Editorial Seeing Red: The Story of CD Projekt (and how they almost went bankrupt)

[whitepony]

The Witcher plays very much like something created by people who had no idea how to make a game.

Twitcher plays like a dynamic hack n slash with little magick and light RPG elements, it's like next gen Diablo for me. But, unlike Diablo (and its numerous hack n slash clones) Twitcher has a truly immersive story, branching plot and good writing. Also, it has much more replay value than any other ARPG, IMO. All in all, Twitcher IS a fun game and is good for what it is. I don't expect Wild Cunt to be a "crowning achievement of the genre", but I will play the hell out of it

 

[whitepony]

Sorry for wrong quoting (a failed attempt to edit the post)

 

[oljebox]

At this point I'm more interested in Cyberpunk 2070 than The Witcher 3: Me Too: Skyrim Edition.

People get into shitty deals. It happens. Red could have decided to finish the game themselves, true, but sometimes you just have to abandon a project or risk finding yourself in Colonial Marines territory. They judged that they weren't ready to make a console game, and made the decision to move on to TW2 to get some much-needed money while they went about figuring the consoles out. This explains why the PC version came out earlier than the console versions.

Bravo, I say. It's nice to see a gaming company that's this business savvy. I may not gush about their games- although they are decent enough and have some shining moments- but I really respect them as a business enterprise.

 

[you know what time it is]

Atari wasn't happy, and it was none other than big Phil Harrison (once of Sony, now of Microsoft, with an Atari interlude) who flew to France to hear both sides of the story. Iwiński remembers the meeting. .​

​

 

[deamento]

I don't. It shows how idiotic they are. All that money wasted because they are morans.

Hell, BIO dealt with a loser small dev company too. They shitcanned them, then proceeded to do finish the game in a month while working on their own stuff, and enver felt the need to whine and cry about it on the internetz non stop.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!


P.S. Contrary to what the article suggests, Twitcher 2 sucks.

And contrary to what you say, bioware only makes awful games

 

[cvv]

At this point I'm more interested in Cyberpunk 2070 than The Witcher 3: Me Too: Skyrim Edition.

Yeah, especially when Dragon Age 3: And Me! is probably coming out at exactly the same time.

It's only too bad we don't have the tinies clue what Cyberpunk 2070 actually is. AssCreed in the future shooting roboblondes in the face? Party based RTwP? Party based TB? Tbh, in this day and age, I don't see a non-indie TB game very realistically, but please at least let it be party based, even stupid RTwP would be better than another AssCreed/Watch Dogs clone.

PS: Great read btw, thanks for the tip Tron.

 

[oljebox]

At this point I'm more interested in Cyberpunk 2070 than The Witcher 3: Me Too: Skyrim Edition.

Yeah, especially when Dragon Age 3: And Me! is probably coming out at exactly the same time.

It's only too bad we don't have the tinies clue what Cyberpunk 2070 actually is. AssCreed in the future shooting roboblondes in the face? Party based RTwP? Party based TB? Tbh, in this day and age, I don't see a non-indie TB game very realistically, but please at least let it be party based, even stupid RTwP would be better than another AssCreed/Watch Dogs clone.

The impression I get is that it's a reskinned TW3 with more roleplay elements, a la V:TMB. That's my hope, anyway. Otherwise, it's just a reskinned TW3. I doubt it's TB or RTwP, either, considering their mainstream ambitions.

Either Red game will be better than Bioware's Skyrim-clone-with-Final-Fantasy-combat-and-YA-story, at any rate.

 

[AstroZombie]

Yeah, especially when Dragon Age 3: And Me! is probably coming out at exactly the same time.

It's only too bad we don't have the tinies clue what Cyberpunk 2070 actually is. AssCreed in the future shooting roboblondes in the face? Party based RTwP? Party based TB? Tbh, in this day and age, I don't see a non-indie TB game very realistically, but please at least let it be party based, even stupid RTwP would be better than another AssCreed/Watch Dogs clone.

PS: Great read btw, thanks for the tip Tron.

Judging by this it'll probably be an akshun RPG.

 

[Roguey]

The lead combat designer also has a background in third/first person shooters.

 

[Infinitron]

CD Projekt is an action-RPG developer. It's what they do. Stop being surprised all the time

 

[cvv]

CD Projekt is an action-RPG developer. It's what they do. Stop being surprised all the time

Yeah, developers usually do what they do until they do something else.

 

[Rake]

CD Projekt is an action-RPG developer. It's what they do. Stop being surprised all the time

Yeah, developers usually do what they do until they do something else. fail to meet expectations and they are forced to change

Fixed that for you.

 

[cherry blossom]

The lead combat designer also has a background in third/first person shooters.

This sardonic post brought to you by Roguey who has a posting background of similarly sardonic or sarcastic posts

 

[bot]

And I thought game journalism was dead. Great article. Its a shame that they had a whole additional area they had to cut for Witcher 2, the game actually felt too short for me.

This article was based on a press trip to CD Projekt's offices in Warsaw. CD Projekt paid for travel and accommodation.

famous gaming journo ethics™

 

[Jvegi]

It's a good article, although it could use some less dick sucking, more detachment. Also, very little is told of what made CD Projekt so successful as a publisher. There was a lot of stuff before and after Baldur's Gate.

Love those oldschool pics

 

[oljebox]

^ Wow, boxes. ^

And I thought game journalism was dead. Great article. Its a shame that they had a whole additional area they had to cut for Witcher 2, the game actually felt too short for me.

This article was based on a press trip to CD Projekt's offices in Warsaw. CD Projekt paid for travel and accommodation.

famous gaming journo ethics™

It's an enthusiast piece. Think of it as the gaming equivalent of a Rolling Stones article about a band, and the tone doesn't seem weird.

 

[cvv]

Also, very little is told of what made CD Projekt so successful as a publisher.

They arranged for a complete localization, including the dubbing, of an extremely popular game. That's really all there is to say. You have to realize that here, in the former bolshevistan in the 90s:

a) nobody spoke English
b) everybody wanted to play games
c) all games were pirated and only in English

So if suddenly somebody came out and offered people a popular game they could not only play but also understand, it was bound to be an instasuccess, no matter the quality of the localization (if the early Czech translations of RPGs are anything to go by, the Polish BG one was just a notch above Google Translator, but hey, who cares about that shit.)

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Love those oldschool pics

That feeling when you outrun someone on the bike.

 

[Jvegi]

Also, very little is told of what made CD Projekt so successful as a publisher.

They arranged for a complete localization, including the dubbing, of an extremely popular game. That's really all there is to say. You have to realize that here, in the former bolshevistan in the 90s:

a) nobody spoke English
b) everybody wanted to play games
c) all games were pirated and only in English

So if suddenly somebody came out and offered people a popular game they could not only play but also understand, it was bound to be an instasuccess, no matter the quality of the localization (if the early Czech translations of RPGs are anything to go by, the Polish BG one was just a notch above Google Translator, but hey, who cares about that shit.)

Dude, I know what made them popular, I've been buying games from them for 13 years. What CDP did, and what those few other existing publishers were copying, was establishing price brands (Extra Klasyka for 19,99 etc), and offering good, translated stuff for 1/5 of the price of other games on shelves. You knew you could always afford to buy something, and you knew it was usually carefully selected. They did loyalty programs. You (I) would go every month to buy something new for a price of 1,5 MCdonald's meals.

I think they were a trend setter. Compressing 15 years of innovating physical distribution to "they sold BG" doesn't really cut it.

 

[cvv]

Ah, I thought you complained about lack of info because you didn't know.

Well, I guess the fact they sold BG "made" them successful. Everything they did after that kept them on top. But frankly, after reading the article, the ultimate answer why are they so successful is that Marcin Iwinski is evidently pretty fucking capable unfettered capitalist onepercenter

 

[Haba]

We need more evil, vile and cruel men who love cRPGs.

 

[Hellraiser]

Oh man I remember when BG came out all those CDs made pirates cry. A pirated game was 20 PLN per CD, legal copies of games were 100 or more PLN regardless of the number of disks of course. I don't remember how much BG cost back then but it was not a whole lot more than what the pirates wanted. The difference was that a pirated copy of BG was at best available for 50% less compared to the usual 80% or more. People still pirated it but there was a lot more incentive to buy the original BG over the pirated one than usual.

There is a big lack of mentioning where they got the idea for GOG from and what was indeed the main thing that kept them at the top of the Polish publishing market for years, that was selling few years old classic titles like Fallout, HoMM 3 and similar for 20 potato which of course was basically the same price as an illegal copy. They initially wanted to do it with new games, I think only Giants: Citizen Kabuto and something else got released for just 20 PLN when they came out, foreign publishers weren't keen on the idea, even if the games were fully localized.

That was just a year or two before DSL became available in Poland, and when the only non-56k internet was still ass (I remember being really happy when I had 50 kb/s download speeds, it was usually half of that at best). So modern day "100% free" pirated copies were not an issue mostly. Torrent didn't take off yet, you got shit via IRC or DC hubs and HDD space was still just around 40 GB leaving not a whole lot of room of keeping cd image files on it. Spending 20 potato on an old game was less of a hassle than trying to get it online back then, CDP hit the jackpot with it. On top of that they had the rights to the big titles like HoMM, Blizzard games, Black Isle games, Bioware Games.

 

[bonescraper]

a town called Łódź

Fucking game jewrnalists.

Good read, but i learned nothing new from the article. CDP did a lot of good back in the day to pretty much single handedly estabilish a legit PC games market in Poland, so i'll always respect them for that. I still fondly remember buying my first legal copy. It was Fallout: Tactics bundled with Fallout 1 and 2 and Jagged Alliance 2.5. The price was 50 zł (~ 17$), and it was a huge fucking deal. 6 CDs from a local pirate would cost me almost twice as much, not to mention he didn't offer printed manuals and other neat goodies. I haven't bought a single pirate game ever since

 

[Volrath]

Whose decision was it to make a game with such horrible combat?

Certainly not anyone's from Troika whose two games out of the only three they made had shit combat so much so that even though I want to, I dread to play Arcanum again even because of what a piss poor experience combat was and both Arcanum and Bloodlines loses out on late-game shenanigans with combat encounters.

TW series, on the other hand, I'm not a big fan of, I would have no problem playing through multiple times if only the series had solid replay value on similar grounds to Troika RPGs.

It is interesting to note that what makes any part of both TW's and Arcanum's combat sufferable (and more often in the former's case than the latter's, even enjoyable) is the preparation phase. Reading up on monsters, learning the tactics and preparing potions before going into combat and then your effort paying off was very satisfying despite the unimpressive combat. Likewise with Arcanum, crafting equipment, potions, scrolls and whatnot and getting a good tactical use out of them made combat bearable and ever so slightly enjoyable despite the generally unpleasant experience of combat itself.

 

[Hellraiser]

a town called Łódź

Fucking game jewrnalists.

Yeah I also laughed at that. Łódź is not that much smaller than Stockholm, just 100-something thousand people behind it.

Also calling that blob of decaying commie blocks and factories a town is an insult to towns