The story of Cyberpunk 2077 – a real world story – was a story of justice turned into a nightmare.
CD Projekt was riding high on the success of The Witcher 3, and the anticipation for its next title was at a level less than the game could have dreamed of. It was the theme song for many of the E3 events, culminating in ‘You’re Breathtaking’ from E3 2019, starring Keanu Reeves.
Towards the end of the PS4 and Xbox One generation, comparisons were being made with Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the biggest and most successful games of all time.
But then it came out. When it was completed under the conditions of COVID, the company publicly admitted that it needed to be done. And when he was released, he was not ready. The game had many problems, especially on PS4 and Xbox One. Publishers call the shambles one of the biggest disasters in corporate history.
And the worst was to come when PlayStation removed the game from its store. For a developer with the stature and prestige of CD Projekt Red, it was a public embarrassment.
This happened about three years ago. Since then, Cyberpunk 2077 is now (I am told) the best. And CD Projekt is back in front of the media to promote the game’s biggest expansion, Phantom Liberty.
At the Summer Games Festival last week, I had the opportunity to speak with someone at the forefront of it all, CD Projekt’s VP of PR and communications Michał Platkow-Gilewski. And the first question I thought I’d ask was a simple one… how are you?
“I’m good. Actually… I think I’m great, to be honest,” he says.
“We are in a cold moment right now. Yes, the road was difficult. When everything was amazing and amazing, before the release of Cyberpunk… it was the time of my life, but it was too good to be true. The game was amazing and we were all proud but this hype around us was very difficult.
“We knew we had to work hard to come back. It was a difficult time for everyone. We had to rebuild a lot of things inside the company. We started with the pipeline on the dev side, we started thinking that we have to build. Is our future another engine or should we have our own? We made decisions about how how we work, how we are made. It was a big rebuild.
“Before they released Cyberpunk… it was the time of my life, but it was too good to be true”
“At the same time, we knew we wanted to work on Cyberpunk and make not only a big expansion, but also a lot of improvements to the original game. It’s been a long journey, but right now I’m just excited to see what people have to say when they start playing.”
Platkow-Gilewski has been at CD Projekt for 12 years, joining back when there were 120 people and was one of six developers. Now the business is close to 1,200 employees and his team is close to 100. And for him, the real disappointment about Cyberpunk 2077 is that he is letting down the fans of the studio.
“I personally wasn’t happy with the way things turned out. I didn’t expect that. I knew immediately that we had to go back. I liked the place we were in. I’m not talking about the high rise, but two years before that, we had our team, we loved them, they loved us, it was amazing to work at CD Projekt RED.
“When I was released it was difficult, but I knew we have the same people. The players are the same… we just need to improve our relationship. The only thing we can do is give our best. We feel that soon we will be able to do this and hopefully it will be a new beginning for everyone.”
It’s not just games that need to be fixed. CD Projekt grew rapidly and managing teams was difficult. The company was known for its crunch culture. There was a need to change the way it works, and this was obvious to everyone during the development of Cyberpunk 2077.
“It’s very difficult to change a company when you have to deliver something and you have a deadline,” explains Platkow-Gilewski.
“This is not the best time. Everyone was waiting for the release. The changes could have been made, but [the Cyberpunk situation] it was another inspiration. It was a wake-up call, saying let’s rebuild, rebuild, rethink… what can we learn from this? It’s not easy to fix. It’s not like you can decide to do things differently starting tomorrow. It’s a process that will probably take a lot of time, but I can see that the company is working differently than before. And no one wants to repeat the mistakes that were made. ”
Many of the challenges facing business are about communication.
“I want to renew the contract with the players, because we had people who followed us for many years and they were disappointed”
“Cyberpunk took us a long time to deliver and we grew,” says Platkow-Gilewski. “We had to rethink how we work in big teams and make sure that everyone listens to each other. Also make sure that we empower the teams to work on their areas of play but, when you put everything together, it works well from all. We also have to empower the new leadership, we want to share our performance work.
“The main thing was to stand up and say ‘we have to do it’. Yes we were waiting for a different launch of Cyberpunk, but now we have another opportunity in front of us. For me, as someone in charge of communication, I want to rebuild the relationship with the players, because we had people who have followed us for years and were disappointed. That, for me, is the biggest thing. We have to make the game.”
Platkow-Gilewski says there is now an entire team dedicated to improving life within the studio, and that includes eliminating overwork.
“Work is life [balance] it is really important to us. It has always been happening but it was difficult to maintain boundaries. I enjoy my private life now more than ever. We’re overhauling, rebuilding, and renovating the studio on so many levels that it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on. But work-life balance, how we work together, how we empower even small teams, what the pipeline is, how we communicate with management, all of that…it’s constantly changing.
“There is a group of people who are responsible for changing things. They are not responsible for the quality of what we are offering, but what is happening in the studio, including creating a new environment so that it is better to work. We also had to know how to work [with people at home]. On the one hand, we miss our friends because we don’t see them very often, but on the other hand we learned how to use technology to make sure that everyone knows everything.
“All this damage started when we were making Cyberpunk, but now we have time to use these tools to create, to create better systems … it’s an exciting time.”
Press reviews for Cyberpunk’s Phantom Liberty expansion have been positive. Not just about the story, but how the original game has really changed. The producer is at pains to say how important this adaptation is, and that’s why he casts Idris Elba (along with Reeves) in it.
“For us, add-ons are very important. Years ago… we started thinking what is DLC? Why would someone pay a few dollars for DLC that only gives you a small item, like a special sword or horse armor? We didn’t. So when we add that it’s … we have DLC that is free because it doesn’t involve a lot of effort, and then we have people who are working on something very important, for a long time, and there’s a price for that, that’s expansion.
“All these projects are in different phases. We are not doing all of them at the same time.”
“For us, the development has to be big. In the first game, we have Keanu, so we said, if we do something important, we need a player who can. [represent that] and show that this is not a small task, but a big part of the things we care about.
“For Phantom Liberty, which is a fun spy story – it has a different vibe from the original game – we wanted someone to match it. Idris is the next James Bond for me. He has this Bond vibe. . When we were talking about the character, Solomon Reed, we knew that he can do better.
Platkow-Gilewski insists CD Projekt is changing and has learned lessons. But there are legitimate concerns if the company is stretching itself too far. Along with Cyberpunk 2077 and various licensed spin-offs – including comics, books and Netflix shows – CD Projekt has announced major games including a new IP, three Witcher games and a Cyberpunk sequel.
“First, all these projects are in different stages,” he defends. “We are not doing all that at the same time, because that would be a lot of work. We are thinking about the strategy for the coming years. We are very careful about our IPs, we want to develop them. We want to create games within them. Also, we want to make sure that we are always stable.
“We have a lot of conversations, like what’s the most important thing right now? Where do we want to go? What do we want to achieve? The conversations we’re having are healthy. It’s easy to spread the butter too much, but we’re always looking and talking, and we think we know what to do.”
About three years ago, CD Projekt benefited from, in the words of Platkow-Gilewski, ‘a huge amount of disagreement’. However, what the team did, he says, was not to lose hope, but to raise his hands and prepare. This will happen all the time, he adds, but that the launch of Phantom Liberty will, hopefully, be the first sign of the studio looking to right the wrongs.
“I believe that Cyberpunk at launch was better than it received, and even the first reviews were positive,” he concludes. “Then it became a cold thing not to like it. We went from champions to zero very quickly. That was a very difficult time. We didn’t know what was going on. We knew that the game was good, yes we can change it. Yes we have to take time to do it, and we have to rebuild some things.
“It took us a lot of time, but I don’t believe we ever broke down. We were always like: Let’s do this.”
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