Original Stalker-designer avviser Eurojank-etiketten

Andrii Verpakhovskyi, a designer who worked on the original Stalker games, argued in a recent interview with Edge magazine that the term Eurojank should not be limited by geography. The label typically refers to systems-heavy, ambitious video games created by Central and Eastern European developers that often feature noticeable technical bugs due to limited development resources. Verpakhovskyi stated that several prominent role-playing games developed in the United States share these exact traits.

The designer specifically pointed to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Arcanum as titles that fit the description despite their American origin. Both games came from Troika Games, a studio formed by the core team behind the original Fallout titles. Verpakhovskyi noted that while these games contained heavy technical flaws, they possessed the same fundamental soul that players attribute to European projects, which makes isolating the term to one specific region inaccurate in his view (via PC Gamer). He explained that the development team at GSC Game World never viewed their work as regionally distinct or different from games produced in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Western Europe. I see a parallel here between regional labeling and the rigid genre boundaries that digital storefronts enforce today.

The developers building the first Stalker entries lacked formal backgrounds in traditional game creation. Verpakhovskyi detailed that the staff consisted entirely of newcomers to the industry, and many employees did not have specialized training in engineering or art. This lack of experience, rather than geographic origin, contributed directly to the technical quirks found in the released games. The interview also featured comments from Greg Pryjmachuk, founder of Minskworks and developer of the driving game Jalopy. Pryjmachuk stated that platforms like Steam have stifled creativity by requiring titles to fit into very specific orthodoxies. He noted that projects failing to stay within established genre lines face quick punishment in the marketplace. I think players and digital platforms often overcomplicate their assessment of games by insisting on these restrictive categories.

"Some of my favourite games back in the day were Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and Arcanum, both built by Troika Games, which was the core team Fallout games before them," Verpakhovskyi told Edge magazine in a recent interview (via PC Gamer). "Those games were janky as hell, but they had this same soul that was in games described as Eurojank, which is why I think it’s unfair to kind of geofence the genre."

— Andrii Verpakhovskyi

"I feel like Steam especially now has smothered creativity with how rigidly titles need to fit into a specific orthodoxy," Greg Pryjmachuk, founder of Minskworks and dev behind Jalopy, told Edge. "Anything that doesn’t colour within the established genre lines is quickly punished."

— Greg Pryjmachuk

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