[Jason Schreier] Inside Cyberpunk 2077's Disastrous Rollout (Update: Head of CDPR Responds)

[RDreamer]

Really thin article on anything new or really altogether interesting. Most of that info was in articles right after release.

Feels fairly similar to a lot of the issues pointed out with other projects in his book but elevated a bit more due to overconfidence and maybe a sprinkle of pandemic fucking things right up at the end. The industry at large has a lot of these problems it just doesn't typically come out in such a spectacularly explosive way.

 

[Crossing Eden]

It's striking how this story has so many similarities to other big game dev shitshows like Anthem or ME Andromeda. It's the same story of bad management pushing unrealistic deadlines and just randomly hoping that the devs will bust their asses and "figure it out" themselves somewhere along the way, at horrible cost to themselves. I feel for the devs who said they lost their families in this crunch. It's just not fucking worth it.

It's always the devs getting screwed by shitty managers setting unrealistic expectations.

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That tends to be the case. Hell marketing even used to romanticize that sort of thing. Remember the marketing for Lost Legacy and ODST bragged about how they made a full game "in only a year."

 

[Kyuuji]

Does seem like an article written by someone who blocks you on twitter for calling him out on spreading misinformation. Would be fine on a indie video game blog.

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What does this even mean lol

 

[KORNdog]

It's good all the information is now in a single article. But it didn't exactly bring any new information. Pretty disappointing.

Maybe the one for halo infinite will be more revealing.

 

[mephixto]

What's wrong with the 48 mnin E3 2018 demo? I watched and it's almost the same as in the final game, at least on PC, hacking is different and the character creation but everthing else seems the same.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

What does this even mean lol

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Egocentric. He was hyping this for a while. A lot of hot air, hyping recycled information, and it's behind a paywall.

 

[RDreamer]

It's striking how this story has so many similarities to other big game dev shitshows like Anthem or ME Andromeda. It's the same story of bad management pushing unrealistic deadlines and just randomly hoping that the devs will bust their asses and "figure it out" themselves somewhere along the way, at horrible cost to themselves. I feel for the devs who said they lost their families in this crunch. It's just not fucking worth it. And you know they're probably crunching again to fix this mess right now.

It's always the devs getting screwed by shitty managers setting unrealistic expectations.

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It's been a while since I read Schreier's book on the subject but yeah I did notice similarities. I do think he pointed out that while the shit shows share this similar story so do the big successes. Largely this stuff happens in every game and the good ones sometimes do just come together right at the end.

 

[ThatOneGuy]

One thing I do appreciate about this article is that it does point out that development didn't really kick off fully until 2016. It obviously doesn't excuse the state the game was released in but I've been saying for a while that people need to stop saying this game has been in development for 8 years.

 

[Chopchop]

That tends to be the case. Hell marketing even used to romanticize that sort of thing. Remember the marketing for Lost Legacy and ODST bragged about how they made a full game "in only a year."

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Yeah, it sucks. I don't work in game dev, but I've seen similar stuff in software development. Asshole managers giving ridiculous deadlines to force dev/qa to sacrifice their health and personal lives for some shitty management buzzwords like "momentum"

Some people working in management/executive positions are the sort of assholes who see managers ruining their employees' lives with shitty deadlines, and see it as "leadership". I'm pretty sure some management advice books/schools actually encourage this attitude, because it's way too prevalent to not have some source actively propagating it.

It's super shitty, and it's good that articles like these expose this practice.

 

[Firefly]

What's wrong with the 48 mnin E3 2018 demo? I watched and it's almost the same as in the final game, at least on PC, hacking is different and the character creation but everthing else seems the same.

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Yeah the whole quest is in the game as is. Been wondering about that myself.

 

[Kyuuji]

Egocentric. He was hyping this for a while. A lot of hot air, hyping recycled information, and it's behind a paywall.

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Did Jason shit in your cornflakes or something lol.

 

[SofNascimento]

Quoting a post from reddit:

Additional info: https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350326730481922050

Some tidbits that were cut from the piece:

• Veteran devs from other companies were shocked at CDPR's free-for-all production. One example: if someone needed a shader, they'd make it, with no pipeline in place to determine whether someone had already made one w/ the same function

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350326730481922050

One CDPR developer told their manager that they didn't want to work overtime, as their CEO had said would be OK. Fine, their manager said, but one of their other coworkers would just have to work extra hours to make up for them. Several other developers shared similar stories

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350327597268414467

A few non-Polish staffers shared stories about coworkers using Polish in front of them, which violated company rules. Made them feel ostracized, they said... were their coworkers talking shit about them? Combined with crunch and low salaries, this led quite a few expats to quit

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350326730481922050

Last year, when CDPR explained that it shares 10% of profits with staff, gamers and pundits assumed the devs would get rich. Adrian Jakubiak said he made around $400/month when he started as a tester in 2015. In 2018, as a junior programmer, he said he was making ~$700/month

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350329528019791872

If you're wondering just how much Cyberpunk 2077 changed over the past decade: well, up until 2016, it was a third-person game. Features that were originally envisioned (wall-running, flying cars, car ambushes) were cut along the way (not atypical in game development)

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https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1350330156683026433

And if you're wondering why the police system in Cyberpunk 2077 is so janky: well, it was all done at the last minute. As is evident by the final product, it was unclear to some of the team why they were trying to make both an RPG and a GTA with a fraction of Rockstar's staff

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Interesting to see that the game was actually thid person for quite a while. And of course, being like GTA was always a goal for CDPR. People who think the game should be compared are delusional. CDPR just didn't know how to achieve the same level of excellence in an urban open world design.

 

[Decarb]

I'm pretty sure everything in TLOU trailer was found to be possible except the final interaction that ended the demo.

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That final interaction also happens in the game at right circumstances (if we're talking about Part 2).

 

[Deleted member 11976]

One thing I do appreciate about this article is that it does point out that development didn't really kick off fully until 2016. It obviously doesn't excuse the state the game was released in but I've been saying for a while that people need to stop saying this game has been in development for 8 years.

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I'm not sure if I agree with this. If they announced publicly in 2012, it's not as if their most senior/expert level staff weren't working on pitching stuff, building new tools and systems, and starting to do high-level layouts for things like Night City itself. My read was that in 2016 they had major direction changes that probably resulted in a lot of throwaway and/or rework.

 

[zma1013]

That final interaction also happens in the game at right circumstances (if we're talking about Part 2).

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No the first game, it has a custom special interaction to end the trailer. I think there is something in the game that is similar but not the same.

 

[JuniperAndSage]

Egocentric. He was hyping this for a while. A lot of hot air, hyping recycled information, and it's behind a paywall.

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You understand that this is his job, right? What's he supposed to do, not tell anyone about the article he spent the last month+ investigating and writing? And it's clearly not "recycled info", it's full of original reporting after talking to a couple dozen different developers. And yeah, it's behind a paywall. Bloomberg is one of the largest business sites on earth, not a 2-man hobbyist blog. Journalism costs money.

 

[Spehornoob]

I had a feeling this game wasn't supposed to really be a GTA-like. I think that decision as much as any sealed its fate. Just too much scope creep. I think if they had focused development on deep quest design and stronger RPG mechanics, this would have come out looking a lot better.

Is there anything in the article about when the loot system was implemented? Because it's probably the thing I dislike most about the game.

Also, I don't get the "we knew this already" takes. Yeah, a lot of this was pretty easy to predict, but there's something to be said to have a respected journalist interview the actual devs and report on it. That's a lot stronger foundation for discussion than "Well this obviously is what went wrong".

 

[Decarb]

No the first game, it has a custom special interaction to end the trailer. I think there is something in the game that is similar but not the same.

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Ah ok. The enemy begging not to be shot still happens, but its not as exaggerated as the trailer.

 

[Son of Sparda]

So basically Witcher 3's success went to their (CDPR's management) heads.

 

[labx]

CDPR always sucked. If people are going to forgive ans forget this, well they are dumb.

 

[Elfotografoalocado]

Does anyone else think it's weird that staff weren't allowed to communicate in Polish? I'm a Brit but if I was working in Germany I wouldn't be offended if co-workers communicated in German at times

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I would think it's more that the official language for professional stuff is English, and if someone is around that doesn't speak Polish, not switching to English is rude. Any company or institution or university that wants to attract top tier international talent has to do this nowadays.

 

[Legio XIV Gemina]

Witcher 3 isn't even good

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Witcher 3 is a very good game and was one the best rpgs. Just because Cyberpunk is a mess doesnt mean everything before that were bad. Witcher 3 was a solid game, especially after two dlcs.

 

[Ocarina_117]

As time passes, the more fondly I look back on the skyward sword gameplay reveal at e3.

Stands out as being sincere in an industry full of shit.

Plus <3 Miyamoto

 

[Chopchop]

It's been a while since I read Schreier's book on the subject but yeah I did notice similarities. I do think he pointed out that while the shit shows share this similar story so do the big successes. Largely this stuff happens in every game and the good ones sometimes do just come together right at the end.

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I feel like when the games do come together well, it's in spite of the shitty deadlines and not because of them. The developers pulled through at great sacrifice to themselves, and the game's success should not be credited to the managers who forced them to make those sacrifices.

Of course, the managers probably only see something much simpler than that, and think something like "push developers into hell = get successful game in short time. That's clearly a good practice, so let's keep doing it!" without noticing or caring about the human costs.

 

[StrayDog]

There were also cultural barriers brought about by hiring expats from the U.S. and Western Europe.

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I love when people call expats instead of immigrants.

 

[TheZynster]

Rare whiff for Jason. Still a huge fan but uh, yeah, not on par with what he's done in the past.

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I'll attribute it to the Bloomberg effect

 

[Vault]

Why would you want to work in Poland if you don't speak the language?

The money is terrible compared to western Europe and the US

 

[Deleted member 44371]

just read the article. yikes.

 

[Altair]

Witcher 3 isn't even good

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If you're going to make a statement like this then at least explain why otherwise it's not even worth paying attention to. Just a lazy drive by.

 

[RDreamer]

I feel like when the games do come together well, it's in spite of the shitty deadlines and not because of them. The developers pulled through at great sacrifice to themselves, and the game's success should not be credited to the managers who forced them to make those sacrifices.

Of course, the managers probably only see something much simpler than that, and think something like "push developers into hell = get successful game in short time. That's clearly a good practice, so let's keep doing it!" without noticing or caring about the human costs.

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Perhaps, but I think it may lie in the nature of game development itself. It seems most if not almost all are absolute broken messes until, well until they're not! It can be hard to see whether a broken mess is going to turn that corner at the last minute and come together or not at all. Games rely on a ton of moving parts compared to other media and the magic that can come out really may not until there's a full picture. Naughty Dog has been chronicled similarly, where a game just didn't work or feel right until it did. They think too that it'll come together because it always has!

The biggest problem is being locked into a release. Naughty Dog is backed by Sony and has more leeway but even then there are some pressures.

 

[Zedelima]

I was hoping for something more detailed

 

[EJS]

I'd love a NoClip documentary on this game.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

So basically he's repeating everything that we've already known. like seriously there's literally nothing new in here. It just seems like he wanted to get his pound of flesh against CDPR and he wrote a long article to do it.

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Yeah i just finished the article and was disappointed. there are a few specific details but mostly nothing new, and it's not even a particularly effective takedown either

 

[flyinj]

Someone should do a deep dive expose about how this article was hyped for hours but ended up being a half baked disappointment.

 

[Rzarekta]

CDPR is garbage and this game is a fraud. Using an example of someone working 13 hours a day for 5 days in a week, however, is not going to change my personal opinion on the crunch aspect of game development. That's 65 hours a week. It's a lot, more than many people would do, but having worked a lot more than that in the past in a different industry, and having seen people who would think a 65 hour work week was a cake walk, that is not some damning piece of information that makes me think CDPR or other devs are evil. Some industries are simply like this and everyone joining said industry knows that. It's not for everyone, and that's perfectly fine. Anyway, CDPR is shitty for many reasons other than crunch. Transphobia and legit lies in their communications and presentations of the game are the reasons I can't support them.

 

[Altair]

Someone should do a deep dive expose about how this article was hyped up for hours but ended up being a half baked disappointment.

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It's why I didn't bother staying up for it. A lot of people thought it would be about Halo but Infinite is still months off and I doubt he gets an extremely detailed article about the development of it when the game isn't even close to being out yet. Figured it'd just be more Cyberpunk stuff.

 

[Sax]

The follow up Tweets are a lot more interesting/juicy than the article itself. The part in there though about the devs thinking it would be ready in 2022, the idiotic management should've gone with that. Skip PS4/XBO and launch in 2022 on PS5/XSX only. Now instead they're spending all of 2021 fixing it after a broken mess of a launch and they'll just end up in the same place, in 2022, except with a severely damaged rep and still chained to the old consoles. Great job!

 

[Saucycarpdog]

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This is the in-depth stuff I was looking for in the article. Why cut it?

I hope this isn't what we can expect from him in the future. The in-depth info from his articles is what separated him from the rest of the game journalist crowd.

 

[Deleted member 79451]

You understand that this is his job, right? What's he supposed to do, not tell anyone about the article he spent the last month+ investigating and writing? And it's clearly not "recycled info", it's full of original reporting after talking to a couple dozen different developers. And yeah, it's behind a paywall. Bloomberg is one of the largest business sites on earth, not a 2-man hobbyist blog. Journalism costs money.

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In this case it wasn't worth it.

Did Jason shit in your cornflakes or something lol.

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Yes, but besides that he's not a good games journalist.

 

[RowdyReverb]

This is the exact problem with "voluntary overtime". Unless you put a limit on working hours for everyone, then you perpetuate a crunch culture because employees will feel guilty for not working as hard as their colleagues who put in more overtime hours.

 

[Nacery]

The follow up Tweets are a lot more interesting/juicy than the article itself. The part in there though about the devs thinking it would be ready in 2022, the idiotic management should've gone with that. Skip PS4/XBO and launch in 2022 on PS5/XSX only. Now instead they're spending all of 2021 fixing it after a broken mess of a launch and they'll just end up in the same place, in 2022, except with a severely damaged rep and still chained to the old consoles. Great job!

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Next Gen consoles are expensive as fuck and with all the Covid thing there's is a shortage of units. Even Sony is releasing some of their games in old gen systems. The market is simply too large for let it go specially now. Remember that even if CD Projekt are acting as one they are no way a AAA developer compared to Ubisoft o EA so they need to recover all the development budget they can so probably not releasing the game in older gen wasn't even an option.

The fact that all the criticism comes from PS4 and XONE players confirm my suspicion as if the game had only released in PS5, XSX and PC the bugs and performance issues would only be subject to Bethesda buggyness levels of memeism instead of anger.

 

[Dever]

If you're going to make a statement like this then at least explain why otherwise it's not even worth paying attention to. Just a lazy drive by.

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Not much to explain, tried getting into it a couple times and disliked it. The combat is bad and the quests often boil down to following footprints and inspecting red glowy things.

But I can understand loving it for things like the atmosphere, setting, writing and characters. To me it seems kind of amusing that with the technical problems Cyberpunk was having, CPR would assure themselves it would turn out fine because they "made Witcher 3"... Like, even though that game is a leap above the first two Witcher games, it's still a very "euro-janky" game.

 

[svacina]

I love when people call expats instead of immigrants.

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It's generally understood expats will leave after their work is done.

 

[KTroopA]

Someone should do a deep dive expose about how this article was hyped for hours but ended up being a half baked disappointment.

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Much like Cyberpunk 2077 lol..

Whatup Choombas... o_O

 

[svacina]

Much like Cyberpunk 2077 lol..

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Yeah, it's pretty meta.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Not much to explain, tried getting into it a couple times and disliked it. The combat is bad and the quests often boil down to following footprints and inspecting red glowy things.

But I can understand loving it for things like the atmosphere, setting, writing and characters. To me it seems kind of amusing that with the technical problems Cyberpunk was having, CPR would assure themselves it would turn out fine because they "made Witcher 3"... Like, even though that game is a leap above the first two Witcher games, it's still a very "euro-janky" game.

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Witcher 3 is one of the most influential games of the generation for very good reasons. Like saying "the core gameplay loop is x" is not in anyway shape or form a criticism because it doesn't in anyway address whether or not that core gameplay loop succeeds or fails. Which in the case of the witcher 3, it absolutely does when taken into the larger whole of the game.

 

[digitalrelic]

Yet there was a sizeable portion of people on that previous forum who believed it was real and were defending it and excusing it with far-fetched theories. Can you believe? Just like now we have people on this very forum believing the Hellblade 2 trailer is real "in engine" despite being 2+ years away from release. It's all fake, people. Never believe what devs say. They will lie to try and impress you and get you hyped for their game. They've done it before, they will do it again.

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I believe that Hellblade 2 is "in-engine", but that really means nothing when it's not real time. In-engine prerendered footage might as well be just a CGI video and really has virtually no bearing on how the actual game is going to look (outside of maybe art direction).

 

[MattEnth]

Yeah, not a great article. Repeats a lot that we already knew.

Was expecting board room dirt, or some senior leader really spilling the beans on what was going through leaderships' heads.

 

[Brainfreeze]

The responses in this thread remind me of the post-Nintendo Direct anger. The article was a little short, but I don't know why everyone expected so much more based on one tweet.

Personally, I learned a few things I wasn't aware of before:
- Devs were creating the engine and the game at the same time
- E3 demo was fake
- Devs were pushing for a 2022 release date
- COVID work from home likely played a large role in the poor last gen performance (though it clearly doesn't excuse it)
- The cockiness that came from developing Witcher 3, and the lack of planning / people to achieve their goals in time for the "double dip" (this could be assumed, but the confirmation is nice)

And of course, he summarizes some things for the auidence that I think a lot of people still weren't fully aware of even though they've been shared before, like the game only really starting full development in 2016, or the rules about speaking English. As someone who's worked for "We'll figure it out later, now please work overtime" management, I just appreciate that the devs have confirmed how the work environment felt.

None of this is suprising, of course - it all basically boils down to bad management, as expected. But good journalism isn't about surprising us, it's just about informing us.

I hope we get another article with more details in the future, but I still enjoyed reading this one. It's a shame the whole thread turned into a meta discussion about Jason.

 

[Deleted member 44371]

Someone should do a deep dive expose about how this article was hyped for hours but ended up being a half baked disappointment.

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Im sorry that you are disappointed by a great investigative article that shows how awful the management of CDPR is and how they didnt listen one single time to their employees calling them out on the mismanagement.

Fuck CDPR.