The CEO and founder of Polish games studio CD Projekt RED has spoken about the importance of its status as an independent developer.
Speaking to Kotaku, Marcin Iwinski said that because it was an independent outfit, it could spend longer working on projects.
Iwinski was discussing the development of Cyberpunk 2077, which started development before 2013 but has only just been officially, properly, announced. The exec said this long development time is due to the Polish studio's focus on quality and iteration in development.
"It is a creative process which is based on iteration. And if internally people at the studio are not happy with something they’ve been working on," he said.
"And it takes three months or six months, being an independent developer and a—I really don’t like the word publisher, but we are self-publishing—we have 100% of the fate in our hands. If we don’t like something, we have no problem saying, ‘OK, we have to redo this part.’ It can mean we are throwing away six months of work, and there were bits and pieces happening like that.
"If you look at it from a developer perspective, if someone’s working on a certain level and he spends six months and thinks it’s great, and then there’s a decision to maybe change the direction, as I mentioned, people are unhappy. So there were different things visible on the outside. But that’s just a part. At the end of the day, the days of real trial are these E3s, or Gamescoms, or the first time you reveal something because that’s when we see hey, does it work, or maybe it doesn’t work.
At the very end the only thing that’s important is the quality. So if the quality’s there and we need to iterate three years, we are lucky enough to be able to afford it first of all, so we have this capability and possibility... Sometimes if you hear something outside it might sound scary but I hope there are no fears anymore."
The world finally got its first glimpse at Cyberpunk 2077 at this year's E3. The game is arguably the most talked-about project on show at this year's conference.
