Polish Developer Demonstrates Exemplary Videogame Design, Distribution, and Support.

Posted by Kyle Stallock on Friday, December 11th, 2009

Online multiplayer games like Diablo 2 and Team Fortress 2 get all the press. Years after release, their developers, Blizzard and Valve, still support the titles – adding patch after patch of ooey gooey delicious fixes and new content. The companies do this despite the diminishing financial returns yielded by improving a progressively dated title. Together, patches and discounts can reinvigorate sales numbers, even rocket them far above the initial push, but at some point the return on investment skews towards unfavorable.  Next, a sequel or an expansion’s announced. This is the natural lifecycle of titles not built upon a subscription, and/or microtransaction, based foundation.

Other developers do this with their titles -applying equivalent love and support long after their little babies depart for new lives at market, but, like I said, Diablo 2 and Team Fortress 2 get all the press (especially recently). They’re media darlings. And rightly so. The former cemented itself as the definitive isometric, single and multiplayer role-playing, loot-obsessed king, and the latter masterfully balances nine radically different player classes across an ever-growing list of diverse maps and modes. Even without the irresistible visuals and sound design, both would’ve probably succeeded.

But this isn’t about those two multi-million selling champions of industry. This is about a developer and publisher from Poland showering a title from a bruised and used property with constant love and attention.

CD Projekt first released The Witcher in the U.S. on October 30, 2007, four days after the European release, and six after the Russian. Critics lauded the title’s dark tone, professional dialog, and consequence-ridden choice system, but criticized the “bulky” interface, stiff character animations, long loading times, and general title instability. Technical issues became the biggest complaint. Still, PC Gamer US called it “…an amazing achievement for first-time Polish developer CD Projekt.” and even awarded the game their prestigious “RPG Game of the Year” award. The title earned similar honors from other sites and publications, and so did its composers and the visual effects team behind the phenomenal pre-rendered seven minute long opening video.

Critics loved The Witcher, and so did gamers. In three months, 600,000 copies of the game were sold worldwide. Nine months later, a full year after release, total copies sold jumped to one million. To some developers, that’s a fraction of their twelve month sales. And to others much more fortunate, one million’s achieved in just a few hours. 24 hours after Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 launched on November 10, 2009, 4.7 million units of the game were sold, according to publisher Activision. Three weeks later, on December 1, publisher and developer Valve announced consumers purchased more than two million retailed copies of Left 4 Dead 2 in its two weeks at market.

Unlike the aforementioned mass market titans, The Witcher didn’t ride off an established base set by a prequel from the year before, or two years before, it didn’t have the backing of a 25 million dollar ad campaign, and the title only appeared on what the uninformed call “a dying platform,” the PC. Michael Kicinski, co-founder of CD Projekt, told Edge one million units “was a very ambitious goal.” “We were not sure if we could make it in the first 12 months,” he continued. “Actually, that was less than a goal, but more of a dream, I would say.”

But wait, if the title cost $11 million, one million more than the gruff, tough, and all that stuff Gears of War (which made oogles and oogles of greenbacks), did Kicinski anticipate losing money on the project? Did he expect to make it back in the long run? Or was there some kind of strange Uwe Boll hole in Polish tax law that he hoped to exploit? AH! My head hurts. For the purpose of this article, let’s just believe everything a high-ranking business official says, and that Santa and the Easter Bunny share a pint of hot chocolate and a plate of crumpets at the holiday bar during their respective offseasons.

Also in the aforementioned article, Kicinski also attributed the game’s success to the established bond between developer and consumer. “We tried to treat people well, and they’ve treated us well,” he claimed, shortly after championing consumer loyalty and the power and importance of word of mouth.

CD Projekt first treated people well by speaking to their intended audience. Instead of hitting multiple platforms and possibly cutting aspects of the game, they aimed to appease a very specific audience of PC gamers. “Some companies make a game for everyone. We decided to stick to a specific audience,” Kicinski said.

As Yahtzee stated in his “first impressions” video, The Witcher’s definitely a PC game. Menus, character sheets, stat pages, and various in-battle stances must all be figured out and mastered if the player desires any form of relevant title competence. The mastermind Zero Punctuation heavily criticized many of these elements and, in a startling show of admittance to guilt, CD Projekt listened.

Six months after The Witcher released worldwide, the developer announced a new and improved version lie baking in the oven, waiting for its September 2008 release. CD Projekt promised to fix everything with The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, and they almost delivered.

Despite addressing most of the major complaints not made in an overcritical fanboy/nerdrage vacuum - adding over 200 new animations for new and old characters, re-recording hours of dialog, improving stability, redesigning the inventory system, etc. – critics from G4 and 1UP complained the new version still suffered from a few spotty points of voice acting and pacing issues.

As a bond-building “thank you” to existing customers, CD Projekt compiled the Enhanced Edition fixes and additions into a downloadable file. Anyone with a copy of the original could grab the patch and apply at will, turning vanilla Witcher into new and fancy Witcher. Those who picked up the Enhanced Edition in stores received a startling amount of extras for no additional cost. (Take note, Capcom. We’re all tired of your Street Fighter shenanigans.)

The package included a “making of DVD, a CD with 29 in-game soundtracks, another CD with “Inspired by” music, the short story The Witcher from the book The Last Wish, a map of Temeria printed on high quality paper, and the official strategy guide.” What can be downloaded was also made available to owners of the original through the official site.

Despite trouncing most of the titles on U.S. shelves in quality, value, and bonus content, our version still didn’t compare to the one CD Projekt released in their native Poland. Those gamers received an additional artbook, bestiary, medallion, t-shirt, card game, posters, stickers, and a fancy leather bag in which to hold it all. Best of all, their version, like all others except the one released in North America, didn’t undergo careful  editing to censor many of the game’s sexual themes. But on July 31, nearly two years after the title’s initial release, the developer finally released a “Director’s Cut” patch for North America. When installed, this update makes the title “equal to Enhanced Editions available to the rest of the world.” Nudity was restored and the people were happy. Ironically, the director’s cut patch is currently only available online. Is CD Projekt circumventing a problem with their North American publisher, Atari? Or are they sneaking around the ESRB and other organizations? I’m guessing the latter, because anyone who publishes a Ghostbusters game written by and starring the original cast can’t possibly be against nudity in games.

Is there any end in sight to CD Projekt’s support? Let’s hope not. And let’s hope for new tweaks and adventures leading directly up to the day of the sequel’s release.

But while all this support is delightfully entertaining, and makes us feel nice and taken care of, it could possibly harm initial sales of the sequel. Gamers scorned by the buggy initial release of the previous title, and anyone preferring the “complete” experience might hold off until another Enhanced Edition hits market. CD Projekt needs to meet these concerns head-on, even if they’re held by a small portion of the market. As they know, word of mouth’s a powerful tool.

I don’t see a future with more companies adopting this support strategy. Many of the most successful developers and publishers currently focus on bread-crumbing consumers into incentivized microtransactions rather than offer loyalty-based, or loyalty-building, free updates. But I can dream, and as long as Valve’s out there supporting us like a caped crusader, and CD Projekt’s doing what they can from Poland, this dream holds some footing in reality.

Tags: CD Projekt, PC gaming, videogames, Witcher
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