[HN Gopher] CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board...
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CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)
Author : rococode
Score : 30 points
Date : 2020-12-15 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cdprojekt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cdprojekt.com)
| pavlov wrote:
| 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
| managers, who can apparently change the terms of this so-called
| bonus any time they want? Awful.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/11/22170655/cyberpunk-2077-...
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Doesn't sound much different than getting paid in equity at a
| startup.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| errantspark wrote:
| I thought that was PascalCase and this is camelCase? Have I
| been wrong all these years?
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| > Hi, this is Michal Nowakowski - the second question; would
| having more developers help deliver the game on old-gens? In
| terms of delivering the game at a certain point, it's really not
| about the number of people; it's not like throwing in - in the
| last month - 200 or so people would actually help. So, the answer
| is no; this is not related to the fact that we could have thrown
| 300 or 500 more people into the fray and things would have
| happened differently.
|
| This is interesting info for someone like me that doesn't work in
| this field. It's something that I can understand intuitively, but
| it's nice to see that confirmed.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Yeah it confirms the sort of teachings of the mythical man
| month.
| niea_11 wrote:
| There is a maxim from the essay "The Mythical Man-Month" saying
| that adding people to a late software project makes it later.
|
| It takes time for new people to become productive,
| communication becomes difficult and some tasks can't be
| "parallelized".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law
| [deleted]
| dotdi wrote:
| 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 the story is thrilling. I'm not much of a gamer, but I feel
| that I'll sink a large amount of time into this game. As of now,
| I can't stop thinking about the game when I'm away from it.
|
| + Although I almost had a heart attack as one time a bad guy that
| I had taken down just got up and sat back down on the bench he
| was sitting on before. He was still "dead" but just chilling on
| the bench. Hidden zombie mode?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I'm generally in the same place as you but I gotta say combat
| is pretty shit. The AI is bonehead stupid, I've killed a guy
| (not using a silencer) that was standing three feet from
| another guy and his partner didn't alert. Meanwhile 5 guys from
| outside the building did, rushed in the building then stopped
| dead and didn't ever shoot.
| hertzrat wrote:
| That's interesting: a lot of releases seem to sell up to 2-3x
| more in console than pc, but approx 60% of their sales are for
| pc. Is that because of Covid, or is it a trend?
| TheGuyWhoCodes wrote:
| Having played cyberpunk on PC it's mostly a fancy light show and
| not a lot of substance. You can't even customize anything past
| the creation screen, no car paint jobs no hair cuts and any body
| modification, no transmog system..
|
| They tried to hide the console issues while reaffirming time and
| time again that current-gen console will be a first class
| citizen, that's an EA tactic not something I would think CDPR
| would do...
|
| Moreover CDPR was given a $7 million grant to develop the
| artificial intelligence. This game has one of the worst open-
| world AI I have ever seen.
|
| Cops spawn on you, the drivers and pedestrians AI is almost non
| existing. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from 2004 is miles ahead
| of this game.
|
| They even announced that they are "very sorry" and that people
| can get a refund only that Sony won't refund if you played or
| even downloaded the fame not to mention this game is very badly
| optimized on AMD systems the current gaming king.
| _cs2017_ wrote:
| 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 of the issues": it's not
| like they needed to _estimate_ anything. This is not an MMO that
| behaves differently after the million users log in. This is not a
| PC that behaves differently on unpredictable end-user 's systems.
| This is not a game where problems only occur under some rare
| combinations of factors.
|
| "We ignored the signals about the need for additional time to
| refine the game": _signals_ implies some indirect evidence that
| can be interpreted differently. It seems, however, that the
| management would have a pretty unambiguous information at their
| disposal.
| pojzon wrote:
| CDPR is owned in 66% by investors. And investors want ROI and
| there is nothing better than holiday season for that.
|
| They also knew about how bad the game runs on PS4 and released
| it either way because "money>everything".
|
| Its really that simple.
| pavon wrote:
| They overestimated how much they could fix in the time between
| the initial delivery and the day-one patch.
| d1egoaz wrote:
| Game wasn't ready for consoles, they just lied about it. And it
| looks like even the PC game feels incomplete "It's all style but
| no substance.".
| https://steamcommunity.com/id/outxider/recommended/1091500/
|
| "Janky. If I can describe it with one word.
|
| 8 years of hype to launch what looks like an Early Access game.
|
| It's glitchy, it's buggy, it doesn't run well unless you have an
| RTX card and DLSS enabled. And that's barely passable.
|
| But those can eventually be fixed.
|
| The core of the game, the massive open world, is incredibly
| superficial, with nothing to do in it. CDPR crafted a beautiful,
| detailed world, with braindead AI and overly simplistic gameplay.
|
| There's no roleplaying involved like you would find in Deus Ex.
| There's no extracurricular activities that doesn't involve
| shooting a bunch of bad guys like you would find in Red Dead
| Redemption 2. You won't find tight gunplay like you would see in
| Destiny 2.
|
| The AI completely lacks any sort of intelligence. Enemies rush
| you without the sense of self-preservation. Oftentimes standing
| there letting you blast them in the face. Cops spawn literally
| yards behind you without any chase, or any threat. Walk a block
| down and they completely forget you exist. No bounty on your
| head, no search and apprehend procedures. But stand next to them
| for 3 seconds and they'll shoot you on sight.
|
| Really, there's not much to do except shoot things. Guns feel
| impactful enough, if you use revolvers or tech weapons, and melee
| combat is passable. You can go for a stealth or hacking approach,
| but those don't feel as good as just pulling the trigger on some
| thugs. Hacking is just pointing your reticle at someone, and then
| make a selection from the menu. And depending on what you chose,
| sparks just fly out of their head. That's it.
|
| The story is engaging, yet forgettable. This is a cyberpunk
| setting, but it's in appearances only. There's all these talks
| about megacorporations taking over the world, but only one
| corporation takes center stage. There's no political intrigue, no
| conspiracy theory that actually turns out to be true, no
| investigation into a greater mystery. Keanu Reeves is literally
| taking your breath away and you go out to make sure that doesn't
| happen.
|
| Your personal backstory is forgettable. It's literally 20 mins
| long, and your entire introduction to Night City is a montage.
| CDPR failed the show, don't tell aspect. They could've squeezed
| in a few good hours of character development and worldbuilding
| with the opening hours. Instead, you get taken straight into
| Night City, told to care about certain things, and want to have
| this lofty ideal of becoming a living legend for some unknown
| reason. You don't have a story to tell, there's a story being
| told to you.
|
| The characters definitely carry the narrative, from Silverhand's
| personal vendetta, to Panam's sense of belonging, and Takemura's
| strong honor code.
|
| Regardless, I did enjoy this game. But there's so many glaring
| flaws that becomes hard to ignore.
|
| So it pains me to say, I do not recommend this game. The numerous
| technical issues make this equivalent to an Early Access title.
| But the gameplay loop, the promise of an immersive experience, a
| sandbox for you to get lost in are totally nonexistent. It's a
| beautiful world CDPR created, but it's just a glorified loading
| screen going from one mission marker to another.
|
| It's all style but no substance."
| platz wrote:
| Cyberpunk 2077 review: dad rock, not new wave - Polygon
|
| https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22158019/cyberpunk-2077-revi...
| platz wrote:
| 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?
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| Last-gen consoles? If it wasn't for the most recent delay of
| release date, Cyberpunk 2077 would've been released before PS5
| and the new Xbox were even available for purchase. You're
| acting like people are trying to play this game on an NES.
|
| If the game ain't gonna work on a certain console, don't sell
| it for that console. Plain and simple. Or if you're going to
| release it anyway, at least let gaming critics review it and
| let the public make an informed decision, which CDPR
| deliberately didn't do.
|
| I'm baffled as to why so many people are defending this
| incredibly shady business practice by CDPR.
| platz wrote:
| I'm using their own terminology.
| tristor wrote:
| The complaints aren't about CP77 performance on Xbox Series X
| or PS5. They're about it's performance on non-X Xbox One and
| non-Pro PS4s. Which aren't just last-gen consoles, they're
| the lowest tier of last gen consoles. I don't think CDPR
| should have released the games on those platforms if they
| don't have their performance scaling right. I'm not defending
| their actions, but I think most people just have their
| expectations out of whack.
|
| CP77 is the first AAA game released in a long time that was
| built for PC first and ported to consoles, instead of the
| other way around. Instead of PCs getting crappy ports hard-
| limited to 60fps no matter how much GPU you throw at it, and
| crappy control schemes, the dregs of last-gen consoles got
| really poor performance and visuals compared to people on PS4
| Pros, Xbox One X, and the latest 2020 gen consoles. It's not
| acceptable, but it's also hard to imagine how you could have
| made people happy when they're that far underpowered from a
| hardware department for a game like CP77.
| jsnell wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| f6v wrote:
| It doesn't seem like they address the main issues, like AI. I
| doubt you can treat the absence of major attributes of an
| open-world game, like car chases, as a bug. They're cleverly
| focusing on minor glitches and bugs in their talk.
| f6v wrote:
| If you watch game footage, it's obvious it's half-baked. However,
| so many people violated the number one rule: no preorders. This
| is literally the only thing gamers can do to incentivise
| developers to not release buggy games. But here we are again.
| miemo23 wrote:
| I've had zero problems with it on PC.
|
| Fantastic game with maybe 2-3 bugs
| notJim wrote:
| Eh, I always appreciate the early adopters who provide feedback
| and pressure on devs to fix the games so that I can play a much
| better game 6 months or a year later.
| f6v wrote:
| Well yeah, same here. But seems like CDPR is happy about
| preorders. That's too many adopters to be called "early".
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| is the inverted side of "no preorders" also "No epic games"?
| Something has to fund development and at a certain point
| investors will not risk the lack of sales. Versus a preorder is
| an actual sale.
| IronRanger wrote:
| 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 the game. Its good
| enough, content is complete, and they need to have the product on
| shelves before Christmas and before people lose interest in last-
| gen consoles.
|
| Having the product out there will motivate its staff - still
| stuck at home in Lockdown Poland - to work on the very public
| bugs.
|
| Its also interesting that Poland seems to have had basically the
| same COVID case and death profile as Ukraine, despite Ukraine
| having a significantly less strict lockdown (bars, restaurants,
| workplaces never shut this Autumn or Winter).
| jontaydev wrote:
| There is a theory that development was restarted several times,
| most notably in 2018 to incorporate Keanu into the main story.
| It seems like they couldn't stick to a singular vision and
| shifted goals too many times.
| f6v wrote:
| Which I never understood: how is an actor supposed to
| suddenly carry the whole game? I mean, he's got those cool
| movies(where he plays the same guy over and over again), but
| he's no Jesus to be worshiped like that.
| angelbar wrote:
| Or Maradona
| platz wrote:
| You make it sound like having a leading role in a game is
| the highest honor in the land one can bestow upon an
| individual.
| TT3351 wrote:
| I hope we get a sequel to Schreier's Anthem article for this
| game [he now works for Bloomberg]. Many repeating patterns.
|
| https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| 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 not able to
| work. So, we have seen a decrease in the number of testers, but
| I wouldn't point to it as a major source of problems.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I still have no idea why all these big game developers are
| releasing new titles and still supporting last gen hardware.
| You would think games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Halo Infinite
| would be launch titles that would entice people to buy new
| consoles.
| Guthur wrote:
| Market reach, the new consoles have just released and are
| very hard to get.
|
| Big AAA need plenty of market reach to be profitable unless
| they have some exclusivity deal.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Cyberpunk 2077 is ~2 years delayed and was marketed heavily
| as the pinnacle of what the last generation of consoles could
| do, to the extent that they released a limited edition Xbox
| One X bundle for the game [0]. They couldn't exactly do that
| and then not sell it on that console, could they?
|
| [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-one-x-1tb-console-
| cyb...
| [deleted]
| save_ferris wrote:
| Two problems with that. A) New consoles are pretty tightly
| supply-limited on release, so people won't buy the game until
| they know they can pick up the console. You've totally killed
| the preorder market.
|
| B) You risk losing even more game sales towards the end of
| the console lifecycle, as soon as rumors start flying around
| about new hardware about to hit the market.
| theSIRius wrote:
| 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 game on the last gen or
| PC and Stadia first, then polish and release on the second
| platform and then finish with the next gen. Releasing on seven or
| more platforms at the same time would not go well even before
| covid.
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