Amazing story CD Projekt. From pirate programs to respect all over the world. [Translation]

I went to Poland, to Warsaw to stay with CD Projekt, in the famous house The Witcher. There is one thing that I want to say about: I will never stop thinking that The Witcher 2 was so sterile (almost perfect), but the company that created it nearly died.

In 2009, two years after the release of The Witcher. Then the World Economic Crisis put CD Projekt on his knees. The money from the first game ate attempts to develop The Witcher: White Wolf, a console game that the world has not seen. At the same time, the Publishing Business CD Projekt has become a huge black hole sucking in money. And GOG was hardly so popular as to maintain the existence of the studio.

This was the worst period in the entire twenty -year career of Marcin IWIńSKI). “The company is my child, my first child,” he said, “Then I already had a daughter and son. And I realized that I could lose “.

Instead of gathering thoughts and getting down to business, after the release of The Witcher CD Projekt began to fall down rapidly. “Then the prospects looked rather gloomy. We were all on the nerves. It was a terrible year, we were forced to scrape through the susks to give out the salary at the end of the month “.

This is not what I expected and, all the more not what I saw in front of myself: Ivinski in Plush, in a hefty leather chair, in the center of a steep office, stylized with fashionable brickwork, glass partitions and ventilation bdows, in which about two hundred people are now working. There is also Mousen Kapchur Studio, shining with a bright red toilet, armor, swords, awards and even a vegan canteen. And around me – the army, curly over The Witcher 3 – the games are so prestigious that even Microsoft boasted it during the presentation of Xbox One on E3.

And all this almost … did not disappear? “Those few months were full of horror,” Ivinsky shares. “I don’t know what happened, but once I told myself, if this does not work, then I will do something else, in extreme cases, restructuring the company. And then the daily stress is like a hand, I had new forces to create “.

“I don’t know why this happened, it sounds extremely a bondist, but there was something else: as long as I was emotionally involved, I was paralyzed. We understood one thing: people may make mistakes, let it be, but we must learn from their mistakes, and not repeat them ”.

CD Projekt survived thanks to the rescue reverse absorption. The company was exhibited on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. But three months later, investors began to line up. “This contradicts logic, but it works like that”.

This Polish stronghold of the player overcame all the obstacles and again soared up. In just two games and the CD Projekt console port, it grew out of a small -known little -known studio to a giant, capable of turning back. But once there was nothing for a long time. There was only a boy Marcin Ivinsky, living in the Jungle of Eastern Europe, so he calls Poland.

He loved games and still loves, but when he was a boy, he could not afford to buy them. The shadow of Soviet Russia and socialism was still looming on the horizon. Many could not afford those amazing computers that Western players played. And people who do not go beyond Eastern Germany could only dream of them. But Marcin’s father, who then shot documentaries, could travel, as a result of which Marcin had a computer Spectrum Sinclair, introducing him to “10 Print“ Hello ”.

“Many people reproach me,” my gods, you were a pirate-you left illegal computer markets, ay-ah-ah!”. To which I answer: “Firstly, it was not illegal and, secondly, look at directors, founders and shareholders of the main IT companies of Poland. Who are these guys?”” “– Marcin Ivinsky

He longed for games, and there were no shops selling them. Fortunately, the law on copyright in Poland then also did not exist. So in large cities on weekends, computer markets were opened, where games and programs were sold from hand. “Yes, it was illegally,” he shrugs, but there was no other alternative, so he had to close his eyes to it.

He took the first steps to his future career when in a broken English he wrote a letter to Greek, whose address he found in the swap-section of his used computer. He asked to copy new games on a clean cassette and after two weeks he received them. “I was crazy as happy. Arriving for computer collapse, I became a star. I brought new releases that no one else had, ”he said. “I still remember one of them – Renegade. Great game was “.

Then two important circumstances played. Firstly, Ivinski filled up a qualification test for a computer course, which he wanted to study in high school, which led him to the physical and mathematics, where he met his business partner for subsequent years, Michal Kiciński, who at that time sold games for Atari. They immediately agreed, “playing a lot of games and often a walking school”.

The second important thing was CD-ROM. “People who did not find this do not remember how revolutionary it was … in the end, what Blu-ray is?”, Laughs Ivinski. “When the CD contained about 400 floppy disks;This completely changed the games “.

Through small wholesalers in America, they imported games to Poland to sell them and first play games like Mad Dog McCree or 7th Guest. The rudiments of the business appeared. “We came to the tax service, knocked on the door and said:“ Hey, we want to establish the company that we need to do?”

The company with the speaking name CD Projekt was founded in 1994. Martsin Ivinsky was twenty years old. For two, young entrepreneurs had two thousand bucks and on a computer, the first office was a simple room in the apartment, which was provided for by a friend for free. There were so many staircases that the people who came to the meeting said: “In the noble one, uh-fuh (catching your breath) you are there”.

“Funny,” adds Ivinski: “In Poland, they often ask me“ Oh, so you were a pirate – your roots from the computer games market?”, And I answer” Firstly, it was not illegal and, secondly, look at the directors, founders and shareholders of the main IT companies of Poland. Who are these guys? These are guys who have established their first ties in computer markets.”

This, of course, is not the main place from where they came out, but those computer markets have become the most important part in the set of values ​​that will serve CD Projekt for many years. Now work is underway on The Witcher 3, which attracts universal attention to CD Projekt, but this is not blind adoration. Everyone understands how CD Projekt is doing their business. The company opens against DRM, while the rest insist on it. The company distributes additional content for free, while the rest take money for this. They respect their audience, and do not see in her milking cows. All this is due to how the company developed.

“Our main competitors here, in Poland, have always been pirates,” says Ivinski. The National Stadium in Warsaw, restored after the destruction during World War II and recently rebuilt, became the house for the largest flea market of Eastern Europe, which is the main exporter of counterfeit goods, games and music. “It was even possible,” he says with a smile, “buy a grenade launcher”. Here you could buy fifteen -pound games for three pounds in the first hours after the release. “Quite tough competition,” he shrugs his shoulders, there was little one could prevent this.

But what if he can convince people to buy licensed copies instead of pirate? He had an idea. “We got into the game in a large day that day: we signed an agreement on the localization of Baldur’s Gate”

He knew that the game would be popular in Poland because it is cool. And he took up its localization than no one was engaged at that time, it is strange, because most people in schools studied Russian, not English.

And the most successful thing is that Baldur’s Gate went out on five discs, so even the pirates would not sell it three pounds.

We spent thirty thousand pounds to license three thousand copies from InterPlay, the localization itself cost us the same amount. Then there was marketing, production and the most pleasant thing – we will hire the famous Polish actors for the voice acting of some roles in the game – to increase popularity. “A lot of money was invested in this project,” he shakes back, “The whole company was counting on success.”

Baldur’s Gate cost thirty pounds, it was very expensive for Poland, so CD Projekt put up a amount of fifteen pounds. But inside the box there was everything that a pirate copy could not provide: parchment cards sealed by wax, a set of D&D of Local Production and a disc with soundtrack. The lowest price at which pirates could sell five discs – fifteen pounds. Ivinsky hoped that people were ready to pay even more to get additional materials.

“Our main policy is a refusal of DRM and we will never change it”– Marcin Ivinsky

And so, three months before the release, the number of orders exceeded the expectation. Five thousand turned into six thousand, then into seven, then at eight. “We served not only retail points in Poland, there were orders from wholesalers, small small -town shops, computer markets. We had to take an additional warehouse to cope, because our office was packed with five thousand copies to the eyeballs.”

“On that day, we sent eighteen thousand copies.»It https://theredlioncasino.co.uk/ was a success that opened the door for CD Projekt to the world of big business. It was a lesson that is difficult to overestimate.

Today, GOG is no longer trying to prevent Internet piracy, as CD Projekt has to prevent piracy in computer markets a year earlier. But GOG increases the value of the game, taking on all the difficult work, looking and processing games, providing technical support and uniting manuals, soundtracks, training, providing favorable conditions. Without obligations. “Our main policy is a refusal of DRM and we will never change it.”

Ivinisk adds: “People have stupid ideas, but they cannot correctly realize them, and therefore pirates are successful. It works, this is freedom. And it’s good that freedom is in the first place. But people want to pay for games and Steam proved this, we proved this. The real driving force of success is the ability to hear the desires of the gamers, to understand what they want and give them it.”

Five years after the opening, GOG visit two million gamers monthly, and the annual turnover has doubled. All this money appeared thanks to the successful restart of the business of the online display of the named CD Projekt Blue, which was separated from the main division of CD Projekt Red, which develops games.

“The desire was from the very beginning,” says Ivinsky about the creation of games. When he was younger, he tried to create on Amiga, and now he says with a laugh: “A programmer shit of me. But we really wanted to make our game.”

Baldur’s Gate was part of the path and at the same time super-adventure in Poland Publishing Business. The hassle added that the chain of stores appeared and closed, on the one hand, on the one hand, and on the other, publishers. Ivinsky and Kichinski looked in the mirror and asked themselves: “Hey, do we really want to remain simple intermediaries?”

They needed an impetus that the famous games of Fergus Urkhart (Obsidian) and Dave Perry (Gaikai), who worked at that time on Interplay, gave them. They wanted CD Projekt to convey to Poland Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, but it was a console game, and the Poles still played PC. The game would not be sold. “Why don’t you process it?»Asked from Interplay. “Yes,” said our Polish heroes. “We will try!”

The man who, in their opinion, could cope with the project, was Sebastian Zieliński-one of the best Polish developers of that time, the person responsible for the alteration of Wolfenshtein, called Mortyr 2093-1944-the game was parted throughout Poland and was extremely popular. He led the project, but there was a second key employee, an artist named Adam Badowski, who became a real find. Now he is the head of the CD Projekt RED studio.

The development set for PlayStation 2 was smuggled from the Interplay London office to Poland and work on the PC version of Dark Alliance boiled. But then they called from InterPlay and broke the deal. “But we have already caught courage,” says Ivinsky. They wanted to make a game, but that they could do?

There is no better famous fantasy historian in Poland, in a country with a rich medieval history than Wiedzmin (Veedj-Min) or The Witcher, as we know it (this is an adaptation made by CD Projekt). Books are written by Andrzej Sapkowski) – a person far from video games, but with such a wonderful fantasy that he was called the Polish Tolkien. “He means a lot for us,” Ivski emphasizes. “He is in a completely different league. If you say: Sapkovsky, it means the upper class, no less ”

He was so inaccessible that Ivinski did not even consider the possibility, transfer of the right to create a game. But they were able, the right is the right from the clutches of the Polish-developer of mobile games that would not even develop history. “We contacted Sapkovsky and asked“ We heard that the development of the game is standing still, we can talk?”Sapkovsky is a writer, not a businessman, and it turned out that he did not understand what was happening. “I’ll tell you,” he said. This is true. The developers said a mobile game is not developed. “Okay, make me an offer,” he answered. “There was no question of a large sum,” Ivinsky recalls, but it worked. “We received rights and then real problems began, because we had to make the game, but did not have the slightest performance as. ”

Protection from “Horse armor”*.

Marcin Ivinsky entrusted to the management of his studio Adam Badovski. He must protect the company from greed, make sure that the mistakes of the White Wolf will no longer be repeated and protect against “evil forces”, such as publishers selling horse armor. “You laugh,” he says, “But I constantly face a discussion of such proposals from external campaigns. They are like a snake-shed, whisper promises to us about wealth, which can be spent both on “that” and “this”. Something similar happened recently, but unfortunately, he cannot talk about it. But Marcin rejected the offer, citing the fact that he did not know how to explain to the players later. “Emmm, hmmm, yes”, they trembled. “So we agreed,” he said. “You know the answer, thanks.”

Firstly, the studio was formed. The Sebastian Zelinski team was separated by the CD Projekt Red, their office was located 120 kilometers south of the Warsaw office, in the city of Lodz. Due to the distance, Ivinski and Kichinski could not often visit there. But under the supervision of Zelinski CD Projekt Red created a demo for a year. “It was a piece of shit”, Adam Badovski chuckles. “We tried to convince Marcin and Michel not to go to the first meeting with the demo, but they decided. ”

… show “this” to publishers throughout Europe on the most expensive and powerful laptops that you can only buy for money. “After two weeks of meetings, we receive two emails that say in pure English:“ This is not good ”, which meant:“ Boys, go home ”. We were crushed. We thought: “Oh my god, we are in shit.”

Sebastian Zelinski stayed with us until the first demo of the witcher was released. “Once I came with one of the guys to our office in Lodz. Before that, we warned Zelinsky that we were going to transport everything to Warsaw and close this office, he said: “I am not interested.»We offered everyone to work and agreed everything. We ordered a cargo taxi, loaded all the equipment and transported it to Warsaw on the same day. We put it in a warehouse.»There it is still lying.

Mikel Kichinski took over the development, and Bioware helped with the engine (Aurora). Ivinski was friendly with Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzika and BioWare even went further, offering a place for their demo at their E3 stand E3. BioWare did everything possible so that the Witcher did not remain unnoticed in the 2004 Jade Empire queue. Ironically, this happened just when BioWare announced Dragon Age, which will go to the head with a witcher – only this time on an equal footing.

To develop The Witcher, 15 people initially gained, but ultimately 100 people worked on it for five years and cost an unprecedented 20 million Polish gold (equivalent, approximately 12-16 million pounds-pounds). Moreover, Ivinsky adds: “It was all our money. Plus, external injections.”

In Poland, there were no games developers who were able to enter the team, and in the CD Projekt Red there were no international ties to attract people from other countries, so bankers, doctors and people from all sectors of society, united by passion for games and the desire to try something new, were collected together. But, like CD Projekt Red, they did not know what to do – they studied in the process.

Ideas got out of control, as the team tried to create something as complicated as Baldur’s Gate with the epic of the book “Witcher”. The game cut off two or three times, but all the same, in the end it turned out a hundred hours of gameplay. “It just shows that if we did not contract it. ” “What?”, I remar,” she would be more than Skyrim?”No”, he laughs “most likely, we would fly out of business.”

Atari turned out to be a publisher with a forces (although Codemasters and Koch were also considered) and CD Projekt Red chose them. “For about six months we worked for 12 hours, seven days a week,” recalls the chief designer of the characters Pavelł Mielniczuk. And Adam Badovski slept under the table. “Three days in the same clothes. These were stinking days “, he laughs.

“There was a complete confusion with the game,” continues Mielnitzuke, “And only at the very end everything fell into place. In fact, we were all surprised that we managed to collect a game from scattered pieces.»As a result, CD Projekt Red could collect the game from anything. And in 2007 The Witcher saw the light.

Immediately after the release of The Witcher, work began on the continuation on the Aurora engine. The development continued until techno-Demo leaked to the Internet.

“If you are a fan of the complete realism of the environment, realistic social interactions and a full -blooded fantasy story, then we ask for mercy,” we wrote then, “Witcher can offer you a lot of things”

It was not a masterpiece, but showed good inclinations and the game was met quite warmly by critics and commercially (today the game is sold more than two million times) to guarantee a continuation. Now CD Projekt has taken up the matter consciously.

After the extended publication for The Witcher (who came out as a free patch for everyone who bought the original, as in the case of The Witcher 2), work began simultaneously on The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3.

The Witcher 3 was three a background project to create a engine working with consoles, since BioWare did not do this in Aurora Engine, and the consoles have always been an attractive platform for CD Projekt Red. The plan was to switch to it after The Witcher 2.

Aurora again served as the Witcher 2 engine, and again he visited PC, but he only managed to get to technical demos, which, as Adam Badovsky thought in those days, “looked amazing.”Suddenly a leak occurred, and it can be evaluated in the article (just below). “We had many leaks!”, Laughs Badovski.

This is all that I received The Witcher on Auror, because then the big and terrible The Witcher: Wight Wolf, who was panting and tearing and destroying all plans.

“I am still ashamed that we then burned a lot of money – our money.”– Marcin Ivinsky

White Wolf was supposed to be the embodiment of The Witcher on the consoles, it was the idea of ​​Atari. Ivinsky saw the benefit that the brand would appear on the consoles in front of the next part. Therefore, after small negotiations, he agreed – a mistake, but how did he know then?

The CD Projekt Red did not have internal resources for the full -fledged development of White Wolf, so the French studio Widescreen Games CD Projekt RED wanted to control the process, so Atari funded the development.

Five months later, problems began and CD Projekt sent a dozen developers to the French studio to help. Further – more. Ivinsky began to suspect that the developers from Widescreen are not completely given to the project. Adam Badovski had to fly to the aid of the studio to create a piece of the game for showing at the Atari conference in Leon, who torn the storm of applause and screams “Bravo!”. But after a couple of weeks, another problem arose and Widescreen decided to roll back the game 4-5 months ago.

“I will not talk about tension and stupid discussions on the phone,“ You are to blame ”and.T.D. The fact is that we realized that they had no idea how to make a game.”Monthly, Widescreen Games was spent more money than on CD Projekt Red in Poland. It is time to make important decisions.

“After five days of proceedings, in the evening we gathered in the Lyon cafe, we were 5-6 people, the question was:“ Well, what do you think?»The answers were one worse than the other. Someone suggested that Widescreen will require another 30 people and a year to finalize White Wolf. As a result, someone said, “Hey, let’s postpone the development and make another game, it will be easier than working with them.»We agreed. “The next day we told Atari that we refused this venture”

Atari did not like this and none other than the big Phil Harrison (who worked in Sony, now in Microsoft, and the beginning his career in Atari) flew to France to listen to both sides of the conflict. Ivinski remembers the meeting. “We sat on one side of the table, Widescreen on the other, and Phil (he says with an accent), in the middle and we started the debate – they accused us, and we”

Harrison took Ivinski and kichiki aside. “He said a very British thing (he imitates the emphasis) it seems that we are in real shit.”We answered:” Yes, Phil, unfortunately, we screwed up ”

“I was ashamed that we then burned a lot of money – our money. And when I contacted Phil again, he told me that he was very sorry, but they were sending an official notice of the need to return the money invested in us.”

Ivinski flew to New York for negotiations, which ended with the signing of an agreement on the transfer of rights to the distribution of The Witcher 2 on the territory of North America. Atari said: “This is at the expense of the debt of White Wolf”

In May 2009, CD Projekt Red confirmed that the work on The Witcher: White Wolf is suspended. In fact, they threw everything into the trash – no developments were used. “We waste so much time,” Ivinski complains.

The CD Projekt RED was disassembled by The Witcher 3 and used its engine to create The Witcher 2. But only the engine was not finished. So, the first time the development of The Witcher was closed blindly, without prototypes and tests. And then the global economic crisis set the CD Projekt Red to his knees, becoming the most terrible moment in the career of Marcin Ivinsky.

What is the most amazing: during this period of constant stress, Ivski still refused to go in an easy way and sign transactions with publishers, putting at risk what he appreciated the most – freedom of creativity. The first The Witcher took only 6 months to sign an agreement with Atari that turned out to be a mistake. Other novice studios would bend down, but Ivinski did not give up. And today The Witcher 3 is fully funded by CD Projekt. “We are almost completely self -sufficient”

The Witcher 2 took half the time to catch up and surpass the predecessor, despite the fact that he was equally ambitious and built on a completely different engine. The initial location, called the “Valley of Flower”, was cut, despite the fact that it contained an “amazing plot layer”. “This is not a girl’s place,” Adam Badovsky quickly adds: “This is the Elves land.»And the elves in the world of the witcher are as dirty and disgusting as everything else. The third act of the game was also cut off, since the team did not have enough time.

The addon published in May 2011, which makes a lot of changes in The Witcher and The Witcher 2, brought CD Projekt to the Premier League. “They just did not have rivals who could even come close to them with regard to balance, study of characters and plot,” we wrote then, “or in the fact that it treats you not as a player who needs to lead by a handle, but, as an adult, providing an opportunity to make mistakes, empathize with the plot, in which not everyone gets deserves.”

And the best thing is that the studio managed to achieve this on its own Red Engine, which finally could justify the company’s ambitions regarding the consoles. A year later, at the Xbox 360, (they simply do not know how to port the game on the PlayStation 3), with the release of the expanded edition of The Witcher 2, a technical triumph came, given that the studio managed to shove it into it.

In the spring of 2012, another difficult solution loomed before us: “And what will we do with a non-gen?”After that, some more time passed before it became known for sure that these consoles would appear.

“We quickly came to the conclusion that we want the next game to be with the open world, a huge game. This is exactly what people expect from the game released by CD Projekt Red, RPG, with an excellent story that will simply explode the brain with its elaboration and graphics. And the past generation is simply not suitable for this, ”says Ivinsky. “Probably, we should not have sacrificed so many and make another game, for example, a witcher 2.5, but it will not.”

“Returning back, I understand that it was a very bold decision, because many studios would say:“ No!”Looking at this from a purely commercial point of view, it was much better to release the game on all five platforms. But we did not want this, it would be a different game;She would not be the “same” game.”

CD Projekt Red again set a high bar, taking up a multi -platform development for the first time and trying to make an open world, the size of which should not be underestimated. The crumbs of the game that showed us look promised. However, to evaluate everything as a whole by small grains, early. There are still a lot of things that you need to finalize. How many? “I don’t know,” Badovski blurted out. “This is a simple question that has a very common nature. We have project documentation for everything, but the game is still not over 90 percent. It is not finished at all, but the entire storyline has already been written and introduced. So, it’s hard to say.”

Now the team is working on a “very important Deadlin”, a new aspect of the gameplay, which will be shown by the press, and then the public. It is planned this year, although it is not fully known.

When The Witcher 3 will come out? This is a big secret, although I would not wait for it before the second half of 2014.

Whenever she comes out, The Witcher 3 will mean the end of the whole era for the CD Projekt Red, the end of more than a decade of the world of the world Andrzej Sapkovsky (which will happen next, excluding the Cyberpunk 2077, no one knows). This should strengthen CD Projekt in the position of a “cool guy” in the field of the game industry, and The Witcher will remember how their path to greatness and public attention. But you need to give a report that light can be as much harsh as a dazzling fire. There will be no concessions anymore, CD Projekt will begin to feel public pressure.

But this will wait, because the next year, Matsina Ivinsky will hit 40 years and will pass 20 years from the date of the beginning of the adventure of CD Projekt. Since he began to trade games with the hands, he managed to do a lot. But he did not go this way alone, he tries to emphasize that in all difficult situations he was helped by Mikol Kichinsky, or his brother Adam Kichinsky, or Peter Nielum, or Adam Badovski. Without them and many others, he would not sit in front of me in blue jeans, a sweatshirt, with a relaxed smile on a bristle face, in a company that continues to serve as an example not only for Poland, but for the whole world.

“I am very proud,” he says, “the biggest success is that we work with the most talented people. I can say that here we have created a family.”

“There are, of course, complex points where without them. But still-this is a unique atmosphere and while it is, while we love the games and while we are inspired by what we play, what we saw that we have read funny, and not just engage in daily routine, it makes sense ”