Cyberpunk 2077 - Some Devs left
 

According to Gamepressure some Cyberpunk 2077 devs left CD Project RED:

Thanks Farflame!

More information.

I sure hope not, but a highly successful product release can make you a target for recruiters. If there's enough talent in the pipeline, they should be able to continue.

I remember a similar conversation when the same thing happened during production of Mass Effect: Andromeda. Turns out the concern was well founded. However in this case, there's no EA demon to blame.

Hmmm… the two in which they mention what companies they left for seem like career downgrades to me. Why would you want to leave a company like CD Projekt to go to Flying Wild Hog or Techland? I've a feeling they weren't seeing eye to eye with some of their co-workers.

Money. Better wages.

Seems unlikely that a much smaller company would be paying them more, but I suppose it's possible.

It could be that the work of these developers is largely done or it could be that they were not producing work of the required standard.

The positions themselves
Lead Level Designer
Project Manager
Senior Gameplay Producer
Senior Art Producer

I believe things like art direction and game design are linked. You can't design a level for Mario without working out how high Mario can jump. Thats a core project requirement to get right. Things like this I would expect to be largely settled by now or you couldn't even begin to design levels for the game.

Oh no

Why don't you just message them and ask instead of wildly speculating :)

The writer of this article falls into the "filthy clickbait trash journalism" category for me.

I hope not. Cyberpunk 2077 and BladeRunner kind of occupy the same narrative subject. I wonder if CD Projekt Red is watching with interest. It will certainly address issues of contemporary life, as most narrative does. Mass Effect Andromeda isn't that bad, aside some jarring neck turning that reduces immersion, its actually quite good. The character missions are well done and probably represent a standard.

Is this game going to be a shooter?

We don't really know yet. We know next to nothing about the actual game.

Considering how bad the gameplay and level design was in TW3 this is probably a good thing.

You've been living in a parallel world where level design was not among the best in a game in decades?

I mean, gameplay criticism I get, it's really not more than a clicky action game with some light RPG elements - but, well, at least it works and carries you enough to see all the glorious story content.

But level design? I haven't seen better designed cities in a game since, well, ever.

Perhaps I should clarify what I mean, the cities are beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, and they are also full of people which is nice. But to me level design includes interesting dungeons, gameplay which integrates with the environment, interesting secret places to find and so on. Just like everything else in TW3 it is designed around the visual and story experience which is exceptional. There were very few place where I found the level design good from a gameplay point of view, one or two dungeons a hidden bandit camp in a tower, and a few other places. I guess a part of the reason for that is that they decided that almost all environmental related puzzle and such is solved by holding the right mouse button.

So the environment is very nice from a story and aesthetic perspective, I really like the swamp island with an abandoned tower from that perspective for example. But the level design is uninteresting from a gameplay and exploring perspective, and it has been done so much better in a lot of other games.

Is it at all understandable what I mean ?

It cant be a bad product, useless to care about who leaves, who comes.

Meh, uninteresting news. They wanted to do something new or just go to a better position with better pay/more responsibility. Just a clickbait article, ignore it.

Actually it would be nice if we don't have more articles like this on rpgwatch. Just an opinion.

Sorry, it's not.
The game is exactly what it wanted to be. It was never supposed to be Dark Souls clone, it was supposed to be everything Dark Souls isn't.

If Cyberpunk will betray base concepts from TW3 and move onto grinding direction just to suck up to Dark Souls audience, there is no way I'll ever buy it.

My thoughts exactly. CDpr lost nothing when some "key" person left to make yet another Dark Souls clone. IIRC that game was called Lords of the Fallen or something, sorry, never could remember the title of that trash. But should in fact as such garbage has no place on my PC and I don't want to buy it accidentally.

You mean you want an interactive movie instead of a game, right ? :biggrin:

Apparently, working conditions at CD Red aren't good. They pay low salaries, and work their employees overtime around the clock.

Not sure if this had something to do with these particular devs leaving, but Youtube gamer YongYea did a sort of "expose" of this in a recent video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBuoexbVEFE&t=21s

Grinding is not game nor a movie.
It's just an outdated design that should die already. Sadly, it happens we see it both in garbageware and soap opera drag-o-ramas.
I'm still not sure why people who can't live without grinding still didn't watch 2000 episodes of Santa Barbara where the content can be described as a grinding game: banging head against the wall for months.

Then again, I'm a tobacco addict myself so I do understand other unhealthy addictions exist.

What does grinding have to do with good level design or gameplay ?

Isn't that default in game development? :-/

It is. Sadly.
But I don't see how we, the audience, can have any impact on some country laws. We're not politicians. At least not majority of us I guess.

Good level design = budget for doomoid/shooter 10 hours long max in mind
Gameplay = budget for mushroombased inferior hardware grinder, not enough $ for anything else

CDpr didn't want to make either of the two, they wanted to make a memorable epic masterpiece of storytelling with choices&consequesnces system and concentrated their budget elsewhere.

There is another possibility though. Maybe they had the $ but decided to scratch whatever console irrelevant in a masterpiece designs and those funds went to make spectacular sunflower fields, nonstatic props in a windy world and furry monsters?

There's a definite upside to working with a smaller company. Everybody knows everybody, decisions can be made more rapidly, and each individual is of greater importance to the whole. Plus it can have a nice family feel to it, depending on the group.

Less stress, smaller team, more creativity allowed, stay in a specific city. Most game dev that leave big companies (and CD Projekt is pretty big now) move to smaller ones or just leave the industry.

Also, the comments on company review websites about CD Projekt aren't very good…

Not anymore. Since you are German, you might want to check out this interesting episode of DevPlay where Björn Pankratz of PB, Jan Klose of Deck13 and Jan Theysen of KingArt talk about crunch time.

PB, for example, are totally not doing it anymore. They work 9 to 5 (or regular 8h days so if someone wants to work 11 to 7 that seems fine, too) almost all the time nowadays.
Pankratz considers crunch time a failure in planning, unnecessary and counter-productive because you get stressed and start making stupid mistakes when you are overworked. I totally agree with him.

With regard to CDP it seems they are in fact almost in permanent crunch time. Given their super-ambitious goals that isn't surprising. They always seem to be striving for the next superlative.
If I had to give them some advice, I would say to take it easy and focus on depth instead of breadth. You don't have to top the Witcher 3 in terms of size. Please feel free to make Cyberpunk smaller but denser. Just my 2c though.

Wow. Wouldn't want to work there :/

Very revealing. Check out this comment to the vid :


I'm a software developer from Poland. I have not worked in CDP Red, but I'm involved in the game dev scene, as well as I've just worked in polish software companies.
The tales of CDP Red crunching are legendary in Poland - basically anyone that's even a bit interested in the game dev scene knows about it, and how it destroyed the people working there.
I can't find better version, but this is a picture of employees that left the company after Witcher 1:
https://i.imgur.com/bjm942Q.jpg
The red crosses are people that left, green ones are those that left and later returned. Most left due to very long crunch period.
This pattern did continue through Witcher 2 and Wither 3 development.

CDP Red is quite young company, that was established by people with little knowledge of running a software dev, let alone game dev studio - they learned as they went.. Most people didn't know how to handle big projects, how to properly plan and time work schedules etc.
There's a reason an "Enchanced Edition" of W1 came out like half a year after the premiere - it was a result of half a year long crunch to actually finish and polish the game, post launch.

Not much changed during W3 development - QA were mostly inexpirienced people working for minimal wages, crunching for 10-12h a day. And when they weren't needed any longer - they were fired or let go. They used to work 10h shift Monday-Friday, and 8h during the weekend.. Some people weren't leaving the company at all, sleeping in the office. One of the former QAs stated that "he was loosing the track of time. He knew it was weekend only because of free pizza, that was provided by the employer". There was almost a mutiny/rebelion by QAs, when one of the demo versions was delayed. It was toned down with 3-shifts-work schedule.
Programmers didn't have it easier either.

Those are not just some random reviews on random sites. Those words come from interviews with people that did work in CDP Red, there are plenty (old) articles in polish games media about it. People as high as the former head of production of W1 and W2 (Maciej Miąsik), Bartłomiej Nagórski (who was almost an executive producer, but quit after learing about the crunches) - software dev who also writes for Polygamia.pl - a polish site about everythig-games-related. There are plenty of other employees that preferred to stay anonymous, when interviewed by the journalists..

So ye - Witcher is great. CDP Red makes great games. CDP Red has great approach to their consumers. But not many really want to work there, especially after knowing a bit more how it works on the inside..
Although there are some good sides of all that shitty inside of CDP Red.. Companies like MoaCube or Flying Wild Hog were created by people who left CDP Red..

Yea, it does sound like a stressful place to work at. That said, I give CD Project Red credit for producing great games like the Witcher 3. There are many stories of legendary workaholics in the arts, like some who worked in Hollywood, and they are the ones who produced the biggest results in box office and success for their movies. Maybe it takes this kind of attitude - being insanely driven - to produce greatness. I don't know.

I wasn't trying to criticize CD Project Red, just making note that they seem to be an extraordinarily ambitious company, and work their employees hard, according to that video that I posted. If the results are anything to go by, it pays off big time for the rpg fans, gamers, and the company, because they sold millions, but yea, it may be problematic for the employees who actually work there.

In my experience, the bigger companies do pay less. It was certainly that way at Intel where the temps are paid more than the permanent workers. They expect you to take a lower salary for the privilege.
--
It isn't just two, these are two important ones that the writer just noticed after it was discovered Project Manager Ovidiu Traian Vasilescu and Michal Stec, Senior Art Producer already left. They all were gone on the same time.

You give them credit for producing great games but they are producing great games because they work their employees into the ground. Nah, I can't get on board with that. I am not a fan of The Witcher series to begin with but I definitely won't be supporting their games going forward.

Yes, let's decry the tyranny of CD Project because some random guy on the internet, who may or may not have an agenda, has claimed they've been naughty. :)

Yes, let's! :)

I've heard that claim from others in the past too. I remember reading during The Witcher 3 production that employees were ran into the ground and being forced to work 60-80 hour weeks or something. I'm foggy on the details but the point was that they had harsh working conditions with long, arduous hours.

Maybe with TW3 profits they can improve the work conditions a lot there and invest more in their employees.

At least this is a rational statement and not like some of the silly kneejerk reactions I'm seeing. People need to remember that not all companies are the same and that the people employed by them have a choice.

Not long ago I was hired by a company for a sales position in the town I live in. I resigned after only a few days because of how many hours they wanted me to work. I don't consider it a bad company because of that though. I simply didn't want to do that job for 60+ hours a week. I know people who work there and are completely cool with it, but it wasn't for me. It's simply a matter of different strokes for different folks.

That's a nice privilege you have there. Not everyone is so lucky.

I'm sure you can easily find that source again and link to it so the rest of us can see it, right? :)

You're pretty naive if you think CDP is the only developer that asks a lot from their employees, but then we also know that if such a thing came out about Bioware or Bethesda you'd be singing a different tune. :)

The vast majority of people have a choice. To pretend otherwise is just being ignorant.

You also missed the point. What's bad to some people isn't bad to others. The negative things you sometimes hear about employers are quite often the result of former employees who have an axe to grind because things didn't go their way.

A very basic Google search turned this up.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1435875

CDPR has a considerably lower rating from employees than Ubisoft or EA. Just Google it and look for yourself. There's plenty of these claims out there.

Another one where CDPR was asked specifically to respond to crunching accusations. They basically ignored the question.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=909461

Yes.. that definitely proves CD Project are horrible people. :rolleyes:

Let's grab our pitchforks!