The video game industry is equal parts art and business, and convincing the business people in the industry to actually fund the artists is a never-ending struggle. (Just look at the furloughed devs behind the recently released Star Wars: Zero Company.) But CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski knows that some games – like The Witcher 4 and GTA 6 – can't be made by pinching pennies.
"We are cost-conscious," Nowakowski tells The Game Business. "It's not unimportant. We're a business in the end, so I would [be lying] if I said it doesn't matter how much the game costs. But the first thing is whether the quality we're meeting is there, period. Whether we're meeting the expectations of what the fans are expecting from the next installment of The Witcher. This is the dominant thing we look at."
The Witcher 4 certainly doesn't have an unlimited budget, and Nowakowski alludes to certain financial "boundaries" guiding the game's development. But he says cost is not the "number one position" in determining the production plan.
"But I definitely wouldn’t say this is a cost-driven development," he continues. "If you want to have a cost-driven development – and that’s proper business thinking for a lot of games – you cannot make a game like The Witcher 4. I doubt if the development of GTA 6 was a cost-driven development. In fact, I'm 100% sure it wasn't. I think the philosophy might be very similar in many ways."
CD Projekt Red has a lot to prove with its next big RPG. Even as Cyberpunk 2077's reputation has turned around thanks to a nonstop barrage of updates and improvements, the shadow of its very bad launch still lingers. But even Cyberpunk's untimely release was more of a result of dev burnout than financial pressure.
"The decision to launch was for sure wrong, period," Nowakowski admits. "There’s no denying it. But there's no easy answer, like some magical 'investors' or stuff like that. I read a lot of that on the internet, [that investors were] telling us 'you have to release now or else.' That was not the situation. It was much more complicated – much more psychological, I would even say."
