Yesterday, we snared a fox by the name of Jakub Styliński, and held him captive until he released new information about The Witcher: Rise of the White Wolf for PS3 and Xbox 360. What we didn't know until now was that as soon as we let him go, that fox went barking back to his master.
Today, further addressing questions of PC piracy, sales and the impetus to recreate The Witcher for consoles, we received what could practically be considered a letter from CD Projekt CEO and co-founder Michal Kicinski himself.
Did you know the Enhanced Edition cost US $1 million to produce? That it has shipped 300,000 copies? That CD Projekt has sworn not to use internet-activated DRM? All that, some valuable opinions and several shameless plugs for GOG await you in Kicinski's email, reprinted in full after the jump.
As one might expect, Rise of the White Wolf came about because CD Projekt wanted to expand the audience for their existing, solid work.
1.) What was the impetus to make a console version of the game?
Creating an RPG is a very complex task. It took us years to develop The Witcher. As it was our debut project we didn’t want to lift the technical difficulty bar to unbearable levels for the new dev team, but from the very beginning we knew that it would be logical to introduce the game to as wide of an audience as possible. When the game was released and got very positive feedback from gamers and media, the idea of introducing the game to console gamers came back. Many elements of the game were proven to be good, while others, like the combat system or GUI, looked like they could be successfully adapted or changed to meet console gamers’ needs. So we decided to make a console version such that the game is practically built from scratch, using proven and well-liked gameplay mechanics and story. We strongly believe that console gamers are waiting for this kind of game on their platforms, maybe even more than PC owners. A deep, mature yet dynamic experience with an incredibly involving story, which TW:RotWW offers, is something very unique, and we believe that
console gamers will enjoy it as much as people who played the game on PC.
Introducing The Witcher to consoles is something we see as a pretty logical move. Creating such a big and deep RPG took us so much effort that it would be a pity not to introduce this to a wider audience when it is possible.
But it seems he really does want to expand that audience, not move it to console entirely. It's a well-known fact that CD Projekt currently has two other games in the works, and here Kicinski hints that one or more of them will be PC-exclusive:
This of course doesn't mean that we become a console-centric company. Our origin is on the PC and we came from a PC-driven market. This platform will be always very important for us, which will be clearly visible in future;) Our dedication to the PC is visible in many things, for example in the GOG.com platform, which is dedicated solely to PC owners.
Emboldened by the declarations of Brad Wardell in his Gamer's Bill of Rights, a number of developers have come forward to denounce DRM as of late -- but Kicinski's words about the general state of the industry when it comes to customer respect struck me as more than a "me too."
2.) How well is Enhanced Edition selling?
We don't have complex data yet, but we have signals from many markets that it gave a boost to sales of The Witcher. We shipped nearly 300k copies of TW: EE worldwide, and I’m pretty sure that those copies will be sold by the end of the year. So the $1 million we invested in TW: EE development will surely pay back sooner or later. The biggest reason for excitement for us, though, is not from sales results, but from the fans’ reactions. Making TW even better, not being afraid to admit that the original game had some problems and repairing it for free on a rather large big scale showed some of our philosophy in business and in how we want to treat our fans and customers. We still think that it was a pretty natural and normal move, but in a games industry driven by a lack of respect for customers and money-squeezing tactics, this move was really appreciated. In my opinion it does less to show how great we are, but more of what an abnormal state the games industry is in now, where customer rights and respect are pretty low on companies’ priority lists. I wouldn’t top managers for that; it is hard to have a profitable games business, and in the search for better results final customers are too easily forgotten. And it is just from them that success or failure comes.
Much as I respect and appreciate it, I'm not sure if Kicinski's philosophy of value for money, below, will curb piracy of hot new titles...
3.) How is The Witcher (on PC) coping with piracy?
Piracy for PC is certainly a big problem. It makes companies around the world believe that making PC games is not profitable. It is a great pity, because actually, the PC as a platform is the only open one. And it is a great place for many companies to start their activity as developers.
We have our own way of fighting piracy. It is slightly different from most of the modern approaches where strict DRM schemes are used. We rather believe that it is better to encourage people to buy the original game by giving them exceptional quality and additional values than trying to punish piracy.
That’s especially important because for most people who pirate games, the punishment usually won't work. It often works against those who bought original version and limits usability of the product through all sorts of limitations and possible technical problems.
So based on this approach we did a ton of work to make the package of The Witcher: Enhanced Edition the most attractive possible in all markets. And we also worked with publishers to establish friendly price points for this edition. That was the reason we wanted give all of the updates for free to people who bought the original; we wanted reward those who spent money on the original version and show them that it is worthwhile to buy legitimate copies of games. At least from us ;). TW still has copy protection. But this is simple protection without any online activation. We'd love to have it even simpler, but so far that just hasn’t been possible. The only thing which we could do is to remove it with latest patch, which we did with the 1.4 patch :). We will see how it will be in future, but for sure we are not gonna agree on any internet-activated DRM. This kind of protection is in my opinion (not only mine;) going too far. Too many limitations placed on usability and it makes the lives of legal users too difficult.
But I do have to admit that I'd be hard-pressed to pirate any game available on Good Old Games when I can get a copy guaranteed to work on my operating system with loads of extras for $6-10, as the CD Projekt CEO explains below.
This is the same approach we have in our gog.com project, which is (to our knowledge) the first digital-distribution project without any DRM implemented. We just offer very fair prices between 5-10 bucks and lots of additional features like lifetime backup of purchased games (if you lose your file, you can download them as many times as you want), lots of free additional materials especially prepared for gog.com, like the recently published Fallout Bible with a personal introduction by Chris Avellone. So, again, good value for a very attractive price. So I really don’t think that pirating those older games makes sense. You have all of the problems connected with pirated version, problems with compatibility, and it is just simpler and saves precious time to buy them on gog.com and have all of these services for free.
Of course, Kicinski fails to mention that GOG makes piracy even easier -- but if you were to pirate the games that CD Projekt has put time and money into collecting and streamlining for modern use, you'd be one hell of a dick.
CDProjekt made a fan out of me. I enjoyed the pre EE Witcher demo and was going to buy the game as is, but then heard of the EE re-release so I waited to see how it would turn out..... wow was that ever worth it. One of the best RPG's I've played in a while and a lot of of my friends also got it after seeing the improvements. Whatever they release next I will be watching very closely.
On the subject of EE, I wish more companys would be this involved in their games. Valve is another dev that provides a similar level of support but other devs are few and far between.
The GTA4 PC launch reminds me how sometimes devs really don't care about the customer and just want some more money (GTA4 is in need of a Enhanced edition just to fix the optimization).
Also GoG is nice. Already bought several games off of it with no problems at all.
@Swarm: I feel just the same way. Other than CD Projekt and Valve, you might also look at Criterion Games (for Burnout Paradise) and Stardock.
I think the "fire and forget" business model for video games is here to stay, but it won't be long until the games people consider AAA are not just those that have the best graphics and biggest names working on them, but those who build a community of devoted fans and players around them.
December 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
CDProjekt made a fan out of me. I enjoyed the pre EE Witcher demo and was going to buy the game as is, but then heard of the EE re-release so I waited to see how it would turn out..... wow was that ever worth it. One of the best RPG's I've played in a while and a lot of of my friends also got it after seeing the improvements. Whatever they release next I will be watching very closely.
On the subject of EE, I wish more companys would be this involved in their games. Valve is another dev that provides a similar level of support but other devs are few and far between.
The GTA4 PC launch reminds me how sometimes devs really don't care about the customer and just want some more money (GTA4 is in need of a Enhanced edition just to fix the optimization).
Also GoG is nice. Already bought several games off of it with no problems at all.
December 10th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
@Swarm: I feel just the same way. Other than CD Projekt and Valve, you might also look at Criterion Games (for Burnout Paradise) and Stardock.
I think the "fire and forget" business model for video games is here to stay, but it won't be long until the games people consider AAA are not just those that have the best graphics and biggest names working on them, but those who build a community of devoted fans and players around them.