What games are developed by Marxists, cooperatives or strong union devs?
Disco Elysium kind of great fr
motion twin is an anarcho-syndicalist co-op. note that dead cells isn’t maintained by them anymore.
Interesting!
Dead Cells, Night in the Woods, Tonight We Riot
Tonight we riot is fun as fuck. I got it in an itch.io bundle and forgot about it until earlier this year.
The game had barely released and they put it on the BLM itch.io bundle. Completely and utterly based.
Night in the Woods is a good time then? only glancing interactions with just the fandom of it.
There is this WIP game with a demo available. It is set in a DnD like fantasy universe.
Good find. I’ve had my sights on that.
Noted!
Disco Elysium is kinda the ceiling in my opinion. It is pretty perfect. I tried for a bit but couldn’t find anything similar.
Disco Elysium will unfortunately get a sequel that won’t be up to snuff.
Because of the people now in charge…
Part of me is morbidly curious what they try to do. I would never give that studio money now after what they did, but I want to see how mainstream they try to go.
They’d probably make it an action RPG or something.
They will probably still make it a CRPG of some sort, but probably turn-based or with more combat.
I don’t know how many people from before the turnover are still there…
Don’t the former developers explicitly endorse piracy of it now?
I believe so!
Decolonators
Oho!
I’m making a Notion doc of this stuff right now. Let me try to look for it…
Here you go. Found it.
Check it out and give me suggestions on what to add to it here:
Y’all can give me some criticism and pointers on how to move forward with this, if you want.
Would W.M. Akers’ “Comrades” count as a TTRPG to add to your list? It was made by an anarchist with a heavy dislike for “Stalinists” though
cruelty squad, pathologic series
Ice-Pick Lodge are marxists?
They havent ever said they are, but they are also a heavily unionised workplace and said that even if there publisher closed doors tomorrow they would still find a way to support there core team, and would work on the games even if no one was paying them.
Tetris I suppose, but that kind of is the low-hanging fruit. Especially since it was basically made by one person who has gone on to be…pretty capitalist.
Disco Elysium is probably the best example, but the developers were basically ousted and the license was usurped. I would suggest finding alternative ways to get the game that won’t profit the usurpers.
Dead Cells used to be developed by a workers collective (Motion Twin) though the team that took over (Evil Empire) is not a coop. Motion Twin was still involved in the Evil Empire projects as far as I am aware.
Stray Bombay (The Anacrusis) is organised as a co-op, I think.
Excellent. Did the tetris dev really turn out to be some capitalist? what’s been his position post 1990?
Yeah Disco Elysium is a damn shame.
What was the lore with the takeover of dead cells?
Will look into Stray Bombay.
Pajitnov moved to the US in the 90s, started the Tetris company, and has had political positions pretty sympathetic to the US. Tetris company mostly just exists to liscense out Tetris and sue people.
The Dead Cells takeover wasn’t anything shady really. Evil Empire (the current team) was created by Motion Twin because they wanted to expand development as a bigger studio and found their structure made that difficult. Motion Twin remains a coop and retains creative control of the IP.
Oh yeah, and I would recommend Citizen Sleeper.