Disco Elysium game director Robert Kurvitz praises the first Fallout: 'It makes other post-apocalyptic worldbuilding seem like an amusement park' - Related to failure, alliance, makes, developer, fallout:

Bill Gates laments Pat Gelsinger's failure to save Intel: 'I was hoping for his sake, for the country's sake that he would be successful'

As much as is it displeases me that every week seems to be 'let's rag on Intel' week, it's hard not to keep bringing up the firm's utter failure to bring its manufacturing up to scratch when big dogs like Bill Gates keep talking about it. At least Gates isn't ragging—he's offering a sombre lament.

Speaking to the Associated Press, ex-Microsoft co-founder and multi-billionaire Bill Gates says he is "stunned that Intel basically lost its way", referring of course to the numerous ways that Intel's design and fabrication divisions have gone wrong.

Gates sums up Intel's general problem more effective than I can: "[Intel is] kind of behind in terms of chip design and they are kind of behind in chip fabrication. And both of those are very capital intensive. They missed the AI chip revolution, and with their fabrication capabilities, they don’t even use standards that people like Nvidia and Qualcomm find easy."

Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel as CEO to lead the charge of its attempted recovery back in 2021, but after apparent failure, he retired late last year. Gates explains: "I thought Pat Gelsinger was very brave to say, ‘No, I am going to fix the design side, I am going to fix the fab side.’ I was hoping for his sake, for the country’s sake that he would be successful. I hope Intel recovers, but it looks pretty tough for them at this stage."

Speaking about the "country's sake" might be hyperbole, but there's also an air of truth to it given that Intel is the United States' only large-scale advanced chip manufacturer. TSMC has been lured over with its Arizona fab, but that's still a Taiwanese corporation.

Intel was also for a long time somewhat unique in designing and producing its own chips. Everything is done in-house, all-American born-n-bred, baby, etc, etc. But not so of late. Now, Intel outsources manufacturing for many of its own processors to TSMC. We've seen this in Meteor Lake, Lunar Lake, and Arrow Lake.

Gelsinger, as an engineer himself, sought to push into the manufacturing and fabrication side of the business to try to turn things around. But big ships take time to turn, and it's not as if other manufacturers are slowing down. TSMC is already on track for 2 nm production later this year, for instance.

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Intel's not completely out of the race, though, as it says its own 18A node is on track for Panther Lake laptop chips later this year. But Intel's interim co-CEO Michelle Holthaus also says that "Nova Lake [next-gen desktop chips] will actually have die both inside and outside [Intel Foundry] for that process". 18A might not be dead in the water, but as Gates says, it does look pretty tough for Intel at this stage.

Part of Gates's lamentation over this situation is probably in part, as the Associated Press points out, personal. That's because Gates' "soft spot" (as the AP says) for Intel is likely due to Microsoft's existence having sprung out of the space carved out for the firm by the chip giant's first desktop processors. These, of course, benefitted from, well, software, such as Microsoft's Altair BASIC programming language for the Intel-powered Altair 8800 computer.

I can see why Intel's troubles might bother Gates, then. Even for the average consumer, the corporation is a staple name and it's a shame to see it struggle.

For us heartless and mercenary PC gamers, though, we still have AMD CPUs to be excited about, and they seem to be selling rather well, judging by AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su's recent comments. AMD is an American business, after all, so it's not all doom and gloom for the states. Although Intel is obviously a much bigger desktop processor operation and, unlike fabless AMD, until in recent times held the promise of home-grown chips.

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Disco Elysium game director Robert Kurvitz praises the first Fallout: 'It makes other post-apocalyptic worldbuilding seem like an amusement park'

Marijam Did & Robert Kurvitz | Everything to Play For - YouTube Watch On.

Independent publisher Verso Books in the recent past 's Everything to Play For: How Videogames are Changing the World, and to promote that work Did has been streaming with game designers. First she played Wolfenstein: Youngblood with Josh Sawyer, and now she's played the original Fallout with Disco Elysium's game director Robert Kurvitz while chatting about politics and art.

Kurvitz is a particular fan of the first Fallout, like everyone else who is correct and right about things. During the stream he calls its character creator "the best thing on Earth" and draws attention to the way it informs you, via a dead body in a Vault suit found in the tutorial cave, that you weren't the first person sent out into the Wastes to find a water chip. That's right, skeleton storytelling was part of Fallout from its opening moments.

At the end of the stream viewer questions are asked, including this: What would Karl Marx's favorite Fallout be? "Second Fallout definitely," Kurvitz answers with confidence. "The first Fallout is like a perfect mood capsule that's almost Biblical in its annihilation. Humanity is truly on its knees. It makes other post-apocalyptic worldbuilding seem like an amusement park—except maybe Threads or some of the really darker TV series. It's a mood piece, but the second one is really very very about trade and social economics and about all of these settlements influencing each other, and so on. It's definitely Fallout 2. I'm 100% sure that Marx would not have gone for any of the Bethesda Fallouts. I'm just talking about Marx here," says Kurvitz, who is definitely just talking about Marx's opinion on Fallout and not that of anyone else, "but he would have had no respect for any of those."

It's not all politics and deep thoughts, though Kurvitz does call Fallout a Gesamtkunstwerk before the video's even 15 minutes in. He also delights in the squeaky death of a rat, saying, "Fallout has wonderful violent sounds. It's not as much a thinking man's game as people make it out to be." He says this while wearing cat ears on his headset, because we all need to feel pretty in these trying times.

The topic does turn to Disco Elysium briefly, like when Kurvitz points to the value of any work of art, videogame or otherwise, is not the thing itself, but the people it draws together. "I think that art is like a bonfire," he says, "but there need to be people around the bonfire talking about it, and then it does something." Did calls this, "another Kurvitz quotable," which he laughs at before carrying on. "I have OK metaphors, but they don't mean as much as they sound like," he says. "But I think what's worked is probably people have played Disco Elysium and they've connected to other people who've played Disco Elysium and then they've talked about it."

Kurvitz and two other members of the ZA/UM diaspora, Helen Hindpere and Alexander Rostov, have formed a studio called Red Info. Last we heard they were involved in a legal battle with Studio ZA/UM over the rights to Elysium, and had submitted a copyright for something called Corinthians. Meanwhile, the shambling animated corpse of ZA/UM has been flogging a poverty-chic Disco Elysium plastic bag.

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Paradox is the new owner of Jagged Alliance 3 and Surviving Mars developer Haemimont Games

Haemimont Games has spent the last 25 years knocking out an impressive list of strategy and management romps, including corkers like Tropico 3-5, Surviving Mars and Jagged Alliance 3. It's had a pretty great run, and now it's the latest feather in publisher Paradox Interactive's cap, which just snatched the studio up.

unveiled today, Paradox has acquired all shares in Haemimont Games and now wholly owns it. In a press release, the publisher called the acquisition "a further step in Paradox's strategic focus on growing in the management games genre, by building a strong internal capability that complements the Group's current studio organization".

This lines up with Paradox's renewed focus on its core genres. Last year, I dug into the past, present and future of the Swedish publisher, and spoke with Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja and CCO Henrik Fåhraeus about what's been a rough couple of years. There's been the tumultuous development of Bloodlines 2, the troubled launch of Cities: Skylines 2 and the cancellation of Life By You.

"We have solved this problem before," expressed Lilja, "and then we sort of forgot. But I think essentially the solution is what we did back then. We refocused on the core." He also admitted that Paradox had a habit of releasing games too early and dealing with technical issues after launch. Meanwhile, the success of games like Crusader Kings, Stellaris and Cities: Skylines made it too "overconfident", resulting in risky investments and taking on the types of games it didn't have any experience with.

For Paradox, Haemimont feels like the opposite of a risky investment. Indeed, the studio was responsible for one of Paradox's big wins: Surviving Mars. It strikes me as a good fit, then, and the only thing that's surprising about it is the fact that Paradox used Surviving Mars as a jumping off point for a whole series of (less successful) Surviving games, but didn't get Haemimont to develop them.

I'm interested in seeing what Haemimont does next, then, and if it ends up returning to the series. Though after its impressive handling of Jagged Alliance 3—the first good Jagged Alliance in a long, long time—I'd be just as keen to see it tackle another tactics game. Especially now that Paradox and Harebrained Schemes are no longer together. We'll have to wait and see, since it's yet to announce its first project as a Paradox studio.

"We're delighted to become a part of the Paradox family!" presented Gabriel Dobrev, Founder of Haemimont Games. "The cultural fit between our companies is remarkable, and we already feel at home. This partnership empowers us to push the boundaries of our games, delivering deeper and more intense experiences to our players. It also opens new horizons for our team, technology, and creative processes, which we're eager to explore. Expect amazing new games from us!"

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