CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14) • Hacker News Board

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#191

Post by voter101 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

Merman_Mike wrote: post #20

IronRanger wrote: post #4

The major underappreciated factor for this release is the impact of COVID lockdowns - particularly enforced WFH - on the final development of this title. For me this is the single factor which has lead to so many of the problems inherent in the game. You cannot just pickup a multi-hundred person digital interactive art project (ie. a video game) and shift it online overnight. Still, I think CDPR were right to release…

FTA: > We have an internal QA department and we’re working with external companies as well. One thing that perhaps didn’t help us is COVID: internal testers are able to test the game working from home because we provide them with our own connected machines and so on, but external testers working for external companies were not able to test the game from homes –they have test centers and if they’re not there, they’re…

With how badly this game turned out, I can only guess that lack of testers and bug reports was last on the priority list of problems.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#192

Post by unpopularopp » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #5

platz wrote: post #2

So, what sales-related project management questions for the CD Projekt Management Board does this answer for the HN crowd? Are people upset that this AAA game that is trying do everything on all devices for a huge audience doesn't perform well on the last-gen consoles on it's initial rollout?

Oh, come on. This level of transparency is really fascinating. What other gaming companies, or tech companies for that matter, do you remember going into the details of a bad launch this soon after it happened. Or really even much later.

Square Enix with FFXIV 1.0

They took full responsibility. Suspended the subscripton for months. People who subbed for at least 3 months before the shutdown got permanent discounted subscription in the new version. They changed the whole upper management of the division responsible of the game. And much more.

Honestly there are 2 games that had a remarkable turn around from a total disaster launch: FFXIV 1.0 and No Man's Sky. Not sure Cyberpunk can do it too.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#193

Post by zyemuzu » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:55 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #187

wmichelin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.

Investors don't make money from sales. They just lost 30% of their investment. Literally no one benefited from this.

I feel like I did. Playing on a 3080, minor bugs I've experienced aside it has been a true taste of the next generation of games. Mostly in a visual sense though.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#194

Post by munk-a » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #7

This company has probably the shittiest gamified bonus system that I've ever heard of: "CDPR leaders would hand out tokens every month to staffers who went above and beyond, and those tokens were supposed to be transferrable into bonuses if the game met “certain criteria, like critical acclaim and a timely release,” according to the report." [1] Get paid in "crunch mode experience points" handed out by middle manager…

CDPR sounds like a relatively progressively run game company tbh. A lot of game dev companies deny you overtime during the run up to a major release and massively layoff staff after releases.

Up here in British Columbia all technical workers[1] are overtime exempt because EA ran roughshod over our labour laws a number of years ago and people are too afraid to change them for fear of driving off businesses.

1. Vaguely defined - in practice includes anyone who uses a keyboard or has anything to do with the film industry.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#195

Post by rhino369 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

29athrowaway wrote: post #49

pavlov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's centuries worth of legislation about equity. You can still get screwed, but "I'm giving you the right to own shares in this company" means something in the eyes of the law. Getting paid in participation tokens doesn't.

You can be employee #2 of a startup, receive a lot of stock early on and then see it dillute to fractions of a cent. Perfectly legal.

So can any equity holder in a company.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#196

Post by marcinzm » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #187

wmichelin wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they'd care about sales rather than their stock price. The stock price will bounce back, and with the game being on sale, I'd imagine many players will just hold off until patches come through. They probably made more money launching as is than they would have if they had just waited.

Investors don't make money from sales. They just lost 30% of their investment. Literally no one benefited from this.

And you think the stock price wouldn't have gone down if they'd announced a delay until March? The stock price went up 20% since beginning of November to early December, I somehow doubt that'd have happened if they'd postponed.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#197

Post by munk-a » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #131

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happened to Eduardo Saverin.

Leading to a lawsuit that was settled with undisclosed terms, but he's reportedly worth $15B now [1], so he must have received quite a lot. 1: https://www.forbes.com/profile/eduardo-saverin/?sh=1b75ae527...

It happens to a lot of other folks that aren't currently worth 15B. He made out well but the majority of folks are left with nothing.

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#198

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

_cs2017_ wrote: post #27

Wasn't it obvious to anyone who play-tested on last-gen consoles that the game is nearly unplayable and so will receive horrendous reviews? Presumably CDPR employees are not afraid to convey such bad news to the management. So why did the management still decide to go ahead with the release this year? After reading this transcript, I didn't find the answer to these questions. "Underestimated the scale and complexity…

Management may very well have had little or no choice in the matter. The game had already been pushed multiple times and there was half a $Billion in pre-orders alone waiting to be collected.

Estimates put the dev budget a little over $300 million [0]. After retailers & Steam take their cut and given that a lot of sales were full-cut direct through GOG, that puts the game around break-even status before it even hits normal retail sales.

Given this picture, it is highly likely that investors forced through this decision to go forward as much or more than management did. Push the game again and you'll really start losing pre-orders, and the next time a release date comes around people will be even more hesitant to drop $60 before release.

(As a side note, I'm playing the game on low-end gaming hardware and it works fine. Occasional graphical glitches, 1 crash. It's hard to live up to the hype, but it's still a great game. Feels like a mashup of GTA V with heavy RPG elements set in a future dystopia. Small hints of Assassin's Creed stealth, maybe more if you build your character in that direction.)

[0] https://www.altchar.com/game-news/cyberpunk-2077-set-to-beco...

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#199

Post by rashkov » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

lock-free wrote: post #121

dotdi wrote: post #9

I see CDPR being bashed a lot and I wanted to chip in: I bought the game on release day on GOG and am playing it on a Macbook Pro via Geforce Now. It's running very well for me. I've had 0 crashes. Very few glitches, and if, then they were cosmetic i.e. didn't cause any gameplay problems†. The visuals are absolutely amazing. Combat is very nice. The skill tree is interesting. Night city is beautifully immersive and t…

I'm playing on a Ryzen 3800x, a GTX 2060 Super with 32GB of 3600 MHz Ram. I think the game looks bad (with playable settings) and hasn't been compelling enough for me to sink that much time into it, while the missions are pretty grindy. I'd say play GTA V and the Witcher 3 for a comparison in immersive open world story telling and high caliber graphics. I haven't played Spiderman (2018, 2020) but in gameplay footage…

I think it may really depend on what settings you have going. The developer really needs to optimize this game for older hardware, but I'd think there's a set of settings that'll get it to look good on your actually very recent machine. Could be wrong of course, but have you seen how good it can look at the top end? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZp8fXLXgqg (Digital foundry's visual tech tour of the game)

Re: CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

#200

Post by Strom » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:58 AM UTC

theSIRius wrote: post #22

The whole project feels terribly mismanaged. Even from the character editor it is obvious the game had to be scaled down in the last year to even ship. Considering the amount of crunch, it is heartbreaking it ended like this for every interested party. I find it hard to believe that the launch of the new consoles did not have an effect on the launch date. CD Projekt could have taken the Rockstar approach, release the…

I do get a sense of mismanagement as well, however the platform situation is a bit complicated.

Stadia release was probably contractually obligated to happen with the first volley. It was a big bet for Google, they never shut up about how Cyberpunk will come out for Stadia. Based on a few reviews I've read, the Stadia version seems to have turned out OK.

The PS5/SeriesXS versions are coming out in 2021. They don't exist right now. The reason the game runs on PS5/SeriesXS is backwards compatibility. That backwards compatibility didn't exist at the time when GTA5 was released for PS3/Xbox360.

The PS4/XBoxOne versions of Cyberpunk should have definitely been delayed. However I think it's not just the holiday season that is a factor here. It's also that the new generation of consoles already came out. Rockstar managed to get GTA5 out for PS3/Xbox360 a few months before PS4/XBoxOne.

It's clear that the PC version was the focus for CDPR - as it has always been for its games. It would have helped to schedule the PC version for later (like Rockstar scheduled GTA5 for PC - 2 years after PS3/XBox360) so that initially the focus could be on PS4/XBoxOne - it would probably have resulted in better reviews and a way more polished game. However ignoring PC for so long can be a hard pill to swallow for a PC centric developer - and indeed, they chose not to do it. According to the Q&A PC pre-orders made up 59% of their sales, so from a sales perspective delaying PC probably not the best choice either.

--

I do wonder how the PS4/XboxOne version of Cyberpunk looked 6 months ago and how much progress has there been. Hard to imagine it being way worse, but if it has been consistently so bad then it's puzzling why there wasn't significant steps taken as the quality of the game on those platforms wasn't changing.