Robert Kurvitz (born 8 October 1984) is an Estonian novelist, video game designer, and musician. He was the lead writer and designer of the 2019 video game Disco Elysium as a founding member of the ZA/UM cultural association and the eponymous video game development company that grew out of it. Kurvitz was fired from ZA/UM in 2022, alongside Disco Elysium's lead art director Aleksander Rostov, after the majority stake in ZA/UM was acquired by Estonian businessmen Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel.
Life and career
Early life
By the age of fifteen, Kurvitz had dropped out of school. He became part of a group of peers called The Overcoats, a group of "5-10 high school dropouts...anarchists of some sort, with the motto: 'Today we drink tea, tomorrow we rule the world.'" Long pen-and-paper role-playing sessions with this group were the beginning of the world that would become Disco Elysium's Elysium, and former Overcoats would form the core of the group that coalesced into the ZA/UM cultural association (not to be confused with ZA/UM Studio) in the early 2000s.
Music
In 2001, Kurvitz became the lyricist and lead singer of progressive rock band Ultramelanhool, which has seen by many as a continuation of the Estonian alternative rock tradition developed by Vennaskond and Metro Luminal. The literary scientist Jaak Tomberg argued, however, that such easy comparisons may do a disservice to the band's actual original character. To date, they have released two albums, (Black Orange) and (Material), in 2004 and 2008 respectively.
The band failed to secure an Estonian record label for their second album. It was then self-released with money inherited by Kurvitz's long-time friend, editor, and collaborator Martin Luiga, and released on the internet for free. In 2011, Kurvitz collaborated on his father's album Forbidden to Sing, providing backing vocals and keyboards.
Literature
In 2013, Kurvitz published the novel Sacred and Terrible Air (), on which he had worked over five years. The novel, set in the fictional world of Elysium, centers on three men who, twenty years after the unexplained disappearance of their classmates, are still determined to locate them. It received positive reviews, with literary theorist Johanna Ross highlighting it as one of the few books to successfully bridge science fiction and "literature proper". The literary scientist Jaak Tomberg emphasized the great attention to detail in his review: "Through that novel we bear witness to (1) a style which seems to be in its actually realistic and simply reflective way to be attentive towards the world to an almost paranoid degree, and (2) to a made-up world, which in its relentless interconnectedness is far more systemic than the reality we recognize as 'our own' and also remarkably more systemic than most of the fictional ones, which may by their similar way of building reservedly be called 'fantastic'." Despite its positive critical reception, the book was a commercial failure, selling between 1,000-1,500 copies, and causing Kurvitz to "succumb to a deep alcoholism". An English translation was planned for 2020, but it did not occur. As of 2023, two English fan translations exist.
Having played tabletop roleplaying games for much of his life, Kurvitz uses worldbuilding techniques derived from Dungeons & Dragons, though opting for a pseudo-modernist fantasy world instead of a pseudo-medieval one. He employs help in the development of his ideas. "Mass editing" was employed as a tool in the finishing stage of the book; people of varying backgrounds assessed the readability and realism of the work, pointing out confusing passages and suggesting amendments.
Video games
In 2016, Kurvitz founded the video game development company ZA/UM. ZA/UM's first game, a single-player computer roleplaying game titled Disco Elysium, was released on 15 October 2019. Kurvitz was the game's lead writer and designer, having produced about half of the total in-game text (half a million words). The game was set in the same world as Kurvitz's novel Sacred and Terrible Air. It received universal acclaim, being named as a game of the year by several publications, along with numerous other awards for its narrative and art.