Projekt Management - Part One

Having to cut any game is tough and always the developer would rather not have to do that at all if it's to the detriment of the project. It was hard when we were faced with having to make cuts to The Witcher, especially as what we were having to cut was because of censorship in certain countries and the themes had already been established and described in the books and read by millions of people so we really wanted to keep those parts of the world in the game. Fortunately we didn't have to change as much as we feared: we had to modify some of the character models and remove some of the mature sexual elements of the game for the US release, but it still required additional investment to prepare the game for different markets.

But to have to drop anything and compromise on the way that the fantasy world was imagined and described was very tough. It was actually a bit like having to harm your baby!

Of course it's not just what you have to cut out it's also about how that affects the rest of the game and the challenges you face with keeping the rest of the game world consistent.

There were a lot of difficult decisions to make because of the inconsistencies between different rating boards. The differences between the US and some of the European rating boards for example and their feedback to us on different elements of the game was totally different.

For us [at GOG.com] it's different, we're offering titles that aren't our own so we don't have access to the source code of the games. We have the master copies so our focus is on making sure it's compatible and optimised to work on the more recent operating systems but we cannot modify any of the content.

However, our service is such that these games have been released on various markets before and in some cases where games have not been released to some markets, perhaps for our neighbours in Germany for example, there is little point not offering the titles to players in specific countries because they could simply change their county location in their profile and they would have access to those games! Really what it means is that in certain countries we cannot promote GOG.com there.

Media outlets and the gaming press are afraid of carrying promotion for our service because of the ban and general disapproval of violent games in Germany but despite this I'm pleased to say that the German market is still in the top 5 or maybe top 8 of our markets. Maybe they hear about the service on English sites like this one and that's how they find out about it...

I think the gaming market in Poland is definitely on the up. From what I've seen there has been a rise in the number of outlets that spread information about games over the last two years, and also there are more people buying consoles. With regard to developers though I think that we have between five and ten big developers in Poland but it's still not enough as far as I'm concerned. I believe that it is a place where a lot of people can make great games, but there just aren't enough investors at the moment.

Also, in the last few years we've had several big publishers opening offices here in Poland so now there's a Ubisoft Poland office, a Sony Computer Entertainment Poland and also Microsoft has an office here. So it's getting bigger, and more people are talking about games but also the way they talk about games is different. They're not talking about them just as kid's toys any more, like they were ten years ago.

The mainstream media are also talking about games and game developers and, for example, The Witcher was the biggest thing that had happened on the Polish games market. Then last year Techland released the second of the Call of Juarez series which I think was a big success for them so it's getting better and better.

There are lots of really programmers and designers here that have quite specific and original ideas for games and so I think it won't be too long before we'll see Polish developers gaining consistent renown on the gaming scene at a worldwide level.

Certainly a lot of programmers have left Poland over the last few years and I'd like to see them returning to Poland to boost the industry here, I'm not sure if that movement has already started but I'd like to see that happen soon.