CD Projekt RED's Tom Ohle Interview
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How was working on The Witcher? It seems like a hard sell, but has been well received. How much of that do you put down to the PR campaign?
I think The Witcher was one of the hardest projects I've ever worked on, but all of the challenges we faced in getting the game in front of fans were challenges that we knew we would have to deal with from the beginning. We had a license that was largely unknown outside of certain parts of Europe, a brand new development studio and a unique aesthetic that was, I think, a bit of a shock to most Western journalists and gamers.
Two or three years ago I think the game may not have actually done as well; gamers' tastes seem to have shifted a bit in the last year or two, and people are a bit more willing to pick up something quirky or different. Hell, two years ago a lot of people were wondering how some strange underwater game called BioShock could possibly be a success. There's just more of an emphasis on originality now.
There was always a decent number of games writers who were optimistic about The Witcher, and it garnered a good amount of buzz at shows like E3. But even so, we came into last year facing an uphill battle. We were going to launch within a day of Hellgate: London, which had a huge following and a much larger marketing and PR budget, and with the team so busy working on the game it was difficult to get much in the way of promotional assets.
In the last three or four months of the PR campaign, though, everything turned around. The team pulled together a ton of amazing artwork, screenshots and videos, and we were able to really flood the market with assets and info. When October finally hit, we were finally getting a lot of really positive buzz and I think it really helped get the game in front of players. In the end, though, the quality of the game was the biggest factor in the game's sales; if we'd been getting crummy reviews I don't think I'd be in the position I'm in right now. RPG fans loved it, they told their friends, they told everyone on their favorite forums and so on. Word of mouth helped us out tremendously.
