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

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

#511

Post by mekkkkkk »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #57
mdoms wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really have no idea? The number of people on previous gen consoles dwarfs the people on new console, especially in a world where new consoles can't even nearly keep up with demand.

But wouldn't this be true for every console generation? I'm used to seeing launch titles drive new hardware sales.

This is true for some games that basically has "drive console sales" as part of the mission statement. In those cases, the game studios are getting economic incentives from the console company to focus on next-gen, even if the market share is smaller. In other cases the studios themselves are controlled by the same company that sells the consoles. See Gears of War, Halo etc.

If the mission is simply "sell as many copies as possible", it will always make sense to not ignore the largest market share. This is why CP2077 is not having proper next-gen features, but is rather running the same (poorly optimized) last-gen build on both systems. Ironic as it sounds, it seems like the focus was to provide a serviceable experience for last-gen gamers first and foremost.

They clearly failed on that front. So now they have a poorly running game on last-gen, and a gimped one on next-gen.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

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

#512

Post by nikanj »

jachee wrote: post #502
nikanj wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alas, can't buy neither a new 3080 nor a new PS5. Imagine the sales numbers if supply wasn't so badly constrained

Supply is artificially constrained by bot-wielding cartels of middlemen with the aim only to “flip” them for profit. If people would stop buying the middlemen’s supply, their exclusivity premium would evaporate, and the rest of the supply chain would be able to catch up and serve the real demand.

That bot-wielding only works on products where supply is limited. Otherwise they’d be scalping every single sector of PC hardware, not just the new GPUs.

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

#513

Post by himinlomax »

Hamuko wrote: post #385
ashtonkem wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... shouldn’t consoles be an easier target to develop for, since they’re more consistent and stable?

They're not easier to target when your game is very unoptimised. Apparently even the PC version is very unoptimised and that you might be able to get better performance out of it by modding it.

It's not that it's entirely "unoptimized," it's that it's targeting high-end GPUs first and low-end setup a distant second. The game appears to make great use of advanced features and performs as expected on the highest settings with the latest cards by just turning down one or two problematic settings. The problem of course is that most of the players will not have that kind of setup and have been let down.

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

#514

Post by mic-kul »

xyzzyz wrote: post #360
illuminati1911 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Polish labour law, but it could be that in Poland like in many other European countries concepts such as "denying overtime" are inherently illegal.

This depend on the kind of legal relationship one has with the company. If you’re working as independent contractor with a B2B arrangement, the notion of overtime does not really exist. If however you are employed through the “employment contract” (“umowa o prace”), the limits on overtime are really strict, and you must be paid for it, in fact 50% extra, and double pay for overtime worked during nights, sundays and h…

> If you’re working as independent contractor with a B2B arrangement, the notion of overtime does not really exist. That's correct. But if you're paid for an hour of work ("time & material") you will get paid for your "overtime".

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

#515

Post by omega3 »

It looks like there are major issues besides the bugs on the last gen consoles and a lot of promised features/content were not delivered:

> no practical difference between life paths chosen

> AI system broken/unfinished

> length of the game + no replayabity factor

> linear playthrough

It has been suggested that the game was rewritten to accommodate the Keanu character.

From what I've gathered this game is a solid 7/10. It's interesting to see so many nine and ten out of ten reviews from the "professional" reveiewers and the reviews from the players. This is a trend that has been going on for some time now.

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

#516

Post by mic-kul »

trymas wrote: post #388
mic-kul wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Poland most of developers run own companies to pay linear income tax (19% flat) plus €350 a month for state pension instead of paying 18% tax for first €20k earned plus 32% for overages plus mostly hidden to employees installment for pension scheme. So when your cost to the employer is €100k a year: - under labour law you take home €5.7k per month - running a company you take home €7k per month For a country with…

> under labour law you take home €5.7k per month - running a company you take home €7k per month I dunno about Poland, but where I live this type of employment has some caveats: - You need save for your time off (holidays) yourself. - You save on social security taxes, but it means your salary is not compensated by it when you are ill (or your kids are ill and you need to take care of them), thus you need to save for…

Other thing worth mentioning is that for full time employee penalty for malpractice is up to 3 monthly salaries.

Contractors are liable with all assets/wealth.

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

#517

Post by kuschku »

unethical_ban wrote: post #445
meddlepal wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC here, agree it's fun and I think some people are definitely expecting GTA from a developer that has absolutely no experience making something like GTA. GTA is GTA because Rockstar perfected the formula and the engine over several iterations of the game. I'm sure every GTA is a mountain of work to create, but its a considerably smaller mountain than starting from scratch. But putting GTA aside, I don't think CDPR e…

Yeah, the hype surrounding 2077 had me thinking this was a GTA/Witcher 3 style game. Haven't played it yet. See what I did there? Compare GTA and W3? Because to me, they are similar. I mean, you can't kill random people in W3, but the "go where you want and collect and build" seems the same. If you're telling me 2077 is not open world, I'll be disappointed.

Imagine the Novigrad chapter in Witcher 3, but 20× larger and in a futuristic setting instead. That's basically 1:1 Cyberpunk. And it's why I love Cyberpunk so much.

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

#518

Post by blunte »

_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…

It has been years since I worked for an AAA game company, but at least at that time (and probably still) the pressure from publishers to release in time for Christmas season is beyond intense.

The revenue difference between selling at Christmas (even if reviews are awful) vs selling around Easter, the next available "good" retail holiday, is huge.

And since these days, patches are the standard - as in, release with known deficiencies and patch your way to "OK" - it is very likely that from an overall financial perspective, releasing now was the right answer.

If a game studio wants to maintain a very high level of quality, they have to be willing to lose a publisher by rejecting this. Unless that studio is already so well established that they are in demand, they just cannot afford to fight their publisher.

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

#519

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

>chip in

;)

I've also had zero crashes but I do notice quite a few minor bugs. They're a little annoying but I've still sunk 30 hours in. I also can't remember the last open world game that didn't have similar bugs.

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

#520

Post by chrisseaton »

tjpnz wrote: post #318
munk-a wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Something similar happened in NZ too under the "Hobbit Law" bought and paid for by Warner Brothers. Now everyone in the film and game industry is considered an independent contractor by default and aren't subject to the usual rights and legal protections afforded to company employees.

> bought and paid for by Warner Brothers

Hang on I remember mass protests by the artists themselves in favour of that law?

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