If the *waves hands frantically* general state of the games industry hasn’t made it clear already, it cannot be understated how much of a priority making money is for the suits that own all these game studios. Who cares if the thing is good! Will it make lots of money? And judging by a recent interview, The Witcher 3 director and director of the upcoming The Blood of Dawnwalker Konrad Tomaszkiewicz takes issue with this frustrating fact.
Speaking to The Game Business, Tomaszkiewicz explained that he felt the “problem in this industry sometimes is that people opening companies are thinking [too much] about how to make money. This is a really cold approach for the games. You cannot create art like this.” For Tomaszkiewicz, his priority is building a studio where people can “grow old together,” so an emphasis was placed on doing something different over being driven by what sells.
“Opening a new company to do exactly the same things we did in the past is a problem, because we’ll not feel that we’re evolving, or developing ourselves,” Tomaszkiewicz explained. “It was really important for us as artists. We want to push the boundaries of AAA RPGs by adding some risky stuff, which gives you more immersion, more emotions, and a different feel when you play.”
The director pointed towards recent games like Clair Obscur and Crimson Desert as examples of games that “are not a copy of other AAA games, but delivering something quite fresh.” To him, it’s capturing a feeling of his experience of playing games in the ’90s, “when I played games on my 286 PC, or even on the Atari where every game was different game. Every game was some unknown. We want to deliver a similar experience for people.”
Except, of course, he is also the director of The Witcher 3, a game that is perhaps uncomfortably beloved. But his response as to whether he feels comfortable with the inevitable comparisons that will be made with his previous RPG? “Really comfortable. I feel really confident about our game.”
It’s unclear when we’ll find out if that confidence is misplaced or not, given that there’s no release date set for The Blood of Dawnwalker yet. But its approach to quests does at least make me interested in giving it a go.