You could really do several different interviews because so many different things have happened at once. On the one hand, you have a new book out in the Loomingu Raamatukogu series, you wrote the text for the choral work "Kauge kaja" and at the beginning of the summer, ZA/UM's new video game "Zero Parades: For Dead Spies" was also released. Are these all simply long-term projects that, more or less by chance, happened to wrap up at the same time?

Yes. The choral piece in particular came completely out of the blue and just landed in my lap. At some point, Jonas Tarm started pestering me, saying, "Let's do it, let's do it," but I was worried because I'd never even written song lyrics before, let alone lyrics specifically for a choral piece. Jonas also wanted us to create the work together somehow — he hadn't finished the melody yet and the score hadn't been written. He wanted us simply to meet regularly: one of us would go off into a corner and write words, the other would go off into a corner and continue writing the melody and then we'd come back together and see how the two might fit. One influenced the other — the words influenced the melody and the melody influenced the words.

So that was happening in the middle of everything else, while the book manuscript was still unfinished and "Zero Parades" was getting increasingly intense, and I did start to feel like it was all a bit too much. On top of that, I was translating Dennis Kelly's play "Orphans" for Markus Ilves at Tallinn City Theater, which premiered a few months before "Zero Parades" was finished. So taken together, it was complete overkill.

Have you always had this tendency to take too much on and then regret it afterward?

Yes. I don't know how to say "no" and I never have any sense of how long things actually take. As soon as an exciting offer comes along, I get really enthusiastic and think I'll somehow manage to make it work. But in the end, I find myself gritting my teeth and getting it done at the expense of sleep, my health and my family relationships. Ultimately, it's just not sustainable, but I'm trying to get better at it.

Have you learned to say "no" yet?

I can't boast that I've become particularly good at saying "no," but it also helps if someone else tells me to say "no" because I'm very obedient. If my spouse says, for example, "For the next three months, you simply have to say 'no' to everything," then I listen and at least try.

If my spouse could hear me saying this right now, she'd probably say she hasn't noticed me listening at all (laughs).

But now that "Orphans" has been translated, "Zero Parades" is finished, the book is out and the choral work has been performed for audiences, can you say that you finally have a little time to rest? Or have you already said "yes" several more times, with the next round of commitments waiting for you?

Things have definitely slowed down. The final stretch of "Zero Parades" was pretty intense — there were a few weeks, and even an entire month, when I was away from home, with my spouse and the children in Tallinn while I was in London. By the end, it was all very difficult. I also feel incredibly guilty when I disappear from the lives of the people close to me and my children — ultimately, it all comes at too high a price.

This summer has been a little calmer and apart from one new play I'm currently translating for Tallinn City Theater, I don't have anything else in the works. Maybe it's the calm before the storm, but I'd like to hope that from now on I'll be able to devote myself to fewer things at once and achieve a more reasonable balance between work and family life. Maybe even see my friends every once in a while. That would be really nice.

PIC

To start with literature, then for the past couple of weeks I've seen almost nothing on social media except praise for your new work. How surprising has this somewhat explosive response been for you? I imagine you've seen a lot of it yourself as well.

I actually haven't seen that much of it, but some people have written to me and it's made me feel that I've never received such immediate, personal and warm feedback on any of my books before. Books usually take time to really reach readers because anyone who reads books at all usually already has 20 to 50 books they want to read. When new books keep coming out, you go to the back of the line and if you're lucky people will discover your book a year or two later, maybe even five years later.

This time, people — at least those who have written to me directly — really have felt an immediate need to share their personal experiences and simply say "thank you." That's been surprising and heartwarming. I had no idea what would become of this book, other than that I'd always dreamed of one day being published in the Loomingu Raamatukogu series.

You've already partly answered my next question because I was going to ask whether you ever even dared to dream that something of yours would be published in Loomingu Raamatukogu.

It really was a dream, yes. Just getting that "yes" from the editorial team was already the fulfillment of a dream for me. Their selection process is quite rigorous; they don't usually publish more than two or three original manuscripts a year. Everyone on their editorial board has their own tastes and their own ideas about what Loomingu Raamatukogu should represent and what its purpose is. I was told right away not to be too disappointed or offended if they decided not to publish the manuscript and that the whole process would take time, so I should be patient.

But when that "yes" finally came several months later, I was very, very happy. I've been thinking that, when it comes to the response to the book, I need to curb the temptation to follow the feedback or seek out praise because with this book it feels a little ... perverse to become vain or seek approval. This is something I needed to write for myself in order to deal with my grief. If I start collecting all the different cheers and accolades the book receives, it starts to feel a little like I'm seeking praise for my grief.

On the one hand, of course, I'm incredibly grateful and moved when people write to me and share their experiences and impressions. But on the other hand, I have to restrain myself. Unlike perhaps with some of my earlier work, this time I feel I can't allow myself to become too vain or give in to the desire for attention. It wouldn't be the right thing to do, because this isn't that kind of book.

Were you knocking on Loomingu Raamatukogu's door for a long time? Did it take you a while to work up the courage to send that first email?

I did have to work up the courage and pull myself together. First, I had to finish the manuscript because I didn't want to approach them with some empty promise that I was planning to write something very special and ask whether they could make a little room for me in their schedule. I wanted the manuscript to be finished from beginning to end and ready to read.

But no, I wasn't knocking on their door for a long time. I'd simply been thinking for years that I'd like to publish something there one day.

If they'd said "no," would you have published the work yourself? Or would you have left it unpublished altogether?

I don't know whether I would have wanted to publish it myself. Not because I would have taken their rejection as confirmation that the book didn't deserve to be published, but simply because the content is so deeply personal and, at times, uncomfortable for me that I couldn't picture myself taking on the role of promoting the book myself, selling it to bookstores and handling that whole side of things.

Maybe I would have offered it to another publisher, but fortunately we'll never know what would have happened, because the best possible thing happened (laughs).

You worked on this manuscript for quite a long time — about six years, I think? Or perhaps even longer?

An earlier version of the manuscript began in 2017, because for a long time the book opened with an obituary for Margus Karu. An hour or two after I learned that he had died, Sirp asked me to write an obituary for him. Of course, that was an utterly impossible task after receiving news like that, but it had to be done and somehow I pulled myself together and wrote it. For a long time, that piece was the opening chapter of the manuscript. But as my editor, Maia Tammjärv, and I worked on tightening and polishing the manuscript, we realized that the whole thing was much stronger if it began a little differently.

All sorts of other things were cut as well. The original version was actually a little longer, but I think we got the pacing exactly right in the end and made it fluid and tight. So the active writing process lasted from 2017 to 2025.

Did you think of the text as a manuscript from the very beginning or was it initially just a document where you wrote things down to get them out of your system?

I instinctively felt that it would eventually form some kind of whole, but I didn't know when it would be finished. With my previous work, I've had a better sense of where I was going — I've had a rough idea of how long the text would be and approximately how long I'd need to write it. With this book, everything was completely unknown. I simply had to let the process unfold calmly and without rushing it. There were times when even a year might pass without me writing anything and then I'd return to the text. The process was dictated by my own transformation in the wake of the events described in the book.

Margus is one of the book's protagonists, so to speak, if that word can be used here. But after Margus died in 2017, I had a very strange six months during which several more people close to me died, one after another. At some point, it began to feel as though every other month I was simply going to someone's funeral. It was all too much to comprehend or fully process emotionally and at some point it almost became routine. I started to feel that I'd already reached that stage of life people usually talk about when they're older, when everyone around them starts dying. It happened to me when I was 33.

So my own growth and transformation dictated the process and the endpoint came when I felt that the story was finished. Somehow, I'd reached a new place in my grief and in my life more generally where everything I describe and analyze in the book was beginning to feel like the previous chapter of my life, with a new story beginning from there. At some point, I had to recognize that this was where the dividing line fell.

There was one other thing that happened. In the book, I also talk about my father and my relationship with him. He's still alive in the book and I had some hope that perhaps things between us might still change. But then, shortly before the book went to press, my father died. In a way, that became a kind of checkpoint in the evolution of the manuscript. Even though I felt some urge to write about that as well and add it to the book, it already seemed like a story for some future book.

PIC

As you described, at some point you realized there was a boundary to this book, one that was in a sense also dictated by events in your life. But did the text itself also play an important role in that? Was writing at times a kind of therapeutic tool that helped you arrive at some kind of understanding?

I think writing has always been therapeutic for me. It helps me understand where I am in my life and what I actually feel and think. Even when I've written plays or prose that aren't directly about my life, with fictional characters in fictional situations and plots, there's always some deeply personal emotional truth in there. In that sense, I definitely needed to write this book simply because I didn't know how else to cope with my grief.

When you returned to the text at different points over the years, were those the most hopeful moments or the most difficult ones — times when you felt you needed to start writing again?

They were different kinds of moments and I consciously tried to maintain a balance between heaviness and lightness, profundity and the everyday. I didn't want the story to veer too far toward any extreme. I have a natural tendency to be very somber and serious when I write, which I don't particularly like because it's not very interesting when there are too few shades and you're working in just one register, one color, one attitude or one point of view. I like a text to be dynamic, to contain more than just despair or a description of what a terrible place the world is and how difficult life is.

Life itself is a deeply contradictory and varied experience for all of us and the best stories — the ones that have sustained and accompanied me throughout my life — leave room for more than just pessimism or nihilism.

Your book is actually very life-affirming. One thought from it that has stayed with me is that people who tend toward negativity need to understand that positivity takes effort. We could all be depressed all the time; it's just that some people make an effort not to be.

Exactly. Through the eyes of someone suffering from depression, any kind of lightness can seem completely impossible and out of the question. If someone in a group of friends or a family is more humorous, has a more positive outlook on life, is perhaps more cheerful and playful, that is often mistaken for frivolity or naivety. For someone with depression, their seriousness also serves as a shield that protects their dignity and personal space and it can start to feel as though this is the proper way for a person to be and everything else is simply unrealistic, frivolous or childish.

Very often, it's precisely the brightest people around us who carry the heaviest burden because despite everything, they work to preserve that brightness within themselves and use it to lift others up as well. That's difficult, demanding work and it's something worth recognizing rather than disparaging.

How are you doing when it comes to that sense of lightness? Have you been more on the bright side lately or do you tend to fall toward the other side?

I lean more toward the bright side than I ever have before because I've changed the way I live and found a certain stability that I never had earlier in my life. So in that sense, I'm definitely brighter these days (laughs). But the fall can always come very suddenly.

What surprises me most about this book is that although the text was written over many years, it reads as one powerful whole. I read it in one sitting and I've heard the same thing from several other people — that it's difficult to put down. Was that something you and your editor worked on deliberately, taking what was initially a fragmented text apart and then putting the pieces back together to create a strong, cohesive whole?

I'm very happy to hear that. A lot of the credit definitely has to go to my editor, Maia Tammjärv, who very calmly helped tighten the story, identified the most important focal points, motifs and threads holding everything together, drew attention to them and made sure the book worked as a strong whole.

At the same time, I wouldn't say the original manuscript was significantly more fragmented or that we had to take all the Lego bricks apart and put them back together in a completely different way. The work that has now reached readers was written in essentially this order and in this form. The editing process was more about tightening the text, during which some things were cut and others made more precise. Some entire chapters were cut, not just individual sentences and paragraphs. The goal was to make the text tight, so that it never dragged and we didn't start rambling about things that weren't relevant to the main subject.

For example, I had this long discussion in there about a Coldplay album. I'm very glad that's no longer in the book because it would have felt like a complete detour into music criticism.

But I'm surprised when you say you read it in one sitting because neither I nor my editor, Maia Tammjärv, can read more than a couple of chapters at a time. Not that I regularly sit around reading my own book, but I remember that during the editing process we had to go through it repeatedly and both my editor and I felt there was a certain amount of the text we could handle in a day without it becoming too exhausting. The fact that the book can now be read in one sitting is the ultimate compliment because it means we ultimately managed to make it tight and fluid enough.

The book's title is also a powerful image. Why "Inimese kostüüm" ("Human Costume")?

I can answer that in two ways. The simpler answer is that this time I had absolutely no idea what the book should be called. That had never happened to me before. Usually, by the end of the final chapter at the latest, I've arrived at a title I'm happy with and feel ties the whole thing together nicely. This time I couldn't find one. I tried out different options, but none of them worked.

Eventually, my dear friend Eia Uus read the manuscript, and I asked her to suggest some possible titles. She immediately sent me a whole list, and "Inimese kostüüm" was one of them. Eia actually suggested "Inimese kostüüm seljas," a three-word title. I dropped the word "seljas," leaving just "Inimese kostüüm," and I really started to like it.

PIC

That was the simpler answer?

Yes, that was the simpler explanation (laughs). But I'll try to keep the other answer short.

On the one hand, the book looks at Margus as someone who was trying to be a person — to act like a human being — as he went about his life and his work and there was always something slightly comical about that to me. I don't mean that in any malicious way. It was simply one of his personality traits that I recognized in myself as well and it gave me the sense that he was one of my people, that we perceived life and the experience of being human in a similar way.

Second, that also extends to all the other people whose stories I tell in the book, including my own experience. We're all these strange creatures thrown into existence, trying to act like human beings and none of us pulls it off particularly convincingly. So perhaps life really is this strange undertaking where you have to wear a human costume and before life and after life, you get to take the costume off again.

Writing has accompanied you in one way or another throughout your life, but now "Inimese kostüüm" has come out, your first poetry collection was published last year and before that there was quite a long gap in your writing. Was that the period when you were working on "Disco Elysium"?

I didn't write "Disco Elysium"; I was the director on it. But yes, there were periods in between when we were developing various video game ideas until eventually one of them really took root and we ultimately finished it — "Zero Parades." I was one of the writers on that as well as the director.

It was a kind of period of experimentation and searching for the next work. By then I'd moved back to Estonia and was readjusting to life here. Our family had returned after living in Brighton for about three years. There was all the practical business of settling back in — our older child started at a new school, our younger child started kindergarten, we had to find somewhere to live and so on. But throughout this whole England-Estonia period, my main job really has been game development. I entered the field in 2019 with the idea of devoting one year to it so I could finish directing "Disco Elysium - The Final Cut," but by now it's been seven years.

How did you end up making video games in the first place? "Inimese kostüüm" also mentions repeatedly that video games are important to you, but what had to happen for someone who was a writer and had previously worked mainly as a theater director to suddenly start making video games?

It's pretty unexpected that things turned out that way at all. To some extent, it was chance, and to some extent, without realizing it, I'd made exactly the right choices earlier in my life. When I went to drama school and before that when I studied at film and television school, I never imagined that making video games could ever be a possibility, much less that it could become my main job. Video games seemed more like an area of life that was my hobby and had been since childhood. For as long as I can remember, I've always played video games, but it never occurred to me that game development might need people like me — that it needed writers, actors and directors. Like a lot of people, I probably assumed games were made by programmers somewhere in Japan or perhaps some other faraway country. Estonia didn't even have such a thing as a video game industry. So there weren't any role models around me whom I could look to as mentors or whose footsteps I could follow. It was all very unexpected when the "Disco Elysium" project finally took off and began attracting all kinds of creative people like a magnet.

In the early days of developing "Disco Elysium," the ZA/UM crowd, which I'd been part of from the beginning, was working out of a studio space on Müürivahe tänav, freezing in there and tinkering away at the game. I was over on Rataskaevu tänav at Von Krahl Theater where I was still a permanent member of the company at the time — a dramaturge and actor and occasionally a director as well. I just watched what they were doing from a distance and it was pretty baffling. I didn't understand who they were making it for or where any of it was supposed to lead. It seemed absurd that suddenly they were making a video game because up to that point we'd done all sorts of more conventional things: photography projects, a blog that published book reviews, debates about culture and cultural policy and so on. Video games had always been very important to us and had played a major role in shaping who we were, but actually plunging headfirst into game development ourselves initially struck me as an unbelievable move.

Kaur Kender was one of the main driving forces in that group, along with several other people. One frequently told story about the origins of "Disco" is that Kaur's sons asked him how much longer he was going to keep writing those books when nobody read them and why didn't he make a video game instead? Kaur then took that idea to Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov and they ran with it. Robert is said to have told Rostov, "My friend, we've already failed at so many things in our lives. Why not fail at making a video game too?" Then, one by one, they started bringing different people in and building the thing together. When they reached the point where they needed to start working with actors in the studio, the next logical step seemed to be bringing me on board, since I was the only trained director in the group.

At first, the idea was that we'd finish the whole thing in a year: come move to England "for a little while." I dropped out of my master's program and our whole family moved to England. But then the pandemic hit, followed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the world became a very different place. We made new plans and ended up staying there for three years. It all started simply because Kaur used to come see my productions at Von Krahl and then at some point it was: "Wait, Jim knows how to direct. Let's get him to come and do it."

But Jim, who knew how to direct, didn't know anything about making video games at the time. You'd only ever played them before?

Yes. None of us knew anything about making video games. That was the absurd risk we took: a bunch of poets, artists and science-fiction fans from some country called Estonia where there wasn't even such a thing as a game industry decided that now we'd make a game too. It's pretty ridiculous, but of course we brought in people who actually knew how games were made and that's how the thing eventually got finished.

In the book, you also describe closing the office door for the last time when "Disco Elysium" was finished. After that insane three-year process was over, were you even ready at that point to contemplate making another video game? Or did you immediately realize that this was something you could keep doing, despite how intense it had been?

By then, I'd already gotten a taste for it because I'd developed some understanding of the landscape, of how the field worked behind the scenes, so to speak, and by that point I'd met so many fascinating people. I'd begun to understand what game development actually meant and where it could take you. I was also thrilled by how far a work from Estonia had traveled. It's completely improbable and, at the same time, fantastic that this story touched and interested so many people that, as things stand now, it has sold somewhere north of 5 million copies. That's an enormous achievement for a work from Estonia and nobody imagined things could possibly turn out that way.

Of course, luck played a part as well. We happened to make the right thing at the right time and we wouldn't be able to write down the formula for that success — it's not something you can deliberately replicate. But the experience gave me the confirmation I needed: game development remains the most exciting place to be in popular culture right now because the way people think there, the ideas circulating there and the things being made are simply so fresh. And right now, perhaps more powerfully than any other art form, it's shaping what we talk about and what we think about.

PIC

As you said, you didn't come up with a formula for success, but at the beginning of the summer ZA/UM released a new game, "Zero Parades: For Dead Spies." Was that a completely different project? It was certainly different in that by then you'd already finished one game and had that experience under your belt.

It was a completely different project and a completely different experience. People with more experience told us that the transition from being a one-hit wonder to a band with two or more albums is a very painful and difficult process. It's significantly harder to become a studio that has already released two or three games than to be a studio making its debut, starting with a blank slate and getting the chance to prove and define itself.

Was it a painful process?

Yes, it was very, very difficult. It also made me wonder whether this is even a sustainable field because it takes so much time and game development is such a resource-intensive undertaking. I grew up in theater; I spent most of my life in theater — attending a youth theater group when I was young and later working in theater as a dramaturge, director and actor. It was a world I understood and where I felt at home and the pace of life in theater is completely different. When you start a new production based on a play, the company gets together and reads through the play and two months later — or three months later for a longer process — you have opening night. One way or another, opening night happens, the production gets finished, people take their bows, there are flowers, hugs and pats on the back and then you start performing the show, move on with your life and start thinking about new things.

In game development, the most notorious example right now is "GTA VI," which is like a black hole that has been approaching Earth for 12 years. The difference in scale is simply enormous in terms of how much time and how many resources go into making a single work. People have been waiting 13 years for "GTA VI," whereas in theater, it takes me two months to get from beginning to end.

I've repeatedly seen the comparison that developing "GTA VI" has cost around $2 billion or more — more than it cost to build the Burj Khalifa, currently the world's tallest building, which I think cost around $1.5 billion.

Even "GTA V," when it came out in 2013, was the most expensive entertainment project in history.

Now "GTA VI" is certain to surpass that many times over.

Yes. In some ways, it's a symptom of our era — this is where it's possible to end up in a hypercapitalist system and game development is also an inherently capitalist form of the cultural industry. Not everyone can afford the freedom and opportunities that "GTA VI" developer Rockstar Games has managed to secure for itself. It also raises the question of whether we even want to live in a world where things cost either $2 billion or nothing at all.

We live in an era where the reasonable middle category has either disappeared or is disappearing and we can see the same thing in the film industry where it has already happened. Hollywood in particular is a good example: you either have these monster projects that cost as much money as some countries manage to scrape together for their entire annual budgets or you have films people shoot on their iPhones, asking friends to help with lighting and sound, with actors working for free simply because a friend asked them to be in it. I don't think that's ultimately good for culture.

We've talked about the almost mythical budget figures for "GTA VI," but what kind of budgets have you had to work with on your games?

Much, much, much smaller.

We've talked about capitalism, money, expensive projects and cheap projects, but after making two video games, have you become rich and financially independent?

No. I'm still in a position where I don't know where my paycheck will be coming from three months from now (laughs).

I'm fortunate enough that I at least have a roof over my head and my family has a home. I don't have to live on a park bench. At least I've achieved that degree of stability, which already gives me an enormous sense of security. But I haven't yet achieved the financial freedom preached by personal finance gurus. I'm still very, very far from that.

When "Disco Elysium" came out, it did extremely well. A lot has been written about that and you received numerous awards. "Zero Parades" has now been out for a few months. How has it done? It hasn't reached quite the same heights?

No, it entered a completely different context and a completely different world. There's an enormous difference between the explosion with which "Disco Elysium" burst onto the cultural scene and the quiet, almost unnoticed way "Zero Parades" crept onto the stage.

Are you disappointed that it turned out that way? What kind of feelings does it bring up?

Of course we're disappointed because ultimately it meant that the studio ran out of the resources that had allowed it to keep all these good people on the payroll. Half of the 80 employees lost their jobs. If you follow what's happening in the game industry at all, that's a depressingly common turn of events.

We also recently saw reports that "Doom," one of the most legendary video game franchises of all time, lost almost its entire team after its latest game was completed, with only a handful of people keeping their jobs.

Yes, the wave of layoffs swept over them too. Before that, the biggest news was Microsoft Xbox laying off more than 3,000 people. Newly appointed executive Asha Sharma promised to bring Xbox back from the ashes so it could rise high again like a phoenix — and the result was thousands of people losing their jobs overnight. That included various exciting indie studios Xbox had previously acquired in the hope of becoming the world's most powerful video game brand, which then had to downsize or shut their doors. It's a brutal and completely unstable industry. If you're looking for peace and security in your life, game development is definitely not the place to find it.

Game development mentor and consultant Rami Ismail wrote something along these lines on Bluesky in June: You make a good game, everyone gets laid off; you make a bad game, everyone gets laid off; you work hard and diligently, everyone gets laid off; you're lazy and don't lift a finger, you get laid off. In other words, the end result is always the same: you lose your job.

It's also interesting because this problem is completely alien to freelance creatives. I'd venture to say that most creative professionals are freelancers for whom it's a perfectly natural rhythm of life that a new project comes along, you finish it and then you're out of work again and have to start looking for the next one. The fact that the game industry has managed to create any kind of sustainable system of monthly salaries is something of a miracle in itself. In the film industry, for example, I don't know anyone who has a stable monthly salary year after year. That's much more the exception than the rule.

PIC

"Disco Elysium" has received some coverage in Estonia, while "Zero Parades" has received less. Video games are still a major challenge for both the general public and cultural journalism in terms of how to understand them and even what they are. Do you think people in Estonia managed to understand what kind of game "Disco Elysium" is and where it fits into our cultural landscape?

I definitely noticed the caution and a certain bewilderment among people covering both "Disco Elysium" and now "Zero Parades." On the one hand, the field has grown enormously influential and large, while our cultural journalists' interest in it remains fairly lukewarm. And that's despite the fact that the video game industry has grown larger than the film and music industries combined — several times larger, in fact.

The numbers we're talking about are almost incomprehensibly large, as is the influence games now wield in popular culture. On the one hand, some games are virtually impossible to avoid, but on the other, I think reluctance and skepticism still prevail both in our cultural journalism and, let's say, in social conversations. I personally know very few people with whom I can freely discuss video games. We're still not accustomed to thinking that someone who goes to PÖFF every year and reads Loomingu Raamatukogu might also be interested in video games.

Are video games still considered inferior to other forms of culture?

Definitely. And they're not just considered inferior; they're not really considered part of culture at all. A lot of people still see them primarily as the domain of teenage boys with attention problems and poor social skills, sitting in their rooms all day with the curtains drawn, drinking energy drinks, eating chips and playing some kind of shooting games day after day. That image still predominates. People aren't used to thinking about the fact that video games now receive literary awards — "Disco Elysium," for example, was nominated for the world-famous Nebula Award for science fiction. We're not used to thinking about the fact that BAFTA in the U.K., their equivalent of the Oscars, which gives annual awards to the best in film and television, has also been giving awards for video games since 2004. This isn't something new.

In Western countries and Asia, established cultural institutions have already developed serious departments dedicated to video games and the field is valued as an important economic driver, to say nothing of its cultural impact. Think of how much cultural influence and value Japan, for example, has gained by being at the forefront of popular culture for so long, not only through manga and anime culture but also through video game culture. Nintendo is a Japanese company and Sony PlayStation also originated in Japan.

If we talk about Super Mario, for example, there are probably more people who know who he is than know any individual writer or literary character. Before anyone comes after me, I should emphasize that this doesn't mean Super Mario is somehow inherently more important than next year's Nobel laureate in literature or that it's even possible to measure the two by the same standard. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that in terms of cultural and economic weight, game development is a field that needs to be taken seriously before we miss the boat. It would be great if something similar could happen here as well, if people could build something larger and sustainable, following the example of Finland or Poland. The Finns and Poles have been very good at that and are already doing some very special things.

Now that you've finished the game, perhaps you could come back to cultural journalism or simply work on developing the video game landscape more broadly in Estonia? Do you see ways it could be developed?

The landscape can definitely be developed and enthusiasts took that sacred duty upon themselves a long time ago. One example is the "Puhata ja Mängida" podcast, which has been flying the flag for video games in the Estonian media for years. It was also great to see Müürileht introduce a video game section a little while ago. But I don't want to be a theorist; that's not really my thing. Even if I had a burning desire to interpret and analyze all of this, I already do enough of that on my podcast, "Popkulturistid" where the format is simple and relaxed: two friends chatting with each other. That's about as much as I currently want or am able to do as a cultural commentator, so to speak. I mainly prefer to focus on creating things myself.

So we won't see you working as a cultural journalist anymore? You were also recently on the anniversary edition of the cultural program "OP."

Never say never. That was a very exciting period as well. I'm not so categorical that I'd say I'll never set foot in ERR again as a program host. Definitely not, but everything has its time. I remember that when I stopped working on "OP," my reason was that I wanted to focus on my own creative work. I felt that if I was constantly running around covering everyone else's work, I wouldn't have the time to disappear for a while and figure out what I myself wanted to say or do as a writer, theater practitioner or whatever else. I needed to carve out that space and time for myself.

At the same time, I'm not ruling out the possibility that I might make another cultural program someday. Why not?

You mentioned the wave of layoffs that also hit your team after "Zero Parades" was completed. Does that mean there won't be a third game?

Time will tell.

Are you now fully settled back in Estonia and no longer splitting your time between two countries? Or what's the situation now?

I still work at ZA/UM, whose headquarters are in London, but we still have our Tallinn office as well. For the time being, the period of traveling frequently to England has come to an end, but I can't say right now what will happen next. I hope I can slow things down and spend a little less time shuttling back and forth between the two countries.

PIC

You spent several years living away from Estonia in England, which gave you a chance to look at life in Estonia somewhat from the outside. How did you view Estonia from there? What did Estonia seem like when you were living elsewhere?

One sobering thing about talking to people was realizing that most of the people I encountered in England had never heard of this entity called Estonia. We like to think we're a readily recognizable and respected little country on the global stage, at the forefront of IT, a country whose pristine nature everyone admires and where people are already saving up to come hike through the bogs. In reality, I had to do a lot of explaining about what Estonia even is — where exactly it is, what language people speak there and what do you mean Estonia isn't Russia? (laughs sadly).

On the one hand, that's depressing and sobering. But on the other hand, people in Estonia still have the opportunity to live a good quality of life, which can't necessarily be said of England because its class system is extremely resistant to change. Although I come from a family that wasn't well-off financially and I had a hard time fitting in at school, I still attended one of Estonia's so-called elite schools. I had every opportunity to carve out a place for myself in this world and find a path that interested me and could support me. So I think there are far fewer barriers here. In England, a poor person has no chance of attending an elite school. If someone works hard, knows how to communicate and be considerate of others and has interesting ideas, that person is very much needed in Estonia — and that feeling that you're genuinely needed is much harder to experience somewhere like England.

We all know how intense the competition is in the English-speaking world. One of the hardest-working and most talented actors in my ensemble, whom I worked with on both "Disco Elysium" and "Zero Parades," and who by Estonian standards could be one of our top actors, lives a life in England where he essentially lives in social housing with his small family, works all kinds of other jobs to support them and gets to act occasionally. He attended one of the best drama schools in England where he competed against 40,000 applicants for admission, out of whom they selected a single small class of 15 or 20 people. It's absurd and almost impossible to comprehend.

That could never happen in Estonia and it doesn't apply only to the creative industries or specifically to theater, but across the board. Every single one of us is needed in this country and I think that ultimately, that's one of the lifelines or rays of sunshine we've been blessed with — here, you can feel that you're genuinely needed. Even if you're a wretched culture rat.

Are you still a wretched culture rat?

Depends on the day. Some days I'm a very wretched rat and on others I'm a slightly happier one. Right now, I'm a somewhat confused but still hopeful rat.

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