG puts a lot of work into their productions and their stuff is generally pretty good but yeah, the ZA/UM one was such a wreck, ESPECIALLY their obnoxious "this ain't it" finger wagging at the end when the former lead writer imo correctly pointed out that holding him up as a toxic meany is such an obvious distraction from the criminal shuffling of millions of dollars happening.

I have feelings about the PMG guys too frequently centering themselves in a way that feels inappropriate to the subject matter, and it's more tolerable when they're reporting on cool Chinese games or whatever, but in a few instances, and the majority of the ZA/UM video, it's unprofessional and careless.


Bigg
@Bigg

One day I'll write my essay about the one section of the PMG Valve corporate structure video titled "Does Steam have a greater responsibility to society?" wherein Chris cherrypicks an unpopular porn game, likens it to a game featuring racist caricatures of black people, and leverages this comparison to make a smirking oblique argument about Gabe opening the platform up to porn was Bad. Changed my relationship to their work pretty profoundly over the course of a 7-minute segment!


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in reply to @fish's post:

I was a big fan of PMG when their video dropped and I was really really disappointed after watching the video. Not to diminish the problems from the crew, but that really wasn't the time to bring that up, and honestly it's the kind of problem that should have been settled privately.

Their videos up to that point were normally exploring really interesting topics from mostly old incidents in game development. I think they pivoted into being investigative journalists after their Roblox video, which was similar to the ZA/UM in tone but at least it was calling out a big corporation exploring children, and AFAIK involved other journalists that were deeper in the trenches of that investigation.

...but, for what it's worth, the writer who said the quote you included in your post is one of the ZA/UM workers with the most screen time in the PMG video, so it's a bit hypocritical of him as well to criticize it as if he hadn't any involvement with it.

thanks for providing some context for what PMG does! i wasn't aware of them until the ZA/UM video.

and, yeah, it's easy for people to do a 180 once they're fired. the writer didn't have any involvement in the video's editing process, though, so i don't want to call him or any of the other interviewees hypocritical. it's a messy situation!

Yeah I concur. PMG's video on ZAUM was soft on the company and crucifying on the fired crew. It didn't earn them any points per se, but it also presented new info that neither ZAUM or Kurvits, Taal/Rostov and Hindpere hadn't had a chance to air prior. But they guilted Kurvits and Taal/Rostov and brushed Kompus soft.

seems like i misinterpreted his quote! thanks for providing the link, i wouldn't have known otherwise.

i still can't shake my feeling of the doc's opportunism, but that's just my personal reaction as someone who isn't familiar with PMG's body of work.

PMG was so naive to the inherent power imbalance between the two sides of the issue. naturally the guys with all the power in the situation get to speak more candidly than the guys who are fighting like hell not to lose everything, both inside the company and outside of it.

in reply to @Bigg's post:

I'm still genuinely baffled by the reception to the PMG doc that I've seen, to the point it feels like I watched something different. Kompus comes across as real shady, and the narrative that something dodgy happened is very compelling. I still think it was important to get other staff viewpoints, who had until that point been ignored or suffered backlash that should have just been focused on management. Those conversations are uncomfortable, but I think the reply from Rostov et al was quite good, and gave good context from their side and made good work at healing any hurts towards those other employees. That final section though, and the final written response. It takes concerns from former employees and paints them as purely management PR tactics. If people want to accuse those members of staff of that, just say it. Rostov et al can rightly take the moral high ground on the legal fight, but Chris is right to say that written reply is pretty outrageous, its just as much PR spin. You can address those issues without conceding the legal argument.

Finally, I'm not sure how this new development reinforces how people originally felt about the doc? It's sounds like from the article, that leadership started cracking down following the doc, the mask fully dropping. It just confirms that the rest of the workers who were left at Zaum continued to get shafted throughout this whole ordeal.

TLDR The PMG doc is misrepresented, I think it accurately shows that Kompus et al were dodgy and likely stole the company and IP. This new development confirms that these vultures are awful people and continue to make working conditions worse. There is a separate issue about interpersonal issues between some colleagues, which while mostly handled well by Rostov et al in the doc, they were unnecessarily dismissive to some. Chris' reaction to this specific point seems to have coloured the whole doc for a lot of people, I don't know how/why.

I literally had the same thought during that video, completely turned around my opinions about their journalism, also, I'm pretty sure Quinn's name was nowhere on that video, which I find very funny cause I typically enjoy his work, so knowing he potentially wasnt a part of that video is a breath of fresh air to me