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 Lance845 wrote:
Again, nothing requires the world of the Witcher to be "very very white".

Doesn't "require" the world to be white.... but it is white and there are tangible reasons it's white so I'd prefer they don't actively work to change the world.

I'd like to think most people aren't so shallow as to be incapable of understanding the world beyond their own doorstep and can appreciate that a world full of white folk written by Poles in Poland makes as much sense as a world full of asians written by asians in asia makes sense, even if it's maybe not the world they happen to live in.

As I said earlier, I don't think the race of the characters is terribly important, but it is what it is and I worry that changing it is the start of a watering down or pansification of the world/stories/characters.

Her real world heritage beyond that point is completely inconsequential.

Yeah so lets just keep the heritage she already has instead of trying to change it.

"It doesn't matter what race they are as long as they aren't white." That's what the casting call implies. Simple rule, if you replace white with any other race, and it sounds racist, it's racist.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I would love to see some good Polish actors in it... that said I don’t know of any good Polish actors and what minimal Polish cinema I’ve seen hasn’t been overly impressive. Maybe I’m just being horribly culture-ist and nou can correct me if this is miles off, but I don’t think Poles would place a high emphasis on acting (unlike many other places, like most of the west, where actors are idolized and many kids grow up wanting to be in movies/TV).

But in the end I want them to make stuff as close to the source material as possible because the further they stray from it the greater the chance of them fething it up. If they have to change the essence of the story, characters, world and so on because they’re scared western audiences won’t be able to cope, at that point I’d rather they just make another fantasy series inspired by but not attempting to be The Witcher.

It’ll be funny if the “minority” actress they cast to play Ciri is actually a Pole, though.

Oh, actors are celebrities in Poland and there are lots of people with "drive for the big screen". What we don't have is US Broadway or UK Shakespearean theaters equivalence of "acting benchmark". Up until maybe early 2000s most of our actors were schooled professionals, and we have some great movies from 1980s and 1990s, (and some great voice acting performances in dubbed animations - our version of Shrek is soo much better than original) but with post-soviet transformation came "cultural import" era I mentioned above, resulting in a huge shift of TV standards and programming, and spawning a lot of instant celebrities. Basically we have huge loads of "kardashians" and precious few good actors. What further disassembled polish praise of "old school" polish actors was their active involvement in politics, with strong "anti polish, anti peasant" attitude being the most common and nowadays their engagement in anti government narrative is even more backfiring. That is what you get with strong reliance on government funding in culture.

But, as I said, we have precious few good actors, that surely deserve wider recognition. One of them is Tomasz Kot - you might have heard rumours about him being a supposed reason of quarrel between Boyd and Craig over newest Bond villain casting. But the whole list I could make here would end with about ten actors (half of them in their grandfather years now) and maybe five actresses tops.

If you're interested in good polish cinema though, I can recommend few more or less classics: Pamiętnik Znaleziony w Saragossie (a black and white costume masterpiece), Hydrozagadka, Rejs (two great excercises in absurd humour but maybe too hermetic to fully understand by foreigners as they are satires on communism times society), Sexmisja (gratest polish s-f about women only postapocalyptic society), Miś (cult classic, a profile of late communist era Poland absurds), Dzień Świra (one man show of Marek Kondrat), Kiler (one of the most iconic polish comedies of '90) and from more recent times Bogowie (a story of polish artificial heart program, featuring Tomasz Kot), Ostatnia Rodzina (a trully unique and very dark film based on dailly audiovisual diary/archive of Zdzisław Beksiński) and a bit on the side Twój Vincent (Loving Vincent, an experimental animation about Van Gogh life and work).

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I think diversity is fine as long as race isn't actually a part of the character.

But diversity for the sake of diversity - under which this would fall - is just dressed up tokenism.

It is not.

Tokenism is about pretending to be diverse. It's the difference between having a show about a space ship crew of all different races at various positions of importance with speaking roles and having one black regular on a cop show that ostensibly takes place in a city with a large black population. Diversity for diversity's sake is so perfectly fine that tokenism pretends to be it.

H.B.M.C. wrote:My point, in all this rambling, is that there is far more to a person than just their race, gender or sexuality, but so many people see that as the single defining characteristic of a person. "But then Ciri can be black!" No, she can't. Because she isn't. She's reflective of the world she's in, and that world is very, very white.

Right, but one of the caveats of that world is that people can leave it. That she can leave it, that her ancestors could leave it.

So they could (could!) have a plot point around this.

Not having read the books, is the race of the main characters mentioned in them?

BertBert wrote:

 AdeptSister wrote:


Netflix believes that more people that will not care about Ciri's race than people who will be upset about it.

This is the crux of this issue. It's pandering to a vocal minority that dominates entertainment media. No consideration is given to quality and authenticity.

Oh yeah? What data do you have that the people who have netflix and either don't know or don't care about race in the witcher are a minority? What data do you have that casting non-white equals a lack of quality?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
Not having read the books, is the race of the main characters mentioned in them?

Ive only read a couple of the stories so far.

The titular Witcher is called the white wolf because hes from the school of the wolf and an albino with white hair. Witchers are basically the spartan program from halo for hunting monsters.

Taken as children, trained extensively both physically and mentally, goes through a process that mjtates their body and augments them with faster reflexes and cat like eyes and gak. Most of them dont survive the mutation.

Geralt is that albino.

Ciri is a little girl he meets and adopts.

 d-usa wrote:
Not having read the books, is the race of the main characters mentioned in them?

Yes, they're called humans. Because the racism in The Witcher is literal racism of humans against elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, dragons, and anything else. Even witchers are hated and distrusted for being mutant freaks.

Dislike all BAME casting. Or any casting that tries to exclude or alienate for a non-narrative reason. We need more raceblind and genderblind castings, not just excluding white men.

I'm not attached to the Witcher franchise, so I'm not really that bothered about Ciri's race. And honestly, I don't think I would be anyways. Select the best actor/actress for any role, based on what the casting director wants for that character. There's no reason for a BAME casting, unless you're specifically wanting to exclude white performers. Why would that be? Well, it's either for a narrative reason (which is fine - director's vision), or forced "diversity" - which, if it were reversed, would undoubtedly be seen as a form of racism or cultural appropriation by some.

As a previous example: Hermione being portrayed by a black actress in the stage show is fine. What was an issue was Rowling making up claims of "Hermione's race was never specified": it was. If she'd said "in my books, she's white, but Noma Dumezweni is the best person to portray her for this show", then that would be infinitely better. I don't know if this was a raceblind casting, but I think it was.

Fundamentally, unless there was a reason to make Ciri a different race, demanded by the narrative, then I disagree with this BAME casting, and all BAME castings.

 d-usa wrote:
Not having read the books, is the race of the main characters mentioned in them?

Polish authors do not have a habit of directly mentioning race, we don't have racially mixed society so there is no need to do so unless you explicitly want someone to be non-white. But they usually provide detailed enough visual descriptions that are enough to construct clear mental image.

Geralt is as white as it gets, being white haired albino.
Ciri is basically young female version of Geralt, with the same silver/white hair, vivid green eyes, and few elvish traits like thin nose and long fingers - features that are all important in building a recognition of closeness between those two characters.
Triss is very "iconic redhead beauty" with 22 inch waist, deep blue eyes and ruddy cheeks. Those features are basis for lot of this character identity and behavior.
Yennefer is pale skinned, with raven hair and violet eyes. Again, very distinct set of features making her stand out from the crowd, but not in an obvious and direct manner that would support making her non-white. Nevertheless, this would be the best character to swap skin color if and only if you would make background population racially mixed. The biggest issue I can see with her is that she is an ugly hunchback magically turned near-pretty, which could provide basis for racial rant...
Jaskier is a very handsome blond haired guy who could pass for an elf on his better days.

One important thing to note - first Witcher story is from 1986, when Poland was still a communist country and racial issues didn't even exist as a context in our culture. The whole rest of Witcher saga was written in the '90s, when our societal concerns where focused on post-soviet transformation and the only visible migrant minority was Vietnamese. Direct racial context was introduced first in polish public discourse in 2000, when we had first naturalized football player of Nigerian origin and since then polish left wing tried very hard to import western racial discrimination issues, but due to very small percentage of people of color the whole subject was very "token" in nature up until very recently, when polish medical schools opened wide to Asian and Indian students, which now form majority of non-white population in Poland, but Vietnamese remain the only significant racial minority that reached second generation.

So the only distinct whiteness, and lack of non-white humans, comes not from the book but from previous adaptations.

 d-usa wrote:
So the only distinct whiteness, and lack of non-white humans, comes not from the book but from previous adaptations.

How you arrived at this conclusion when I have just wrote you a list of visual traits of characters that are naturally linked to white race and explained why seeking for direct quote about race in Sapkowsky works is utterly ignorant about the context of his works?

Yes.

Because an albino Witcher and a lady with elf-like features and also having white hair and looking like the albino is the only thing you’ve mentioned.

Are the dwarves in Poland mountain or cave dwarves? What race are your elves? Are your vampires all white as well?

It’s a fantasy novel in a fantasy world influenced by polish stories. It’s not a factual history of Poland.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the 90s post-Soviet content of the stories:

I’m guessing a large part of the target audience doesn’t give a gak about the societal issues in post-Soviet Poland in the 90s.

So just like the author did by writing in a way that reflected current societal issues and struggles in his story relevant to his target audience, the writers and producers of “The Witcher Worldwide - 25 years later than post-Soviet Poland” are making decisions in order to make the story relevant to current societal issues and events.

 d-usa wrote:
Yes.

Because an albino Witcher and a lady with elf-like features and also having white hair and looking like the albino is the only thing you’ve mentioned.

Are the dwarves in Poland mountain or cave dwarves? What race are your elves? Are your vampires all white as well?

It’s a fantasy novel in a fantasy world influenced by polish stories. It’s not a factual history of Poland.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the 90s post-Soviet content of the stories:

I’m guessing a large part of the target audience doesn’t give a gak about the societal issues in post-Soviet Poland in the 90s.

So just like the author did by writing in a way that reflected current societal issues and struggles in his story relevant to his target audience, the writers and producers of “The Witcher Worldwide - 25 years later than post-Soviet Poland” are making decisions in order to make the story relevant to current societal issues and events.

I cannot even imagine the scale of anti racist and anti cultural imperialism outburst your post would ignite if you would substitute Poland here for any African or Asian country and their major cultural achievement. You should seriously reevaluate your views on what exactly constitutes ethnic supremacism.

Edit: just in case it came across like "I" don't give a gak about issues in post-soviet Poland in the 90s:

Modern adaptations of older works always make changes to make the issues that are present in the older works relevant to audiences consuming the adaptation today.

"O" was an adaptation that set the characters in a modern US high school rather than Venice. Romeo & Juliet has been featured with guns instead of swords, gnomes instead of humans, and any other possible variation you could think of. HBO's adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 had a black Montag for whatever reason and they featured Social Media which wasn't present in the original book. Many adaptations of stories that were influenced by the Cold War against the Soviet Union now frequently feature China or terrorists as the constant threat, because that's what society can relate to now.

The Witcher is not a completely original story. The author took old themes, created a new setting and compelling characters, sprinkled in things that made it relevant to what he knew and what his audience could relate to, and had success. Now people still like the themes, the setting, and the characters, but maybe a large part of the audience is not familiar with what it was like to grow up in in Poland in 1993. They know what it is like in 2018 where they are now, so let's sprinkle in some current issues that would impact and influence the story in a way they could relate to.

It could also be a simple issue like "Let's make the houses more distinct, to show that the racial struggles isn't just between "human" and "others". Maybe they just want an easy lazy visual to keep houses separate. Maybe it's their way of making the big races different as well. From my vast experience with the series via Wiki, she might be looking a bit elvish? Maybe the elves will be played by characters of the same race as her? Maybe it's just a lazy way of making her be the one person with Elder Blood?

Who knows.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

I cannot even imagine the scale of anti racist and anti cultural imperialism outburst your post would ignite if you would substitute Poland here for any African or Asian country and their major cultural achievement. You should seriously reevaluate your views on what exactly constitutes ethnic supremacism.

See above.

Protip:

You guys didn't invent Elves, and I bet there was at least one non-white person in Poland between 1456-1992.

So let me explain to you why exactly as close as possible adaptation is so important to Poles. After 1989 we were basically culturally colonized in every possible industry. The Witcher games success, CDPR growth and then Techland success were pretty much first proofs that our companies can in fact compete on equal footing with international industry giants. That The Witcher games were so succesfull without any racial or cultural alterations whatsoever was also proof, that our modern culture can in fact provide a widely acclaimed product that do not directy cater to western trends. CDPR success was realy major news and made entire generation proud and hopefull for the future. Now with the whole BAME thing a lot of poles felt threaten that it'll be robbed from a major, recent and very, very rare achievement.

As to your latest post - the very nature of well defined ramifications of fantasy genre makes every story in such setting feel generic, so your post was rather trivial. But in turn this is exactly why we should preserve anything that does succesfull fantasy stories unique among the crowd of other fantasy stories.

And one last time - US internal issues are not universal modern society issues; UK internal issues are not universal modern society issues; no single coutry issues are universal modern society issues and it's high time to stop insisting otherwise and building false image of the world. The very idea of sprinkling everything with modern US issues in the name of ill-defined diversity is what makes latest Netflix productions so predictable, boring and unrelatable for large swathes of non US audience. As I wrote earlier - HBO in fact makes much better job at providing true cultural diversity by sponsoring VERY local series and movies and then distributing them worldwide. I mentioned Ostatnia Rodzina as a recommended viewing for AllSeeingSkink earlier, and what makes it even possible is exactly HBO involvement in production and distribution of this trully unique endavour. What is funny is that Black Panther was brougt up exactly as an argument for "racially and culturally pure" productions as positive example of diversity within industry while the exact same approach to The Witcher seems to be unbearable for some...

It may be important to Poles.

But Poles aren't the main target audience for this production. It is a major international company making a major international production of a franchise for major international distribution.

nou wrote:
Now with the whole BAME thing a lot of poles felt threaten that it'll be robbed from a major, recent and very, very rare achievement.

That says more about Poland than the success of The Witcher ever could.

 d-usa wrote:
It may be important to Poles.

But Poles aren't the main target audience for this production. It is a major international company making a major international production of a franchise for major international distribution.

nou wrote:
Now with the whole BAME thing a lot of poles felt threaten that it'll be robbed from a major, recent and very, very rare achievement.

That says more about Poland than the success of The Witcher ever could.

You are cherry picking here with clear ill intent.

The Witcher games were designed for international audience and international distribution from ground up, there is no major difference between games and Netflix series that justifies modifying internationally successfull source material. The international audience has been already tested and is ok with getting non-BAME adjusted material, your argument simply does not stand. To be honest Poles are actually ME part of the BAME abbreviation if BAME does not simply mean skin color but actual ethnicity - you even have large Polish minority in the US that retained much of it's original identity. And you also misunderstood this last quote - come live here for a while, meet our people, learn our culture and our history, acknowledge the struggle this country has endured during partitions, interwar, soviet and post-soviet era for longer than US even exists and then come back and say that it's perfectly fine and not at all morally questionable by the very metric of yours to rob one culture of it's achievement for the sake of completely foreign cultural issues and financial benefit. Being white does not automatically make us beneficiaries of white west prosperity - very, very far from that. But all that is rather rhetorical, as throughout this whole discourse of ours you are clearly sorting different cultures by importance and insist on US culture being at the top of the pyramid, so at this point it's rather clear what your POV on this thought experiment would be.

And to be clear - I'm in no way offended by any views in this thread or by Netflix actions, what I am is amazed that "diversity" in the modern US dictionary is defined only by the most racist property of skin colour and not by actual cultural diversity of various regional and cultural identities in the world.

Per your own admission, nobody is mentioned as being white in the books.

d-usa wrote:Per your own admission, nobody is mentioned as being white in the books.

There is extremely heavy implication that they are white.

nou wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Not having read the books, is the race of the main characters mentioned in them?

Geralt is as white as it gets, being white haired albino.
Ciri is basically young female version of Geralt, with the same silver/white hair, vivid green eyes, and few elvish traits like thin nose and long fingers - features that are all important in building a recognition of closeness between those two characters.
Triss is very "iconic redhead beauty" with 22 inch waist, deep blue eyes and ruddy cheeks. Those features are basis for lot of this character identity and behavior.
Yennefer is pale skinned, with raven hair and violet eyes. Again, very distinct set of features making her stand out from the crowd, but not in an obvious and direct manner that would support making her non-white. Nevertheless, this would be the best character to swap skin color if and only if you would make background population racially mixed. The biggest issue I can see with her is that she is an ugly hunchback magically turned near-pretty, which could provide basis for racial rant...
Jaskier is a very handsome blond haired guy who could pass for an elf on his better days.

All of those will typically bring to mind Caucasian people.

 d-usa wrote:

nou wrote:
Now with the whole BAME thing a lot of poles felt threaten that it'll be robbed from a major, recent and very, very rare achievement.

That says more about Poland than the success of The Witcher ever could.

I understand you are insensitive about this being from USA but in Europe ethnic differences are very important, specially in eastern europe. Poles and Russians have much more problems between themselves being both "white" people than agaisnt black or arab or whatever ethnicity.

So when you are basically implying that people from Poland (A country without a racist background or imperialist/colonialist background or a background of opresion agaisnt minorities) are racist or xenophobes because they don't like that one of the only polish things that has become world-wide famous is being "stealed" from them, just because people from Poland is white (Putting all white people in the same box ignoring national background), and admiting your double standards that if this was happening to some other ethnic group that just happens to be a minority in USA it would be different, you are showing yourself as extremely petty.

And I don't want to broke Rule 1#, and I mostly have agree with you when I have been reading you in the USA thread, etc... but your stance here is just so hypocrite and short sighted that I can't understand how you can defend it.


EDIT: Nou has explained it much better than myself and with a more fluent english

I'm German, but that doesn't help my perceived anti-Polish bias any I am sure.

My simple stand is that the game is an adaptation, just as the Netflix version will be an adaptation, and both are able to take whatever creative liberties they want to take.

And until we know why the choice was made, It's hard to be angry about it. There are plenty of valid reasons why they could have gone that route.

My main beef with situations like this is that they basically boil down to "unless a person HAS to be anything other than white, they better be white" in most cases.

 d-usa wrote:
I'm German, but that doesn't help my perceived anti-Polish bias any I am sure.

My simple stand is that the game is an adaptation, just as the Netflix version will be an adaptation, and both are able to take whatever creative liberties they want to take.

And until we know why the choice was made, It's hard to be angry about it. There are plenty of valid reasons why they could have gone that route.

My main beef with situations like this is that they basically boil down to "unless a person HAS to be anything other than white, they better be white" in most cases.

Then I apologize for assuming your birth-place.

I agree with the rest of your post. I have said it before, adaptations are adaptations. But I found your point about "If this was happening to non-white people it would be bad, but this is ok, and if Poles don't like this they are wrong".

About your last part, is a complex matter. It depends of origin, of the public you are wanting to reach, etc... for example in Warcraft, human kingdoms have people of all skin colours. It is not explained, but it doesn't need to. In the movie you have Stowmrind officials from all ethnicities and nobody said anything. Because it was built into the universe.
The Witcher universe happens to not be constructed that way. As this is a Netflix adaptation, it could change. They can make the people of different skin colours without a problem. Some people would claim forced diversity, I'm sure, and blablabla. Personally i wouldn't found it a problem. Just like when Shadows of War was announced more people was angry about having a black-skined gondor captain than the fething Balrog in Mordor (The black-skined Gondor Captain was from Harad and it was adopted by a Gondor soldier in one of the many Gondorian campaings agaisnt Umbar and Harad)
My only problem here is with the call out for an actress being specifically for everyone barring white. I know, of course, that the norm in most western countries is that when some role is open to all skin colours, it will probably end up being for a white person, and many people has write many things about why that happens. With some I agree and with others I disagree.

This won't be worse than ugly asian Warcraft High Elves with pink teeth and scars

@ Galas: Thank you for your compliment

@ d-usa: I don't read you as anti-Polish biased, I read you as quite western hermetic in your POV on the world cultural landscape. There is huge difference.

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

d-usa wrote:Per your own admission, nobody is mentioned as being white in the books.

There is extremely heavy implication that they are white.

Yes, but skin color is not emphasized as a significant identifier of who/what people are.* Again, the racism is presented as humans against literal non-humans.



*I would have to double-check how the Zerrikanian bodyguards were introduced.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 VictorVonTzeentch wrote:

d-usa wrote:Per your own admission, nobody is mentioned as being white in the books.

There is extremely heavy implication that they are white.

Yes, but skin color is not emphasized as a significant identifier of who/what people are.* Again, the racism is presented as humans against literal non-humans.

*I would have to double-check how the Zerrikanian bodyguards were introduced.

Well yeah, I was more just pointing out that there is the Implication. What I've gathered of Witcher is as long as you're human you're generally fine regardless of color because thats not what matters. They are more likely to judge a human off what nation they are from than their skin, as that is a very common European thing. Racism being directed more at the non-humans.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:


How about we move on to lighter topics, like how the books refer to homosexuality as "deviant"?

I know Nou will disagree with me here (Probably) but I think the books are pretty... mediocre to bad. And not only because of the ideas shown by the author. Gerald from the books is an awfull character. And not in the sense that you dislike it because thats what the author wants (Like Joffrey from Song of Fire and Ice). Hes just a bad character.

I'll always say that the videogames are a superior product.

 Galas wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:


How about we move on to lighter topics, like how the books refer to homosexuality as "deviant"?

I know Nou will disagree with me here (Probably) but I think the books are pretty... mediocre to bad. And not only because of the ideas shown by the author. Gerald from the books is an awfull character. And not in the sense that you dislike it because thats what the author wants (Like Joffrey from Song of Fire and Ice). Hes just a bad character.

I'll always say that the videogames are a superior product.

That's also another potential issue with the Netflix production:

Is it "Witcher - based on the books" or "Witcher - based on the game based on the books".

How many people are expecting a production based on a game and who have never read any of the actual literary work? Of course the same could probably be said about the Warcraft movie...

Then our whole conversation could have boiled down to:

Person 1: "Why isn't she white?"
Person 2: "Actually, while it's implied the books never specifically mention her specific human race and so they took some creative liberties and blah blah blah"
Person 1: "What the feth are you talking about 'books', she's white in the awesome game I played!"

I have already explained why there is no direct inclusion of skin colour in descriptions of characters in polish saga from the '90s and it has nothing to do with racial identification/racial emphasis. Reading it otherwise is actually modern/foreign reader's viewpoint projection. Nothing wrong with it of course, but one should be aware that this is unintended by the author.

Fun fact - I have actually been there to witness when my cosplayer friend have won a personal judge award from Sapkowski himself for portraying, as he himself said "exactly his Yennefer". Not surprisingly, she is white.

Interesting news just starting to float around that Cavill may no longer by playing Superman. Let's hope The Witcher works out well.

 Galas wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:


How about we move on to lighter topics, like how the books refer to homosexuality as "deviant"?

I know Nou will disagree with me here (Probably) but I think the books are pretty... mediocre to bad. And not only because of the ideas shown by the author. Gerald from the books is an awfull character. And not in the sense that you dislike it because thats what the author wants (Like Joffrey from Song of Fire and Ice). Hes just a bad character.

I'll always say that the videogames are a superior product.

And now I'll probably surprise you very, very much - I don't like The Witcher series. I have had the (un)fortunate opportunity to meet the author in mid-90s, before reading my first book and he is as much arrogant and unpleasant person as one can be and that experience had spoiled this series for me permanently. But nevertheless The Witcher is a phenomenon here in Poland on par with GoT and LotR, so I simply had to learn about it to understand my fandom friends and this is why my knowledge about the series is more academic than fanboyish. I do own the first game, though by the strange twist of fate I have never really played it, as my wife became interested in 40K right after Steam sale I bought it on and I have never looked back at computer games since.

Now about homosexuality being "deviant" in Sapkowski works - again, this is directly drawn from polish '90s climate of sparking debate about abortion, catholic church and homosexual rights that ignited our politics back then. The book may be mediocre (but I think it looses a lot of language character in translation), the characters awfull, but amazingly, the source material is a great looking glass into post-transformation Poland. And yes, games added another huuuuge layer to this and are the true basis for both modern fandom love and Netflix interest in this project. Many people I know have actually read the books only after playing the games. Another fun fact - Sapkowski was so convinced that the whole game endavour will be a failure, that he demanded full (and rather small) payment for the rights up front and not a percentage of earnings (a full story is a bit more complicated than that, but this is the crux of it). This was renegotiated only later, before second instalment of the game series.

[BTW, it's nou not Nou, the small letters are conscious visual choice. Just informative, not offended or anything, I know it's obscure and unintuitive.]