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Mummelmann on 29 May 2015
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SvennoJ said:
Mummelmann said:


That's what amazes me about this game; on a tiny budget (relatively speaking) they have made a gorgeous, huge, varied, deep, challenging game with good optimization. Kinda makes one wonder what the hell other developers are doing.
It tells me two important things; one being that great games don't have to cost a massive fortune to make and the other being that even if you choose to do things differently, your game can still sell really well and get rave reviews.

So, I agree that others should take note, this is a tremendous achievement by CDProjekt.

Making Far cry 4 for example, releasing on time, on 5 platforms. Witcher 3 cost about 15 million to make btw with another 25 million marketing budget. That's not tiny. Also consider the average wage and living costs in Poland are 1/4th of that in the UK.

Witcher 3 is a great achievement, but no need to downplay the passion of other developers. You don't become a game developer to clock in 9 to 5. Without passion you won't make it long in the game industry.


Actually; Poland is about half of the UK in most indexes, and has more favorable indexes on several accounts so that's not strictly true. In median costs; this would entail a budget of around 30 million dollars in the UK, which is still tiny for a game of this scope, size and ambition and with this level of depth. It shows that many are indeed wasting resources (and time) in their production, this is doubly so for sequels that build upon the framework of already existing games (Assassin's Creed series, for instance, or the ridiculous budgets for Call of Duty games).

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp

I'm not downplaying the passion of other developers, I'm pointing out that CDProjekt are going a different path and finding success despite not following all the set conventions for the genre and game development in general. They also have a massive advantage in still being independent; the publisher often directly interferes with the developer's vision and layout in order to ensure that the end product becomes something easily sold to customers.
The industry has become driven by fads and trends and publishers are pushing these on developers in exchange for help with massive advertisement budgets and up-front guarantees on turnover, this is not a good trend for neither developers nor consumers.

There are many developers with a lot of passion, but only a few of them are free to act freely on it and not be under the constraints of corporate structures that hold creative freedom in low regard compared to simple profit.