CD Projekt RED - Worry Not

CD Projekt RED tweeted that they will not be taking the path of EA for Cyberpunk 2077.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> .@PrettyBadTweets Worry not. When thinking CP2077, think nothing less than TW3 — huge single player, open world, story-driven RPG. No hidden catch, you get what you pay for — no bullshit, just honest gaming like with Wild Hunt. We leave greed to others.

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) November 19, 2017[/quote]

More information.

I think most of us were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and this is reassuring.

Still leaves room for a persistent online aspect, but fingers crossed it won't be anything grotty.

Originally Posted by Ripper
I think most of us were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and this is reassuring.

Agree. CDPR has earned their reputation for extremely high value games. I'm willing to rely on that and glad to see they consider important, concerns of their customers.

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Exactly. Out of all the developers out there people decide CDPR is somehow the bad guy here? I can't help but smell sensationalism at work over some anonymous supposed testimonials.

What I find particularly interesting is that they're pretty clearly stating that the industry bullshit that claims the "ongoing purchases" model is essential to the continuation of business is, in fact, greed.

CDPR business model is focused on increasing profit by selling more copies of high value product at reasonable price to more and larger customer base, as opposed to other studios like EA that make more profits by getting more money out of existing customers.

"We leave greed to others" could easily be their company slogan based on history to date.

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Originally Posted by Ripper
What I find particularly interesting is that they're pretty clearly stating that the industry bullshit that claims the "ongoing purchases" model is essential to the continuation of business is, in fact, greed.

I think most of us knew this already, didn't we? But it is refreshing to hear someone in the industry say so. We're all so used to hearing corporate douchebags telling us the sky isn't actually blue, perhaps many of us start to believe it after a while.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
I think most of us knew this already, didn't we? But it is refreshing to hear someone in the industry say so. We're all so used to hearing corporate douchebags telling us the sky isn't actually blue, perhaps many of us start to believe it after a while.

That's the thing - most of us can come to a sensible critical conclusion, but sooner or later someone comes along to try and convince us that this is all proper and above board, and we should all embrace the gleaming future. It's good to hear from a studio that hasn't insulted the intelligence of its customers, and is happy to confirm that, yes, this is bullshit, and we're not going to play that way.

Love their marketting. I'm in

Originally Posted by Wisdom
Love their marketting. I'm in

Ha! Bill Hicks saw that one coming!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0

Between this and EA bending to pressure over their ridiculous loot boxes and micro- transactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2, where they seemed to respond to universal player outrage, and this, where CDPR seems to confirm that they are on the side of the gamer, and doesn't go along with the business model of nickeling-and-diming the gamer (or, should I say: the sucker) for every cent they can squeeze out of them, this has been a good week in gaming.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
Between this and EA bending to pressure over their ridiculous loot boxes and micro- transactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2, where they seemed to respond to universal player outrage, and this, where CDPR seems to confirm that they are on the side of the gamer, and doesn't go along with the business model of nickling-and-diming the gamer (or, should I say: the sucker) for every cent they can squeeze out, this has been a good week in gaming.

Bending, not breaking to pressure.

All they said was that they were putting purchases on hold until everyone gets the same start. They clearly intend to restart them shortly.

Originally Posted by Ripper
Ha! Bill Hicks saw that one coming!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0

Ahh, Bill Hicks. His standup used to make me laugh. R.I.P., Bill Hicks.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Ahh, Bill Hicks. His standup used to make me laugh. R.I.P., Bill Hicks.

One of my influences in my fondly remembered teenage years of struggling to escape from the terrible nonsense.

Originally Posted by Ripper
One of my influences in my fondly remembered teenage years of struggling to escape from the terrible nonsense.

A never-ending struggle. These days, it seems to have caught up with me and is running me the hell down.

I think we're all feeling it. Strange days.

The price of a AAA game, at least in the console space, has been fixed at $60 since 2006. According to the official inflation numbers that's equivalent to about $73.50 in current dollars, which is to say that in real terms the price of a AAA game has dropped about 22% over the last decade. If you, like me, suspect that the official inflation numbers significantly under-report the actual state of the economy then the equivalent price of a AAA game in 2017 dollars would be even higher. I'm pretty sure that development costs have not remained fixed in the same way. (I'm a software developer, although not in the games industry, and my nominal income certainly hasn't stayed the same since 2006.) If we really want the micro-transaction BS to go away we should be willing to accept an inflation adjustment in the base price of a game. If you cut a company's real revenue per game by 22%, they're going to try to get some of that back in some other way, just like you would if your income got cut by the same amount.

I can't help but wonder to what extent CD Projekt RED's business model works because of the relative cost of living in Poland. It wouldn't surprise me if their cost of development is lower than that of US-based developers. The inflation-based revenue hit probably doesn't hurt them as badly, so they have less need to make up the difference.

@khaight

Understand your logic and agree that it seems to make sense. But the analysis misses the difference between digital and conventional products. In particular digital products don't have manufacturing or distribution costs. So if sales of digital products are doubled profits are doubled, same as if price of a conventional product is doubled.

CDPR has figured this out and has focused on increasing sales by adding extreme levels of high value to their products. You get lots more than what you pay for.

Cost of Polish labor does give them an advantage. But model still holds even for high labor cost producers. Make a digital product that you can sell at a relatively low cost to large number of consumers. and you make a profit even with a large investment. No need to charge greater price to customer; if you can greatly increase number of customers.

The digital product market is simply different than what we're used to.

Regards.

[Edit] Hell's bells. I got it wrong. Conventional product -> manufacturing cost is fixed, profit is fixed; so if sales are doubled then profits are doubled. Digital product -> profit is not fixed on a per product basis; so after sufficient sales to recover investment, all revenue from additional sales is profit, since no manufacturing or distribution costs for additional sales. Digital market is just different.

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Originally Posted by khaight
The price of a AAA game, at least in the console space, has been fixed at $60 since 2006. According to the official inflation numbers that's equivalent to about $73.50 in current dollars, which is to say that in real terms the price of a AAA game has dropped about 22% over the last decade. If you, like me, suspect that the official inflation numbers significantly under-report the actual state of the economy then the equivalent price of a AAA game in 2017 dollars would be even higher. I'm pretty sure that development costs have not remained fixed in the same way. (I'm a software developer, although not in the games industry, and my nominal income certainly hasn't stayed the same since 2006.) If we really want the micro-transaction BS to go away we should be willing to accept an inflation adjustment in the base price of a game. If you cut a company's real revenue per game by 22%, they're going to try to get some of that back in some other way, just like you would if your income got cut by the same amount.
.

I suspect that's probably about right. I would have no problem with the base price of games going up from what they were 20 years ago. What I don't understand or accept is that they dare not raise the base price, and the only way that they can make ends meet is through, essentially, turning AAA games into fruit machines.

I'm happy to pay a sensible price for the game I'd enjoy, but if the whole thing becomes an exercise in manipulative cash extraction, I'll give it up as a bad job, and do something else instead.

I'm very curious about Cyberpunk 2077. I wouldn't expect anything less than a Witcher 3 - and I'm definitely hoping for more in the gameplay department.

But I'm such a sucker for the setting that I can probably deal with limited evolution in gameplay terms - and I'll know not to bother with freeform exploration and just focus on the story, which is sure to be worth the effort.

Here's hoping they don't go big for the sake of big - which was kinda one of my issues with W3.

We'll see.

I was never worried, though.