Sumith Prasad
Amazon Prime Video’s thriller series ‘The Consultant’ follows Regus Patoff, an independent consultant who assumes the office of Sang-woo, the founder and head of a video game publishing company named CompWare, after his death. Patoff acquires complete control over the operation of the Los Angeles-based company using a contract signed by Sang a few days before his murder. Patoff transforms the company altogether after he arrives at the same and tries his best to facilitate its survival from financial turmoil. Since the majority of the dark comedy series is set inside the company, the viewers must be wondering whether it is based on an actual video game publisher. Well, here’s everything you need to know about the same!
CompWare: A Fictional Video Game Publisher from Bentley Little’s Novel
No, CompWare is not a real video game publisher. The company is created by Bentley Little for his eponymous novel, which serves as the source text of the series. On the surface, CompWare resembles any other video game publisher. The company has video game creators, coders, a creative liaison, a marketing department, etc. at the center of its operation like any renowned company that produces video games. The brainstorming sessions, beta testing, and focus group discussions that happen in CompWare even succeed in giving the viewers an introduction to the operation of a real-life video game publisher.
However, CompWare is a fictional company and is not modeled after any real-life video game developers. ‘The Consultant,’ by placing its narrative in a corporate establishment, tries to explore how a modern-day workspace functions as a satire. Before Patoff’s arrival at the place, CompWare had been a company that prioritized the rights and needs of its employees irrespective of its financial turnover. After the consultant assumes Sang’s office, he brings radical changes to the place, starting with the elimination of the aforementioned rights and needs. He fires employees over reasons that aren’t acceptable to them.
Patoff instills unhealthy competitiveness in the minds of the employees, which leads them to fight against one another for producing better individual results. They start to forget principles that used to hold them together as a unit as well. Elaine even unleashes a wild elephant on the streets of Los Angeles for securing her position in the company. CompWare’s transformation from a creative workspace to an authoritarian corporate space is the foundation on which the show’s narrative progresses. Such a transformation happens or happened in real-life companies innumerable times as well.
After Patoff arrives at CompWare, the company only focuses on increasing its turnover, even if it means abandoning ethical principles. Since our reality is filled with such companies, it is safe to say that CompWare is a representative of modern-day corporate establishments that were built above human suffering and suppression, overseen by “heartless” corporate moguls.
Read More: The Consultant Season 1 Ending, Explained
