Witcher 3 - Open Letter From Adam Badowski

Myrthos

Myrthos

Cave Canem
Administrator
Supporter
Joined
August 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
Adam Badowski, head of the CD Project Red Studio has published an open letter about The Witcher 3.

Hey Gamers!

Time does fly! These few months since launch passed faster than you can say potestaquisitor. We've been hard at work delivering you new content, fixing what needed to be fixed, and secretly plotting how to rock this boat we call the RPG genre even more. We've just concluded our shareholder conference where we announced that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt family got a bit bigger -- we sold over 6 million copies of the game in six weeks since launch. Worry not, I won't discuss any financial stuff here. I would, however, like to give you some insight on what that means to us as game creators.

One could think we have six million reasons to be happy and that's it. We do, but that number is also a big responsibility and I want everyone to know that we, as a studio, realize that. For us, all your high praise, all the positive reviews, are also an obligation -- we've made a really good game but there's still a long road ahead of us. Everyone here in CD PROJEKT RED is really attached to their work and how you, the gamers, perceive it. RED is full of artists, wild dreamers and people crazy about what they do (and sometimes just plain crazy). We lose sleep over that particular color the sun has when it sets over Velen, and argue over arranging the furniture in a house the majority of gamers will probably never see. We're not the kind of people who are easily satisfied and we always strive for more. I'd like you to know that.

Yes, six million copies is a great achievement for a company making RPGs, but this business is not only about that. If our games are a gallery of sound, picture and text - you are the visitors of this gallery. To an artist, there's no sweeter sight than people enjoying their work. That's why, in the name of all the devs in the studio, I'd like to say thanks to each and every one of you.
Click to expand...
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,223
CD Projekt will get my money everytime as long as they keep doing RPGs right and don't fall into the easy lazy cash-grab.

They've proved that you don't need to sell your soul to EA to make a huge AAA RPG, be successful and earn both great amounts of money and respect from every RPG fan.

Learn from this BioWare. What you could have been, until you got your shackles of rushed release dates and imposed milestones. Watch and mourn. We do mourn too.
 
Joined
Apr 11, 2015
Messages
138
I'm very happy for them, and they deserve all the praise and success they can get after pouring their hearts and souls into the Witcher series.

That said, as Witcher 3 is such a smash with both critics and consumers, I don't expect them to tone down the mainstream direction they're obviously headed in when it comes to challenge and mechanics, but I'd really hate for them to go further in that direction.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the ideal game and setting for a proper detective story, and I'll be very sad indeed if we get something akin to "Witcher senses" in that one, as it'll mean most of the game will solve itself and the only challenge I can hope for is combat.

I guess we'll see, but I'm a bit worried they'll see the success of Witcher 3 as a clear sign to become even more mainstream.
 
Last edited:
Excellent news. I hope they sell 15 - 20 million over the life time of the product.
 
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
4,425
Location
UK
Don't want to repeat what I said in another thread so…

I bet that graphics downgrade "scandal" didn't hurt sales, and IMO TW3 is the game with the best visuals that exist on PC. On consoles it's not - Order 1886 beats it, but it's QTE:The Game so no wonder it can afford 3D Studio Max renderer.
I'll never understand some people's necessity to mod TW3's visuals. Not only because it doesn't contain dated graphics, but because it also added hairworks tech for those who can afford $10.000 GPUs.

The political correctness "scandal" was quickly disposed of. The game is based on certain books and there was no way it's developers would go Peter Jackson and massacre the source material just to suck up to CJB trolls. This definetly didn't hurt sales because those trolls don't buy games anyway and we who do, we don't want any compromises in our games just because.

Lack of Korean localization on the release was a big deal because it was promised but not delivered. CDpr sorted it fast, as an apologize they gave previous TW games for free at that market. No sales hurt.

16 DLC, most of them just a decoration were a superb marketing strategy really. The game was alive in headlines with each DLC released, and since all of them were freebies, they got some more sales numbers up by doing this. Not only that, they shown that to make a profit you don't have to skin someone alive by charging rediculous amount of cash for some semiuseless ingame stuff (horse armor).

To sum up.
A musthave game with great support, no wonder it sold so many copies and it'll probably sell much more than that over time.
It's only sin is that it wasn't released at the same time as DA:I as it'd wipe the floor with bears/hinterland filler.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Yeah, yeah Adam. Shut up already and release RedKit 2 :biggrin:
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,429
Location
Spudlandia
That's just cosmetic fluff Couch (textures etc.). We were promised honest to goodness modkit.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
zahratustra said:
That's just cosmetic fluff Couch (textures etc.). We were promised honest to goodness modkit.
Click to expand...

If they have ambitions of ever matching Skyrim sales etc then they really have to release proper mod kit.
 
Joined
Oct 8, 2009
Messages
4,425
Location
UK
I'd certainly be keen to play it more if the community made a loot mod akin to Morrowloot.
 
lostforever said:
If they have ambitions of ever matching Skyrim sales etc then they really have to release proper mod kit.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure they didn't want to match Skyrim sales but they wanted to outmatch Skyrim stories. If there was any.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
23,459
Sure, joxer, why would anyone want to sell 20+ million copies of their game ;)
 
I guess this letter implies that they care more about their artistic vision than amount of sales. Of course it might just all be a ploy to sell more copies.....
 
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Messages
6,292
Format92 said:
Enough of Witcher 3, where is Cyberpunk 2077 ???

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Well we have to wait till 2017-18, and CD Projekt RED is not willing to share any information until Cyberpunk 2077 is ready. For now Witcher III is the main focus.

Simply put we have two expansions on the way to play for at least another year.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,429
Location
Spudlandia
Well, could be a good sign that they're learning from their mistakes...Witcher was announced way too early...too much hype for a long time, can be a nerve wreck. Better they show first in game trailers, when it's fully done and "only" needs six extra months of polishing. By the Polish. Polish-ing.
 
Joined
Jun 5, 2015
Messages
3,898
Location
Croatia
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom