How The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Made Superstars of CD Projekt RED

In this industry, names don’t come much bigger than CD Projekt. The Warsaw-based games company is now the second largest in Europe (behind Ubisoft), and its upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077, could only generate greater levels of excitement if it came with a genuine set of cybernetic limbs. It wasn’t always that way though. Like many gaming companies, CD Projekt began in the early 90s as a scrappy start-up, importing and selling games on the outdoor markets of Warsaw. The company grew, expanding to offer localisation services, an online distribution platform (heard of GOG?) and a development branch of its own, CD Projekt RED.

Just like the company’s distribution efforts, its forays into development steadily grew in both scope and popularity over the years. The Witcher, released in 2007, introduced players to the gritty, gory and sometimes goofy world of Geralt of Rivia. It saw modest success, hitting the million sales mark around a year after its release. The 2011 sequel, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, easily trumped its predecessor’s sales performance, hitting the same milestone in around three months and netting itself dozens of—well earned—awards. These were undoubtedly victories for the Polish studio, but the series, and its developer’s popularity, really kicked into gear with the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2015. If you’re familiar with The Witcher, it’s probably this entry (if not the Netflix series) that welcomed you to the franchise. It’s not easy to determine how quickly this one reached a million sales because it flew past that number far too quickly, reaching 1.7 million in its very first week on the market—a dramatically higher figure than the studio, or anyone else, could have expected.

From the get-go, The Witcher games received praise for how they brought their source material’s world to life. Its characters may have inhabited a fantasy land filled with magic and monsters, but their genuine, believable personalities grounded the wild fantasy in a sense of reality. In a genre often criticised for self-importance and stuffiness, The Witcher felt unpretentious and real. While these qualities were present from the very first entry, they went hand-in-hand with the increased scope and accessibility of 2015’s Wild Hunt to create one of the most engrossing interactive worlds ever seen.

It’s generally accepted that games with stellar writing or world building tend to suffer in the gameplay and/or graphics department. Bethesda’s RPGs, for example, are criticised for their lacklustre combat and—at best—passable graphics; they get a pass (or used to, at least), due to their expansive environments and world building efforts. With The Witcher 3, however, CD Projekt RED defied expectations by hitting every mark: gameplay, writing, worldbuilding, exploration and graphical fidelity. There were complaints to be had by some, sure, but almost nobody could claim to find a real rough patch with the game. It was a masterpiece that saw The Witcher, Geralt and CD Projekt RED becoming global household names.

Unlike most releases, The Witcher 3’s sales didn’t drop year on year after its launch. Continued online discussion, a Netflix series and a Switch release saw the game’s 2019 sales beat their 2018 counterparts. In addition, sales even continued rising going into 2020. As of May 2020, it sits alongside the likes of Tetris, the Pokémon series and Skyrim as one of the best-selling games of all time.

Put simply, The Witcher 3 made CD Projekt RED superstars by being really, really, unbelievably good. It might be an anticlimax of an answer, but it’s surely the most admirable way for a developer to get into the public’s good graces. Of course, it helps that CD Projekt as a whole (including its GOG storefront) has made a point of being transparent, open and generous with its player base over the years: releasing its games without DRM, displaying—perhaps too much—understanding towards pirates, and standing as an advocate for the preservation of older games for new generations. As far as most are concerned, CD Projekt can’t put a foot wrong. No wonder Cyberpunk 2077 is being treated with the same kind of excitement as a Beatles reunion show with Elvis as an opening act.

Can the upcoming game live up to expectations though? Well, if you ask me, that depends on what your expectations are. Do you think Cyberpunk 2077 will shed all of gaming’s limitations and usher in a new era of interactive entertainment? Or will it ‘just’ be another jaw-droppingly superb RPG? If you’re in the latter group, you can probably keep that pre-order placed: you’re almost certainly in for a cracking time. Members of the former camp, however, might want to take a step back: CD Projekt RED isn’t formed of wizards, just hard-working, skilled people with a strong vision.

Take this month, the five-year anniversary of The Witcher 3, as a chance to get some perspective. We’re about the same distance from that game’s launch as The Witcher 3 was to 2. Think about the improvement that took place between those two games: significant—enough to place CD Projekt RED in the industry big leagues—but not Earth-shattering. While Cyberpunk 2077 has been in some stage of development for almost a decade, work didn’t start “in earnest” until the release of Wild Hunt’s first DLC in late 2015, according to an IGN report from 2019. With that in mind, it would be sensible to expect an equal jump in quality. Make no mistake, that alone would make for an instant Game of the Year contender, but it probably won’t be enough to launch the industry into a bold new direction.

Bottom line: Cyberpunk 2077 will probably be outstanding, but don’t expect miracles.