Polish CD Projekt RED, developer of the best East European RPG "Witcher" – based on the books of Andrzei Sapkovsky – two years ago I hardly found funds to pay salaries to employees, and today it costs $ 250,000 in the Warsaw Exchange. Shortly before the second “Witcher” release, our special correspondent Sergei Klimov took the founders of the company for gills and found out whether the exchange and development are compatible, which is why the version has flowed on the network – this is a success, how to sell a role -playing game of the year, why all evil from publishers and whether ideologists will soon be ideologists The series will sell all shares and leave to live in the village
[Sergey:] Markin, Michal, Hi! We have been familiar with about fifteen years, so let's immediately go to the quarry.
I propose to talk about how you have gone from almost complete bankruptcy to a studio worth $ 250 million.
About how you assess the current state of the game industry, which no one loves, but which no one has yet come up with alternatives.
And also about the “witcher” as a business project: what should you complete the first part than the development of the second is characteristic and when you finally announce the third.
[Marchin:] Listen, maybe you will write everything yourself? You already know everything, but you don't know – you think. The main thing is that then people go and buy our new game ..
[Michal:] As an option, we can just talk about why we need to buy a second “witcher” for three hours now. We have a lot of arguments for "for" ..
[Sergey:] Oh you! I am not interested in either the interface of the game or the storyline. I am interested in all sorts of terrible stories that our industry never speak in public. Here you are, when the last time you read a normal, honest interview with the developer or publisher?
[Michal:] I don't read the game press. I don't read the press at all.
[Marchin:] Okay, okay. You are right, usually the press publishes materials with the message “Buy our rotten!»But we are ready to talk with you today. Honest pioneer. Ask!
[Sergey:] Yeah, then let's get down.
What is CD Projekt?
[Sergey:] CD Projekt – The case for our business is very rare. We are used to dealing either with creative teams (for example, Revolution Software from the UK, developers of the series Broken Sword , sort of brilliant eccentrics), or with publishers-commercials burned by cynics, who today say one, tomorrow is another, and the day after tomorrow they are filed for bankruptcy (for example, Jowood , Rare idiots, agree … nevertheless, more than ten years were taken by the press). So, you have an intermediate case, you are both a developer and a publisher ..
[Marchin:] Yes, we are unique.
[Sergey:] Well, let's say, they are still not unique – there is Stardock Corporation , There is NordicSoftsales , There is Fxintractive..
[Michal:] And what is Stardock so publishing?
[Sergey:] They develop and sell various utilities for Windows. Half of the company is busy with this, shaking decent money. And the other half makes games – Galactic Civilizations , Elemental. Therefore, by the way, they feel so confident in terms of new projects – they have a cool sales director, they are behind him as behind a stone wall.
So, guys, how would you determine CD Projekt? When I talk about you, I always say that you are an experienced, commercially oriented company. With all due respect to your work, I can’t imagine Markin and Michal for the drawing board – I imagine Marchin and Michal for a calculator, for a contract or at a notary.
[Marchin:] Well, I don't know, I don't know … I am against this categorization. "Commercially oriented" – this means that we work first of all for the sake of profit, yes? Then you are wrong.
[Sergey:] Suppose. And for what you work then? How you are different from ThQ , For example? She's here HomeFront released, grades – so -so. Only 70 points according to Metakritica – and this is for a game with a budget for $ 20 million! But the corporate office, meanwhile, reports: “Hurray! Sales are made! The plan is overfulfilled!"That is, no one is worried there, the game is good or not very. The game was sold? Sold! Well, the end of history, stocks are growing, goodbye and until new meetings. And, by the way, your own company, CD Projekt, publishes this game in Poland! Hence the question: what is the difference between the publisher of Homefront and the publisher “Witcher” and is there such a difference in general?
[Marchin:] The difference is that, unlike ThQ, we started our business as players – and as players we continue to manage them. We made the company not because we love the money very much, but because we love the game very much.
[Michal:] And unlike many, we understand what a good game is. While most publishers in this business only know what a commercially successful game is. Where other companies see financial tables and profit indicators, we see players and their reviews, their experience.
[Marchin:] When we opened CD Projekt in 1994, it was the work of our dreams because we wanted to do what we love.
[Sergey:] Wait! When we opened Snowball In 1996, we opened the developer studio. And although we became a publisher – I can definitely say that in the early years we thought not about how to sell, but about how to create. And you?
[Marchin:] The same thing: from the very beginning we approached the games not from the commercial, but from the creative side. All the projects that we published, we adopted, let them through them through ourselves.
Localizing the game, we did not just translate it – we processed it. Localization Baldur’s Gate , released in 1998, was almost a joint development, despite the fact that we could just bring boxes, put them on shelves, and the end of the end. Only we always dreamed of making our own project, and the more we localized the stranger, the more we understood that sooner or later we would succeed.
[Sergey:] That is, you are for the idea. Yeah … And from what position do you look at the business today – from the position of the publisher or from the standpoint of the developer?
[Michal:] From the position of the player. We were always different in that we are looking at the game as a consumer, and not as a manufacturer. Also in InterPlay They did until they went bankrupt … (laughs)
If you, being a purebred publisher, make a game as an exclusively commercial product, focusing on the analysis of the market, survey data, sales history and all that, then you can have an absolute hit on paper, but the players will not digest it and the project will fail.
If you look at the game only as a developer who thinks about creativity, about self -realization, about high matters, then the game can turn out to be super -notal, not like anything in the world, but it will fail in the same way, because the players simply do not want to play it.
[Sergey:] And what is such a point of view (as players) manifests itself at the level of specific solutions?
[Michal:] Well, at least in the fact that when the guys bring me the plot “The Witcher” for the statement, I sometimes tell them: “Guys, rewrite, it will be difficult to understand the players – people who launch the game on Friday in the evening and start playing from scratch ". Maybe this scenario is good for those who spent the last three years in the world of Geral and understand all these hints and references to the original source, but for me as a player this is some kind of nonsense! And I won't let you go to the game.
Author!
Sergey Klimov is a permanent author of the magazine "Gambling". He has been engaged in games as a business for 15 years, describes the evolution of his game addictions as Loom , Doom , Bloom.
Last year, Sergei and his partners united their independent studio Snowball with the giant of the Russian publishing market, company " 1C-SoftKlab ". Since then, Sergei has been working in the new company as the director for the development of a new business and dreams of developing this new business so to move, finally, to the village on the seashore.
In free from turning by millions and signing megachis, Sergey will produces the continuation of one extremely good step -by -step strategy, whose name begins with the letter “E” and ends with the number “2”. Most of all, he wants this game to win the prize Independent Games Festival 2012.
In general, you know, most publishers and developers in our industry often lack empathy with players.
And take Steve Jobs and his Apple. He does not have the best, not the fastest and not the cheapest products, but he understands that the consumer needs. I do not choose a laptop on the basis of a long list of characteristics-only three or four are important to me. And Jobs understands me as a consumer!
The same thing I can say about players and "Witcher". If we make the best facial animation in the world, but at the very first minutes we will lose the plot, the players will not give a damn how much time we spent on animation-they will go to play in some other project.
[Sergey:] And why have businessmen – I mean companies that are mainly about money, and not about games – as a rule, good games are not obtained? It turns out that success cannot be calculated?
[Marchin:] In my opinion, this is a matter of goals, a question of ideas laid down in the draft. The idea is primary. There is no idea – there will be no integrity in the project.
Only when the game has his dad, someone who does not care, can it be successful. As a rule, creative ambition is based on a successful project, without this, the game is like a chicken without a head. Look at Dragon Age. The first part was a whole project – maybe not quite the way fans wanted to see BioWare , But worthy. The second part came out orphans.
[Michal:] A good game is obtained when the consumer is put in first place when the first question is in the producer’s head: “What do I want from the game as a player?»And in the case of Dragon Age 2 , It seems to me that the task was to assemble the maximum cashier. Purely commercial experience: “Want to know the continuation of the story? Drive five bucks for DLC!»Well, this is a nightmare!!! (waves his hands, rolls out eyes)
[Marchin:] At the same time, we are not at all the immemorials who are interested only in creating. Of course not. We really need the commercial success of the “Witcher” to continue to create projects in this series, so that we have the funds of the third part of the way we see it without compromises.
Where would you be today, if not for pan Sapkovsky
[Sergey:] Guys, this is not the first time I ask myself that primary is the success of your studio or the success of the Witcher. In other words, you could succeed in developing your role project, if not for the license from Sapkovsky?
[Marchin:] No.
[Michal:] Yes.
[Sergey:] Sorry?
[Michal:] Well, we would most likely make some other role-playing game, without such a consistent plot and an integral world as in the Witcher. And they would lose, because one of the main characteristics of the first “witcher”, which many more reviewers noted, is that the world of the game is felt very holistic, like a real world.
[Marchin:] This, by the way, is one of the unobvious, but very important characteristics of any serious gaming project – so that there is the integrity of the idea, the integrity of the implementation. At the exhibition Games Connection , Where young developers meet with publishers, teams come and say: “We came up with our own world!"Further, when they begin to tell more about this" world ", they carry the nonsense of a madman.
[Michal:] When we were just starting development, we wanted the player to create a heave character for himself and go through the game in free mode, in the open world. Yes, at some point he would have met Geralt from Rivia, of course,-but so, in one of the episodes. So, it turned out that the axis disappears without a heral, the game loses fascination. In this regard, Sapkovsky helped us a lot.
[Marchin:] With the first part, we insured as best we could: the world from Sapkovsky, the engine from BioWare … and at the same time we still had to postpone the deadlines, increase the budget. It is hard to imagine what it would be, we take up the development of our own idea, and even on our own technology. I must admit, I think that we would not have started: there were too many examples when promising teams announced new projects-and then closed them after 2-3 years attempts to embrace the immense.
[Sergey:] What was the biggest help for you during the development of the first part of the "Witcher"?
[Michal:] Intuition. Without it, it seems to me, we would not have managed.
We had an idea of what the “game of Sapkovsky” should be, and we consistently went to the implementation of this performance. If you remember, the first year a completely different team worked on the Witcher, and we closed that project when we realized that we would not get the desired. The publishing business was then profitable, we had money, and we were ready to develop the game exactly as much as we needed, according to the old formula “It’s Done When it’s Done”.
[Sergey:] Marchin, you agree with this?
[Marchin:] Yes. It is necessary to believe in yourself, you need to believe in your vision, in what you know, “as it should,” – and will not pass for three years, as everything will work out.(smiles)
[Sergey:] And what was this vision? What did you want to achieve? Make a good role -playing game? Or make the best role -playing game in the world?
[Michal:] You know, we are not used to starting any business to become a number two. We always started and begin to be a number one. So it is with the "witcher". Of course, we wanted not just to make a role -playing game, but to make the best game in the genre. And, judging by the estimates of the press, we did it.
[Sergey:] And as sales?
[Marchin:] 1,700,000 copies. A lot, but not the limit. With the second part, I am sure, we will repent.
[Sergey:] Why?
[Marchin:] And you ask Mikhal, he will tell you.(smiles)
[Michal:] Sergey, when I play the second “Witcher”, I understand that this is one of the best role-playing games that I have ever played at all. Incredible progress, the development of an idea-it is impossible to see by videos or understand from press releases, because we are talking about game experience, not about textures or other measured characteristics. I am sure that the most powerful instrument for sale will be the recommendations of the players who have already bought, played – and they really liked it.
[Marchin:] For me personally, the most amazing thing is that the game was made by our team without the direct participation of me or Mikhaly. Yes, we set the direction and supported the correct, in our opinion, decisions, but we ourselves were not involved in daily work. Michal read the script, but did not write it, as it was in the case of the first part.
With the "killers of the kings" our biggest and most difficult task was to choose a good team. If you selected the right composition – consider it, did more than half.
[Michal:] Marchin is right. In 2005-2007, I was very deeply involved in the development of the first “witcher”. I don’t lie if I say that I lived for several years with this project … with the second part is not the case anymore – and thank God. I am making final decisions on design and production, Markin makes all key decisions in terms of business, but routine development is carried out without us.
A good example of a similar approach is our portal for the sale of old but good games – GOG.Com ( Goodoldgames. Com ). At the very beginning, it was the idea of Marchin, he threw a concept ..
[Marchin:]… on 3-4 pages, and then took two people, and they began to make a skeleton. At first I taught them everything, and so we slowly developed, until the head of the department was found, which completely intercepted my project.
[Michal:] And then GOG.Com began to grow by itself. Markin was the keeper of the idea, vision, he laid DNA – and the body grew as it should.
The same story with the second "witcher". We built a coordinate system – this is the main thing. The second part is much easier: the team knows what a good game is in our performance with Michal. And she works without disputing our solutions and without requiring daily focusing.
Partners. Markin about Michal
The power of Mikhalya is in his creative approach. He is able to solve problems as no one else solves.
He never gives up. Always goes forward, always believes in success.
He is very reliable, I can completely rely on him. If we agreed on something, I do not need to check whether he did or changed his mind. We can agree on a meeting of May fifth in Los Angeles at the intersection of the fifth street and Broadway at ten in the morning, and he will be there. We can agree that we are looking for a creative producer – and he will find this.
The most of his best solution? That he started this business with me, created this company.
What does he think about me? Let's not say.
How the Witcher sold was sold
[Sergey:] Mike, Markin, let's change the subject a little. When we are talking about the “Witcher”, we are talking about success history. Firstly, the first part has an average rating on Methacritic-86 points, this is one of the best RPG in the world and certainly the best RPG developed in Eastern Europe. Secondly, the CD Projekt Red has become a studio worth $ 250 million, which gives you almost unlimited opportunities for financing the third “witcher”, without compromises on quality and without pressure from publishers. Thirdly, the second “witcher”, which comes out very soon, seems to be a glory.
However, I would like to add objectivity to this story. After all, when you did the first part, then the exit time was postponed several times. The game engine has changed, and many, including the release of many, including the question – there will be a good game or just another attempt to make cool? I even remember how one famous game journalist from Russia came to visit you six months before the Vitamak exit to speak for the Russian publisher a game expert. So, returning, he said that you would not succeed. This is not to the fact that he is an idiot (then we are all idiots). This is me to the fact that outside the studio no one had confidence that you would succeed. Agree?
[Marchin:] At the end of the development – perhaps I agree. We knew our project along and across and believed one hundred percent in it, but from outside the role -playing game it is rarely possible to say whether it is good or not. Especially if this is the first game of the studio, as it was in our case.
[Sergey:] And if you recall the search for the publisher for the first "witcher"? Remember, about five years ago, when you had an almost ready game in your hands, but for some reason the publishers were not in a hurry to give you money.
[Michal:] This is still a very soft formulation! In search of the publisher, we went through all the circles of hell.
[Sergey:] The experience of CDP as a Polish publisher helped you? After all, you came to publishers not just as a studio, by that time you have published other people's projects for more than 10 years and have been a number one player in Poland.
[Marchin:] Publishing experience, of course, helped a lot. It was a serious vaccination in terms of business. Large international publishers usually really throw all novice developers on the first major deal, and indeed – on the first deal. Immediately recall a dozen stories about teams that lost rights, lost money, lost years of work … It helped us that we learned to develop games on the Witcher, but not to conduct business. In terms of business, everything was in order with us.
[Sergey:] And on whose money you made the first "witcher"? In my experience, the development of the game in the absence of my own source of income is a very serious pressure on the project. You might like to throw everything out in the middle of the process and redo it like Gabe Newell with Half-Life , But if you work for other people's money, then you will not allow you, and a game-comment will come out, from which no one will be good-neither players, nor the developer, nor, in the end, to the publisher.
[Michal:] “Witcher” we made exclusively with our own money. This helped us and interfered with. I remember how at our first Games Connection in Lyon we met with one major international publisher (do not call it in the article, forgive us – we may have to work with them (he grins))).
Their vice-president in development for five minutes looks at the game and begins to ask questions. We are waiting for questions about the genre, about the features of the gameplay, but he asks: “When you need the first payment?"Marchin says:" Yes, actually not yet needed-we are working on our own ". Vice President: “And when your own ends? How many weeks do you still have enough funding?»Come up, he did not even measure for months, he simply could not imagine that an independent developer could have his own money in some normal volume!
[Marchin:] Yes, for us it was a conversation with aliens. When he found out that we were developing for our money, he was shocked – how is it, the developer has money! He is simply not used to working in such a situation. After all, publishers use financing as their main lever: we pay – we determine what, how and when you do.
[Michal:] And when he digested that we did not need money forward from him, he asked his second question: “How much is our IP (Intellectual Property -“ Intellectual Property ”), how much are we ready to give the“ Witcher ”in the root?"We say:" Not for sale ". He smiles and says: “Well, what are you guys, everything is sold in our industry. Let us not get your IP right away, let's get it seven years after the release of the first game will arrange?"
[Marchin:] And we say: "Will not suit". I was very unpleasant after that meeting, because I saw with my own eyes how the work of large gaming publishers really arranged. They are used to communicating with teams that end with money and who need to subscribe as soon as possible. And for this matter, they immediately grab the rights to IP. As if he had come to the first date, but panties are already being pulled off from you. We made a game, dreamed, and now these ghouls want to pick up everything – rights, license, freedom. Just because they do this with everyone.
[Michal:] This is exactly what I was talking about. We were not stereotypical poor developers, because of this it was difficult for us to attach the project. International publishers are accustomed to work either on the terms of distribution (when they bring a ready -made game and you only need to take the shopping boxes), or on the conditions when the developer is their slave. And we wanted partnerships, no matter how naive it sounds, we wanted to jointly work to bring the project to the market.
[Sergey:] By the way, it was not very noticeable for you that you suffered from this. Both I and many others were completely sure that you were trifling – looking for who would pay you the maximum advance.
[Marchin:] If!
[Michal:] Remember E3 2006? It was a serious lesson for us. There was a year left before the project, the game was almost ready. And we are still without a publisher!
[Marchin:] Yes, we then said that we should return from the exhibition already with the contract – or at least with the certainty with whom we will subscribe.
[Michal:] The Witcher at that time already had at least five awards “Best Role Game of the Exhibition” from various events. All publishers to whom we showed the project, he liked it. But not a single bastard wanted to subscribe! They did not understand how to work with us without taking our right to the whole series. And we developed “Plan B”: if we do not sign the contract until the end of summer, we begin to sell rights to individual countries, without a global umbrella. In Spain, to France, local regional distributors ..
[Sergey:] I remember exactly that at the August exhibition in Leipzig, with the look of the conspirators, you discussed something for a long time for a long time on the street, in the parking lot, under the sun.
[Marchin:] Yes, we then decided whether we would work for individual countries ourselves or choose Atari. And then it took us six months to sign the contract. I don't want to offend anyone, but working with the French is horror. I haven't seen the worst businessmen in my life yet.
[Sergey:] What does the developer need for success, in your opinion?
[Marchin:] High -quality project and business experience.
[Michal:] Or good connections, correct acquaintances. But this is a vicious circle – dating appears in the process of doing business, which means that if you do not have experience in the game business, you do not have the necessary connections.
[Marchin:] Without experience in business, definitely in no way. For example, the publisher says to you: “We will reserve forty percent of the copyright from each quarter under return”. This is a lot? Or little? This is fine? Or you are bred?
[Sergey:] In my opinion, a bit too much. I would take twenty and only the first three quarters.
[Marchin:] That's it. This is the publishing years in you. Imagine what situation the beginner developer falls into the situation?
Developers against publishers
[Sergey:] Tell me, why do few people in the industry love publishers? I argued here the other day with one of the directors of an independent studio on how rotten the system. He says to me: "What is at least one publisher with whom it would be useful to work with a talented team". I thought for a long time, but could not name.
[Michal:] You know, it seems to me that such a problem – the lack of normal personnel – is in any industry.
It's just that you and I have been engaged in games all our lives, and it seems to us that all the idiots moved to us. But if we went to work in a music business, or in the exhibition, or in tourist, we would understand that there is exactly the same ratio of fools and reasonable people.
You look at the sake of example for large technological companies, at this multi -billion dollar business. Only Apple differs from other phone manufacturers because Apple thinks about the consumer, and not about the market or about the financial plan. And where now Nokia? Nokia – weaves in the tail because the company forgot its customers. They have educated people with many diplomas there, but they can only hang these diplomas on the wall, no more – diplomas cannot be transferred into success. You can collect meetings as much as you like and arrange teleconference, but if you do not understand how your product is used, write disappears. Apple makes phones for people, and for whom it makes Nokia phones? Certainly not for me. As soon as you lose the focus on the consumer, this is the end.
[Sergey:] Yes, yes, this story has haunted me since last year. Simple question: how do you think the leader thinks about Rockstar Games – About the campaign or about their games? It seems to me about games. Because what they do with the same L.A. Noire , – This is clearly not according to the rules. This is a game that is being developed in Australia (op!), an external studio (op!), in the genre, which is officially considered dead (op!), and in the setting that none of the publishers today considers cool (opa!). On E3 of 2010, everyone said that this would be the second failure of the studio (the first was Bully ), and now they already say that it will be the same success as Red Dead Redemption.
[Michal:] And who said something? Surely some people in costumes-publishing ballast, plankton of our industry.
See what such "marketers" have done with Dragon Age. They decided to expand the audience, get into the mass market, which excites all investors, and as a result lost the most faithful BioWare fans.
[Marchin:] It’s like with a system of age ratings, there is such a “e”, it means “for everyyone”, “for all”, that is, any ram can play the project. As a rule, only rams down in such projects and play.
[Sergey:] And you did not try to "get into the mass market" with the second "witcher"? You are now a public company, you have exchange quotes, external investors ..
[Michal:] No, we did not do such insanity and we will not do. While we have control over the company in our hands, we are not going to kill the Witcher. In the second part, we planned to give a deeper storyline, nonlinear, in some places provocative – and at the same time preserve the core of the audience.
[Marchin:] There is the following formula: “Easy to play – hard to master” (roughly speaking, “easy to play is hard to win”). This is about us. The second "witcher" has become more accessible, but in no case is it easier.
[Sergey:] By the way, continuing the theme of publishers and developers. I just heard the other day from a friend, Sven Vinka from Larian Studios , which is now making the third part Divinity And he will announce it at the end of summer that he is afraid to add a business department to his studio, as he can corrupt the entire company by re-having re-incident from the idea of playing the cost of a brand. What do you think there are risks?
[Michal:] If you take the business manager to the studio, who does not understand the hens, it will be the most faithful and shortest way to the death of the company. Here is the classic of our business – when the game series is killed by too much low -quality continuation. The manager, the player himself does not see the difference: there is a game, and here the game, the pictures are beautiful, the menus are similar … Where he will understand that he was slipped by the cartoon? And here it is not only when the last time these people played ..
[Marchin:]… I played this morning in Plants vs. Zombies On the iPad, I have all the Achiva – except for the forty waves of the zombie, I can’t go through this yet ..
[Michal:]… the fact is how these people have a head. If you invite the manager’s understanding game and players to the creative team, then this will be the perfect option. Here Markin says about Plants vs. Zombies is an example Popcap Games indicative. They do incredible, creative things, and at the same time, from the point of view of business, they do it very smartly.
[Sergey:] Yes, I noticed-with such a business department they do not need to beg money from any publisher.
[Marchin:] No one needs to beg money at all if you want to make a good game.
[Sergey:] Listen to you, so the developers are always right, and all evil from publishers.
[Marchin:] This is wrong. Rather, not quite. I am against it when the developer becomes such a dreamer who does not think about taxes or rental.
[Michal:] If the developer wants success, he must first be well organized. It is necessary to achieve the unity of the creative principle within the framework of his studio – and professionalism.
[Marchin:] Look at us – yes, we are now full of money, we are successful, we are on the exchange, but at the same time we ourselves are responsible for the financial result of each of our projects. At some point, any team needs to assign a tough date for the game-and everything is to be done to this very date. Development of development, but at a certain stage you need to start thinking about the publishing side of the issue, when you no longer have freedom at the level “I don’t want” and “come later”: once “May” said, it means May.
[Sergey:] What is, in your opinion, a "successful project"? This is generally the same concept in the eyes of the developers and in the eyes of publishers?
[Michal:] For me, the success of the project is determined not by the collected cashier, but the satisfaction of consumers, no matter how trite it may sound.
Imagine two situations. The first is when the publisher releases a continuation of the famous game. Continuation – rubbish, but almost everyone is bought and scolding the game after they gave the money for it. This is a success? If you look at the fees – certainly. The second situation is when the developer does the project, it makes it for a long time, it turns out cool, but somewhere before the exit of the game, the producer accidentally misses an unprotected copy to the network, and as a result, one and a half million people joyfully play, although it is still far from the official release. This is a success? If you look at the fees, then closer to failure. But for me, success is precisely the second case, because the developer received an audience, a base of players. And when he continues, he will be able to sell their million copies to them, because people liked the game and they will come for the second part. And in the first case, despite the good today's fees, the entire game series – crains. The series died. All. It was, but all came out. And this is already a failure so failure.
Partners. Michal about Markin
Markin is a person’s person well organized, he likes to build processes, make decisions. I'm chaotic, I am interested in the idea, vision. I can’t stand business meetings, dinners, telephone conversations, correspondence by mail with many interlocutors – but he loves all this. He even loves to travel. His strength is that he likes a business process, he understands it and enjoys him. If Markin had not built a system, I would not have advanced with my creative approach.
It is quite open to new ideas. "Enough"-because sometimes it will still be stubborn. But in general, he does not have a short and he relies on my opinion, on my feelings. Few can. There are people who look at me as a psycho: I am inventing the engine – and they are preoccupied with how to row the oars quickly. Well, it happens, I'm not offended.
In general, we are well suitable for each other – we have different types of personality, and at the same time we are able to work together.
The best decision of Marchin? That he decided to make his company and took me to partners. There are no options here, this is the most important decision that we both probably made.
What does he think about me? Well, he probably said that I have a creative vein. This is true what to hide. Probably something else about my abilities to promote projects, communication, understanding the needs of players, about the ability to perceive games precisely as a player, and not as a businessman. Well, about business qualities. I don't know what he said, but it would seem to me fair to note them.
"Witcher" on the stock exchange
[Sergey:] It’s easier to live with access to the exchange? Something has changed significantly?
[Michal:] Yes!
[Marchin:] Oh yes!
[Sergey:] I have one example from real life. Not so long ago, the Russian studio signed up to work with a major international publisher, and now, in the framework of control over production, this publisher sends its production team a composition of five people every month. All five fly a business class. Five tickets from San Francisco to Moscow, business, cost $ 45,000. And this is only for flights, every month! At the same time, there are domestic teams that have the whole game less than these very forty -five thousand ..
[Michal:] You know, this is one of the lessons that we received after entering the exchange: either you are in the first league, or you are on the street. Not given average.
[Marchin:] This is true, there is no "moderate success" in our industry. When we sold the first “witcher”, we came to one American publisher. And so he asks: “What is the game budget?"We say:" Two million ". And he replies: “Guys, we spend at least ten million on the game. Here, the remake is now doing one, the budget is fifteen million. We cannot sign you with your two two. This is too little for us ".
[Michal:] Direct consequence of the exchange – that we are offered from all sides to take funding on very good conditions. And at the same time, we do not need money for development, everything is in perfect order.
However, I remember very well that if you have a financing of the problem, if there is no success yet, then to find one dollar, the problem. This is an old story about the fact that the experienced producer is ready to pay a lot of money, while nobody needs inexperienced producers and for a dead.
[Sergey:] Your financial problems in the company have ever had financial problems?
[Michal:] You ask!
[Marchin:] After the 2008 crisis, we were almost on the verge of bankruptcy for 20 months. Seriously, every month they made a lot of efforts to find money to pay salaries, a lot of abbreviations were carried out.
[Michal:] And now our studio costs $ 250 million on the exchange, checked! (smiles)
[Sergey:] What helped you overcome your problems?
[Marchin:] We, like a frog in a fairy tale, never gave up and continued to whip milk until we got oil and dumped from a fucking tub ..
[Michal:] Two Polish frogs.
[Marchin:] Thanks to this story, by the way, we realized that most venture investors do not think in business in business. Honestly. When we had problems, people came to us and offered to buy the whole company for debts, paying one zloty. And then a man came and offered a million euros. We refused. Although we really needed money at that time.
[Michal:] Let me tell you a story about Ernst & Young, you can? A few years ago, after the first “Witcher”, I was nominated by the Marki to the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from E& Y. We were in a wake of success and went to the banquet on the occasion with pleasure. And there were gathered such fat cats that are engaged in investments, buying and selling companies … And so they talked about one corporation from Poland, which is engaged in the production of surgical knives. The story was that almost all Polish investors refused to invest in it – and then, a year later, the company went to the exchange and raised two hundred million dollars. Like this.
[Marchin:] I was then surprised that all these “professional investors” – they are like rams, live according to the laws of the herd. What is success in our business? This is when you make games that are in demand when you secured yourself an audience that will return to your series again and again. But this is not to measure. You can measure sales, visits to the site, but the satisfaction of players is the concept of subjective. And it turns out that any glance of financiers at the game studio is a very strange exercise. They do not see what is important, but at the same time they see that it has nothing to do with business success.
[Sergey:] Tell me, you are finally happy? They released the game, run the second now … We went to the exchange, got rich. What else do you need?
[Marchin:] I want our company to develop further, the “witcher” as a game series and further growing. If the business is healthy, profitable for shareholders and at the same time players will be happy, it will be wonderful.
[Michal:] Before going to the exchange, we were scared that external shareholders will spoil our life, and beg the focus of the company. However, we managed to maintain control over the studio and we managed to build normal relations with shareholders. So we still have a continuous positive. It’s easier for us to work, we have much more opportunities to finance new projects – and with independent financing, much more than a percentage of money collected is returned to the studio without settling in publishing pockets. We are not dependent on any publisher today: we decided to develop a project – we opened production, there are no questions.
[Sergey:] What is the main thing for you now?
[Michal:] The development of the series. In May, we release the version for the RS, and we will be waiting for pAnd, d* p, we have big plans – yes you yourself know. Just don't write in the magazine for now, let's wait.
[Sergey:] For the second XL Casino “witcher”, success is two million copies sold?
[Michal:] I do not measure success in copies. After the first part, I spent a lot of time reading reviews on the forums. So, for me, success is when reviews on the “killers of kings” will be even better than on the first “witcher”. Players will be satisfied – everything will be in order!