Interview Robert Kurvitz talks about writing Disco Elysium on GameSpot Audio Logs

[Verylittlefishes]

Disco haters: complaining abour overcomplicated tons of text, whining about vozial navel.
Also Disco haters: complaining about Twitter-influenced style sentences.

Okay.

 

[Alpan]

The greater point Kurvitz was trying to make -- and he mentions this in the video as well -- is that reading sucks: It is considered a boring activity for the majority of people, and even people who like reading often soldier through it. At the same time the same majority of people have no problems spending hours fully engaged with Twitter, doubtlessly reading a lot of text, and reacting to some of it with their own tweets, even as they quickly scroll their way through. From these two simple observations, and navigating what appears to be a fundamental contradiction, he comes to the conclusion that this is how quite a lot of people read these days, and goes about trying to understand what makes Twitter text work. There is no doubt that Twitter is an inspiration for Disco Elysium, but it's not quite "lol let's make Twitter the game".

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The greater point Kurvitz was trying to make -- and he mentions this in the video as well -- is that reading sucks: It is considered a boring activity for the majority of people, and even people who like reading often soldier through it. At the same time the same majority of people have no problems spending hours fully engaged with Twitter, doubtlessly reading a lot of text, and reacting to some of it with their own tweets, even as they quickly scroll their way through. From these two simple observations, and navigating what appears to be a fundamental contradiction, he comes to the conclusion that this is how quite a lot of people read these days, and goes about trying to understand what makes Twitter text work.

What makes twitter work is short attention span, successive fragmented bits of information conveyed in insane speed, collective texting and group thinking (hashtags), etc. Tons of futility, addiction and waste of time. You tried to do a game that feels like a visual novel inspired on social media and you have the worst of both worlds: none of the gameplay and reactivity you would associate with a traditional cRPG and none of the narrative you would expect from a visual novel. But it must be great since it sounds innovative, ain't?

 

[Haba]

But it must be great

Yes indeed.

Universal acclaim, 91 on Metacritic, Codex GOTY and recommended Cleveland Mark Blakemore himself.

 

[Viata]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

essentially every Western RPG has put its text in very long, squat horizontal windows.

…no?
right off the top of my head I can think of a recent example: the shadowrun games

 

[MRY]

I said essentially. Older games didn’t do it as much either. But from 90s on it is the strong norm.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

Never understood people who think "reading sucks" and consider themselves a sentient beings.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I said essentially. Older games didn’t do it as much either. But from 90s on it is the strong norm.

If I had to guess: because the standard aspect ratio at the time(4:3) made the horizontal windows appear much less stretched than they do on both modern devices and devices dating prior to that period. The 90s(late 80s, actually) shifted from 1.6:1 to 4:3 IIRC.

 

[jebsmoker]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

Never understood people who think "reading sucks" and consider themselves a sentient beings.

i couldn't stomach pillars of eternity 1 because it throws paragraph after paragraph at you in a way that disrupts the core gameplay loop. DE's core gameplay loop is designed *around* the reading, so it works better

in other words, it has to be designed well

 

[Viata]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

Never understood people who think "reading sucks" and consider themselves a sentient beings.

i couldn't stomach pillars of eternity 1 because it throws paragraph after paragraph at you in a way that disrupts the core gameplay loop. DE's core gameplay loop is designed *around* the reading, so it works better

in other words, it has to be designed well

Sure. I love reading, but doesn't mean every time I read something, it has to be an encyclopedia. That is the problem of PoE 1. Every character has max lore and know every shit that is happening around the world and have 5000 words to tell about it.

 

[Alpan]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

Never understood people who think "reading sucks" and consider themselves a sentient beings.

You will have to direct this sentiment toward Kurvitz. Watch the video.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Universal acclaim, 91 on Metacritic, Codex GOTY and recommended Cleveland Mark Blakemore himself.

M O N G O L O I D

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Fuck people that think reading sucks. Bunch of fags, including those that supposedly "like reading and often soldier through it".

Never understood people who think "reading sucks" and consider themselves a sentient beings.

You will have to direct this sentiment toward Kurvitz. Watch the video.

Kurvitz is certainly not "reading sucks" guy. I guess he meant the morons who won't buy his game because "were iz muh kombad bookz are sheet".

 

[Latro]

Disco haters: complaining abour overcomplicated tons of text

the prose is dull and unfun to read. the biggest DE fans are ESL.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

lol when even kotaku knows more about rpgs than codexers

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Disco haters: complaining abour overcomplicated tons of text

the prose is dull and unfun to read. the biggest DE fans are ESL.

You want RPG where all texts are poetry?
Hell, I do!

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Universal acclaim

There are plenty of people here who knows their stuff and hated the game.

91 on Metacritic

Since when Metacritic became a criterion of quality?

Codex GOTY.

DA:O and TW3 must be classics then.

Cleveland Mark Blakemore himself.

Cleve enjoys all kinds of crazy animu and trashy horror movies. I love the man neanderthal but his huge brain isn't always reliable in matters of taste.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[ItsChon]

Whichever way you look at it, using twitter as inspiration to design your game is a bad idea

This isn't an argument, it's a Fanta tier shitpost. Don't resort to such low tier stuff, it's beneath you.

What is that? A euphemism for short attention span and vices of social media? Traditional dialogue trees are perfectly usable.

Sure, traditional dialogue trees are perfectly usable, but the dialogue system that Disco uses is absolutely perfect for representing various different thoughts and ideas each chiming in. Thoughts sliding down is much smoother and more satisfying than new dialogue just appearing in the box that's at the bottom of the screen. I don't think anyone here is arguing that all games should automatically switch to Disco's type of dialogue trees. The point is that it worked perfectly for what Disco Elysium was trying to do, and other games might also benefit from keeping the design philosophies that Kurvitz outlines in mind when they're making their own game.

I found it a chore to read, and figured most others did also, hence why all the devs went back to bottom-center.

What the fuck? Why are you pretending like the screenshots you linked are at all similar to Disco's system? The boxes are arranged haphazardly around the screen, they're stuck in a transparent window that seems like it'd be an inventory screen or something else along those lines, and they take up essential parts of the background. And, as Infinitron points out, it's about the placement of the dialogue in the right hand side of the screen, which is just as important as it being narrow. Get this false equivalency shit out of my face.

There are plenty of people here who knows their stuff and hated the game.

Like who? Goral? Jenkem? Latro? Roxor? These people don't even speak English.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

The Disco text is all right-sided on the screen. So on a widescreen monitor, you have to physically turn your head or eyes to read it properly, then center back for the game. It's shitty design. IE and Fallout design is superior as the text is centered and also narrows into a nice readable column. You can also see what's going on in front of you as you read, instead of having all that writing off to the side like that in DE, where it takes up the whole length of the screen vertically.

 

[Roguey]

Roguey Not sure what to tell you. I've always found it more comfortable to read narrower paragraphs. There's a reason why newspapers print in columns rather than edge-to-edge.
This:

Is a lot more comfortable than this:

I improved your examples by centering the top image . See how much easier it is to read?

It's not particularly egregious in your Fallout/PST examples because of the low screen resolution (it's like if the right half of the Disco Elysium screen was all that could fit on the monitor), but in newer games you need another solution than edge-to-edge dialogue windows, and the sidebar format is the best I've seen. Anything as narrow as DE's window would if centered either obscure the middle of the game window, i. e. the spot where everything is happening, or it'd fit practically no text. Agree to disagree, I guess.

Newer games don't have the text take up the entire wide screen, devs aren't that clueless.

Which is more comfortable to read? The top one for me without question.

As for the writing guidelines in your post, that's just anti-wall of text sentiment, which is a bit funny when you bring it to a newspost about this:

One can do that without making it sound like every character lives on twitter.

 

[Excommunicator]

Whichever way you look at it, using twitter as inspiration to design your game is a bad idea

This isn't an argument, it's a Fanta tier shitpost. Don't resort to such low tier stuff, it's beneath you.

It's a statement. Twitter to me has always had very poor readability let alone any other bad influences on dialogue

 

[ItsChon]

The Disco text is all right-sided on the screen. So on a widescreen monitor, you have to physically turn your head or eyes to read it properly, then center back for the game. It's shitty design.

Lol? What the fuck are we talking about here? Your hyperbolic statement aside, how is a feature not being fully optimized for a widescreen monitor an indictment against its design? If I said some bullshit about how X feature doesn't look good on my 4k monitor therefore it's shit design, or whatever the fuck else, people would laugh at my face, and rightfully so.

Also, imagine complaining about the fact that you might have to possibly turn your head the tiniest fraction of a degree just to have a better view of the text

IE and Fallout design is superior as the text is centered and also narrows into a nice readable column.

You've never played DE, so how the fuck are you going to sit here and tell me that IE and Fallout's text design would be superior in Disco Elysium. And note, no one is arguing that textboxes being on the right side of the screen is superior to them being on the bottom, or whatever else you might think. I specifically said that designing the text UI the way it was done is the absolute best choice for DE, and other games that want to do similar things might also benefit from experimenting with some things.

You can also see what's going on in front of you as you read, instead of having all that writing off to the side like that in DE, where it takes up the whole length of the screen vertically.

In the video, they specifically cited complaints against the textbox being on the bottom of the screen and talking up the whole length of the screen horizontally. I mean, I think it's a nonissue with either horizontal or vertical textboxes, but people that love to complain are going to complain regardless of what you do.

One can do that without making it sound like every character lives on twitter.

That's not what was said, and that's not what was done in the game. Whatever though, keep being disingenuous.

Never has there been a more concentrated effort to shit on a game from people that haven't played it, or are simply butt hurt about the level of praise it's getting.

It's a statement. Twitter to me has always had very poor readability let alone any other bad influences on dialogue

Twitter was used as inspiration for the UI of the dialogue screen and certain elements of syntax. But making a broad, sweeping statement such as, "Using anything inspired from Twitter is a bad idea" is just intellectually lazy. Plenty of terrible shit has been used as inspiration to create great works, and it's clear from DE's reception that this was a good move.

 

[Infinitron]

This can be a deceptive visual comparison, because in reality when you reach the state in the bottom screen, you will have already read all the dialogue that scrolled up. You're only looking at the bottom right corner.