It has been nearly three years since we saw the infamous release of Cyberpunk 2077. A title that was supposed to overhaul the entire gaming industry ended up with a tacky release riddled with game-breaking bugs, poor optimization, and promised features that did not make it through. Understandably, this was a big challenge for the whole development team behind the game at CD Projekt.
Colin Walder, an engineering director at CD Projekt Red, shed light on this topic at the Inven Game Conference held in South Korea. According to Walder, the team took a “significant hit” after the game’s disappointing release. While he accepts that it was indeed a challenge, “The crucial thing was to acknowledge what happened. We had to admit that the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped for and that we were determined to change things.”
The Change Heading Into Upcoming Releases For CD Projekt
Walder acknowledges that the CD Projekt team has taken some steps following the learnings from Cyberpunk 2077’s development. He said, “This approach we had, the way we were working production-wise, creating demos, and moving towards an agile mindset and workflow—it’s about ensuring we’re on top of certain things from the start.”
The team is now focusing on testing and reviewing on consoles from the beginning for their upcoming project The Witcher: Polaris. Walder further points out that the company is determined to “change things”.
“You’ve got to demonstrate commitment. For instance, when a deadline is looming, instead of reverting to crunch, we might say, “Let’s adjust the schedule,” or, “Let’s approach this differently.” Once this becomes a repeated behavior—once the team sees a genuine effort to prevent crunch—that’s when trust and morale start to rebuild,” said Walder.
One thing we know for sure is that recently the company has been on its way to a comeback. Many of the patch fixes have made Cyberpunk 2077 a lot smoother, the Phantom Liberty Expansion pack was also regarded as a great development. Following this, if the company is on the right track of transformation, and there is again, a lot to expect from CD Projekt, especially from the upcoming The Witcher Trilogy.
