The Witcher creators were looked down upon within their own company. „We were like weird people living in a cellar”

The CD Projekt Red team wasn't respected even within their own company until the studio's first success silenced the skeptics.

The Polish gaming industry has long moved past the days when its biggest achievements were small titles. Some of them were decent, but they usually couldn't hold a candle to even the second-tier Western games. Nowadays, devs from Poland can be proud of many games – from Dying Light to Frostpunk and a host of other large and small titles.

Of course, no one will argue that at the forefront of these Polish hits is The Witcher 3, and CD Projekt Red is the flagship Polish studio, even after the "memorable" launch of Cyberpunk 2077. However, long ago, even the people at CD Projekt Red didn't believe in the team's future.

"The Ugly Child" of CD Projekt

Pawel Mielniczuk, the art director of CDP, is another creator who reminisced about the first decade of the 21st century. In an interview with PC Gamer, Mielniczuk talked about his early days with the team working on the first Witcher game. Back then, there were about 60 people crammed into just two rooms, including the "red room" where all the digital magic for Geralt's adventures happened.

Aside from the inconvenience, the devs had another issue: a lack of respect from their "blue" colleagues, meaning people from the main publishing department of CD Projekt. Mielniczuk recalls how, during the 7 years of making The Witcher 1, a lot of people thought CD Projekt Red was wasting their time and would never make any money.

Today, more than 10 years after the "blue" division was absorbed by CD Projekt Red, this skepticism might seem amusing. Nevertheless, before the release of the first Witcher, the Polish gaming industry hadn't had big success in the 21st century (or even at all).

In this context, it's not surprising that there was a lack of faith in a team that wanted to make a big, ambitious RPG with truly meaningful choices. Furthermore, it was based on a very "Slavic" book universe with a dark fantasy vibe, which even years later still made the creators a bit nervous. Back then, it must have seemed like a recipe for a big, expensive disaster, and let's be real, we still see plenty of those today.

Fortunately for CD Projekt, The Witcher sold very well and secured their future. Most importantly, it proved that there is a place for Polish games in the global market.

1. Geralt's sword, silent monsters and the unseen performance. Inside Maciej Kwiatkowski's world of mocap

The Witcher

October 26, 2007

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• Overview
• Guide

• CD Projekt Group
• action RPG
• gamedev behind-the-scenes
• Polish games
• The Witcher (franchise)