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[Jason Schreier] Inside Cyberpunk 2077's Disastrous Rollout (Update: Head of CDPR Responds)
- Thread starter IDontBeatGames
- Start date
Us as the audience saying "they made the Witcher 3 therefore we can trust they'll deliver" is one thing because we aren't part of the development. You as the freaking team shouldn't be saying "it's ok we made the Witcher 3, it'll work out". Jesus christ. I've lost all confidence for this company. I was gonna possibly start cyberpunk in a few months but I might as well wait until the single player campaign has all the content and mods to maximize experience because they're still scrambling just to clean up their fuck ups. Now I'm curious how much deleted content they'll be adding back.
Not surprising at all, sadly. That barebones "timeline" they posted recently basically says that outright. 2021 is going to be a whole year of massive bug fixes and exhaustive attempts to get last-gen versions working well, with some content updates sprinkled in whenever they get a chance to breathe. 2022 will see the 'actual', out-of-Early-Access release of the game.
Because when you have people coming from multiple different countries, the only common language is English.
You can't expect folks to become fluent in Polish (or German) at a level necessary for socializing and discussing highly technical work aspects immediately or even within couple years.
So most offices with a lot of international users institute policy of speaking English. When you have a bunch of people you specifically brought on board knowing they don't speak the locks language and they come from different countries, it's the correct thing to do.
I've always been of the belief that the Witcher franchise made it a whole lot easier for the the developers to put out coherent themes and world characterization (for the most part) because they have thousands and thousands of pages of how the world and characters behave. Yes I know Cyberpunk 2020 exists. It doesn't hold a candle to the fact that there are half a dozen books/short story collections to draw your writing from, which makes it extremely easy to figure out the Yennifer/Geralt/Ciri dynamic and how these characters would react in specific situations.
That's the biggest problem I have with the writing in Cyberpunk so far and I don't know how you fix it without removing and adding stuff to the game. There are individual bits of very good writing then the next minute you read some complete dreck in the form of datashards. It really reads like a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters.
Is it deleted content if they never made it in the first place?
About the length or the content of the paper, I dunno for Bloomberg but in EU any article like this one will be read by a lawyer before being published in countries with defamation laws. Writing something trial-proof is another work than forum speculation, and Schreier has proven having his back covered against assumptions regarding his work (his opinions are a different matter).
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The thing is a lot of this isn't shocking or surprising when you not only consider the leaks/assumptions so far, but also the bullshit operation and management behind a lot of AAA productions, and CDPR's shaky history.
I know they ballooned into a beloved developer post Witcher 3, but I think it's important to remember that CDPR has had development issues on all three of their major titles, and a lot of their production pipelines have grown exponentially and unintentionally during development. The Witcher 1 received several major patch passes culminating with the Enhanced Edition before it was really recognised on an international scale. The Witcher 2, from memory, almost bankrupted the company as it was stuck in development hell, CDPR running out of money and had to cancel the Witcher 1 port/remake that was in development for consoles. The Witcher 3's development was also rocky, requiring a significantly larger volume of staff than intended, a lot of crunch and overtime, an engine that had to have its lighting and shadowing rendering gutted and simplified (amongst other things) as early tech tests ultimately didn't pan out. A lot of what has saved CDPR over the years has been cash injections from partnerships and investments (including government), in addition to TW3's huge success exploding their stock value.
AFAIK even stuff like The Witcher: Thonebreaker, which is excellent, ended up significantly larger than initially intended, chewing up a lot more time and resources that also bumped up the release date by like a year or more past the plan.
A part of me feels CDPR's success and acclaim is a combination of genuine talent (which they obviously have, given the highest quality of their output) and clumsily falling upwards. A lot of the production infrastructure and processes, particularly related to management, just being something they kinda stumbled into on the road to The Witcher 3 that quickly became undone with Cyberpunk.
And as noted by both the article and many others, this is also what happens when you have upper management and boards that are fundamentally out of touch with the development team. A lot of announcements and projections and promises on what the game is going to be and for what platforms, what kind of experiences the players can have, but in practice no real management or oversight to assess how reasonable all of these projections and promises are and if so when they'd actually be made reality.
Management basically went "Well The Witcher 3 worked out, so we'll be fine", when they should have been saying "Fuck me The Witcher 3 was a nightmare to make. How can we ensure our next project's production remedies all the issues and adopts lessons learned?".
I know they ballooned into a beloved developer post Witcher 3, but I think it's important to remember that CDPR has had development issues on all three of their major titles, and a lot of their production pipelines have grown exponentially and unintentionally during development. The Witcher 1 received several major patch passes culminating with the Enhanced Edition before it was really recognised on an international scale. The Witcher 2, from memory, almost bankrupted the company as it was stuck in development hell, CDPR running out of money and had to cancel the Witcher 1 port/remake that was in development for consoles. The Witcher 3's development was also rocky, requiring a significantly larger volume of staff than intended, a lot of crunch and overtime, an engine that had to have its lighting and shadowing rendering gutted and simplified (amongst other things) as early tech tests ultimately didn't pan out. A lot of what has saved CDPR over the years has been cash injections from partnerships and investments (including government), in addition to TW3's huge success exploding their stock value.
AFAIK even stuff like The Witcher: Thonebreaker, which is excellent, ended up significantly larger than initially intended, chewing up a lot more time and resources that also bumped up the release date by like a year or more past the plan.
A part of me feels CDPR's success and acclaim is a combination of genuine talent (which they obviously have, given the highest quality of their output) and clumsily falling upwards. A lot of the production infrastructure and processes, particularly related to management, just being something they kinda stumbled into on the road to The Witcher 3 that quickly became undone with Cyberpunk.
And as noted by both the article and many others, this is also what happens when you have upper management and boards that are fundamentally out of touch with the development team. A lot of announcements and projections and promises on what the game is going to be and for what platforms, what kind of experiences the players can have, but in practice no real management or oversight to assess how reasonable all of these projections and promises are and if so when they'd actually be made reality.
Management basically went "Well The Witcher 3 worked out, so we'll be fine", when they should have been saying "Fuck me The Witcher 3 was a nightmare to make. How can we ensure our next project's production remedies all the issues and adopts lessons learned?".
God, it'll take them months at this point to develop a half-way decent police system that was featured in open world games from like nearly two decades ago.
Sounds like a proper clusterfuck, no wonder the poor devs wanted a 2022 release window.
Amazing work as always Schreier. Insane to think development didn't really begin until 2016, and it was originally planned to be a third person game. Redemption arc perhaps, but the damage is really heavy. These poor developers forced to crunch even further - god help them. The board of directors being so out of touch with the game's development was legit life threatening.
A clash of visions resulting a change from third to first person and people leaving seems on track with their history. A lot of devs seemed as confused to their ambition as the public was given some dream game. I wonder what kind of game they envisioned when they first announced it and who had left by the time it actually started development.
That's normal. Game engines are constantly developed, along with the game. They aren't made ready and are set in stone before the production starts.
The important question asked.
But some reviewers were just like "yeah, it has so many problems and performance issues, but I LOVED THE STORY AND ATMOSPHERE..."
Some even claim that the review-version (PC) wasn't as buggy as the patched version. Which I just don't believe. But maybe they were super-lucky with their play-through and didn't encounter major bugs. Which can happen regarding to some user impressions.
The gaming press plays a significant part in this whole shitshow with hyping the game into oblivion and glancing over too many of the issues. I mean it's fine if a reviewer genuinely likes the game, but they need to learn to be at least a bit more objective again. Major and minor Bugs, shit loot system, a lack of AI, sub-par RPG mechanics, shit melee, an overall non-interactive city are things that are objectively bad and should be punished accordingly. You can always do a re-review if you want your favourite game to hit 90+ ...
Fantastic post, but I guess many people just started with The Witcher 3 and already forgot or never experienced CD Projects old games. And even the Witcher 3 isn't exactly a polished experience.
That's not always indicative of the final product.
Halo Infinite was a real development build and it was trashed, while God of War was basically Santa Monica throwing in something quick to show off from the stuff they had ready, as most of the game was in an unfinished state by then - the very same "vertical slice in-engine"
I won't ever easily forget that E3 demo.
What a bunch of lies. Moreover, what a waste of time and assets.
What a bunch of lies. Moreover, what a waste of time and assets.
Because hype is the almighty superpower of the video game industry.
Also, I'm not surprised reading those snippets. It's not exactly something we didn't know or could surmise already.
"We´ve made Witcher 3, it will work out"
looking at Bioware it seems this sort of thinking is pretty common in the industry. "we´ve made great games, it will work out"
nope, it won´t because every creative work is a team effort where many different aspects are important: composition of the right people at the right place in the right time, chemistry between the people, a lead which connects to the people (like a good soccer/football coach) and the inside motivation of everyone will affect the outcome.
(and thats why i don´t expect that many great games starting from this year going forward, all those aspects are down the drain with "working from home")
the e3 demo was an orchestrated vertical slice shown to journos with the intention that they will write previews to bring the hype to people, nothing more.
looking at Bioware it seems this sort of thinking is pretty common in the industry. "we´ve made great games, it will work out"
nope, it won´t because every creative work is a team effort where many different aspects are important: composition of the right people at the right place in the right time, chemistry between the people, a lead which connects to the people (like a good soccer/football coach) and the inside motivation of everyone will affect the outcome.
(and thats why i don´t expect that many great games starting from this year going forward, all those aspects are down the drain with "working from home")
the e3 demo was an orchestrated vertical slice shown to journos with the intention that they will write previews to bring the hype to people, nothing more.
sothatwasafuckinglie.gif
Not surprising though. But it's really scummy of them to throw their QA dept under the bus like that
so much cut content in this game that it's quite interesting to see people discover and clip into areas that were blocked off. it's like shadow of the colossus all over again.
when i read that everything is cobbled together i heard eurojank get a definition in my head.
when i read that everything is cobbled together i heard eurojank get a definition in my head.
This is an interesting take, and helps me work through a question. As someone who never played Witcher 3 but heard nothing but high praise for its writing and who then experienced about 30 hours of Cyberpunk 2077 -- which has a script that is uneven in its best moments, unendingly awkward throughout, and mostly just pisspoor in an edgy teenage journal kinda way -- I've been really puzzled. But there's probably some credence to this thought.
It still doesn't explain why much of the English script genuinely seems poorly translated, though. Was the Witcher like this, or maybe the staff turnover is to blame?
It also leaves me pretty jaded by the overabundance of game critics who fawned over the narrative and writing, specifically. Straight up, an uncomfortable amount of them lost my respect in that realm.
That's nonsense, the shackles of a 5400 RPM HDD and Jaguar CPU are not the problem with this game, because the last gen versions (And the next gen versions too) were an afterthought and the game runs like complete shit. It's amazing that even in the light of all the evidence that the incompetence of the management at CDPR is the only cause, some PC fans still blame the consoles. RDR 2 is more next gen than this game and it was made for last gen consoles.
Hmm yes and no in my experience. If you have to build a completely new engine, management needs to factor in that it will take considerably longer (i.e. in terms of even years) to develop the game. If it's just few tweaks and on a pre existing engine, then sure.
I'm getting flashbacks to Bioware, Bethesda and Square-Enix. Some of these companies have just lost their way completely.
In the Twitter comments, Jason says Bloomberg requires them to stick to a word count.
From the moment this game turned into a fps I became less interested. Then we found out that they kept on cutting third person stuff for "immersion"(such crap)
Obviously I never knew it would come this far but ever since that I always kept a watchful eye on this game, then few months before releasing all the info coming out about content being cut left and right.
Signs were there, but man they did a good job covering it up.
Maybe if they spent as much time working on the game as they did covering up what they couldn't do, this situation could have been avoided.
Obviously I never knew it would come this far but ever since that I always kept a watchful eye on this game, then few months before releasing all the info coming out about content being cut left and right.
Signs were there, but man they did a good job covering it up.
Maybe if they spent as much time working on the game as they did covering up what they couldn't do, this situation could have been avoided.
I can imagine all kinds of management bullshit going on in the meeting rooms of CDPR. Obviously they knew that the game was in a rough state. And then they probably convinced themselves that it couldn't possibly be _that_ bad when it hit the streets.
I guess having specifics is nice, but there isn't anything mind-blowing in the article itself. The game was overly ambitious, had obvious flaws that were overlooked, and generally needed more time in the oven. All of which I can surmise from my own experiences on big projects with unreasonable deadlines and from the game itself.
On a slightly related tangent, this is truly also egg in the face of any gaming site/publication that gave this game a great score. Years of gaming critics stating that they're immune to pre release marketing buzz and the only group of people to be concerned about are youtube shills. Guess what, you all drank the Kool Aid...If I were in this field, I'd take a long hard look at developer/publisher- gaming editorial relations because quite frankly many of them completely dropped the ball on this one.
Not trying to downplay the "crunch" but the hours mentioned in the quote are not at all high. I'm in farming and there are times of the year (harvest, planting, etc) where I do five 12 hour shifts and an 8 hour shift on Saturday. This can go on for 3-4 months straight. It's just the nature of the industry and I understand this. I get paid overtime to compensate so perhaps that is the difference. Did these guys get any extra pay?
This question having beaten the game was on my mind as well it feels like they wanted CP77 to be a jack of all trades and ended up being a master of none.
An open world action game gta style combined with a deep RPG experience with hardly the same ammount of resources that rockstar has something had to give.
They should have focused on one or the other and tried to focus development more instead management wanted to them to do everything.
So devs thought it would be ready by 2022 while the suits basically forced this out in 2020? Ffs.
Also lol at the police system being done at the last minute. I always wondered if that was the case, couldn't think of any other reason why it was more simplistic than fucking GTA3.
Also lol at the police system being done at the last minute. I always wondered if that was the case, couldn't think of any other reason why it was more simplistic than fucking GTA3.
The Witcher for the most part was very coherent. The characters generally behave as you expect them to and the world is consistent. It's very well done for the most part, you can completely believe Geralt and Yennifer being an old married couple despite only meeting Yennifer in the 3rd game as an example.
The other aspect is that a lot of the quests are based on European fairy tales and folk lore (the Wild Hunt subtitle for The Witcher 3 being a clear reference to the Northern European belief that spectral hunters riding through the sky heralded the apocalypse of sorts) . They generally give the fairy tales a twist to make it interesting but because those fairy tales are born from people of the similar cultures, it builds and expands on the world in a very seamless manner. And like all fairy tales, there's a message or moral attached to them.
This isn't to say what CDPR did with The Witcher series was easy but makes sense why a rushed game like Cyberpunk 2077 would read like it had never gone through an editor. There's a whole lot less material to work with and harder to directly tie into the world they've created seamlessly.
There's some things to be said about the sexism/misogyny throughout the series but that was also in the books.
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I mean, on PC I had just awful performance issues until I completely disabled my OC. Since then it hasn't been particularly more buggy than other tentpole open world releases. My BIL has had a similar experience and he's just running a 3600 and a 2060, which would be a budget PC build if COVID hadn't jacked up prices. From my experience and what I've heard from others I know with PCs I honestly don't think performance/bugs/crashes would impact scores too much if reviewers played on PC.
I always felt like CDPR got "lucky" with Witcher 3 as everything came together perfectly, which requires a great, well working team and clear shared design vision. Somehow I never got that feeling looking at anything in CP2077. This article just confirms that they were using same work style for something above their waist expecting to once again fall into places perfectly.