First of all, the folks calling The Witcher 3's graphics "mediocre" or "average" are crazy. The game's still one of the best-looking games out there. It's just not the "next Crysis" that some folks were wanting.
Anyway, I still think this whole thing could have been easily avoided. All they had to do was:
1) Show the 2013 VGX vertical slice and make it CLEAR that the footage is early and may not be visually representative of the final product.
2) Once the downgraded videos surfaced in 2014, be up-front and honestly acknowledge the downgrade. Yes, there would have still been some backlash, but not much. The issue would have been put to bed quick.
-- or --
1) Not show the 2013 vertical slice at all.
2) Don't show ANY footage until you are confident that it is reasonably representative of the final product. That is what Bethesda and Rockstar do. That said...CDPR does not have the huge resources or long track record of those other companies...and thus showing early vertical slices of an upcoming product may have been necessary to help secure additional funding/investment or staff or whatever.
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I also question Iwinski's claim that TW3 couldn't have been done if it was a PC exclusive. (That may be true if it were a permanent PC exclusive...but hardly anyone was asking for that.) First of all, I'm sure they turned a VERY nice profit from their 5-8 million sales of The Witcher 2, even taking deep Steam discounts into account. Secondly, all they had to do was approach TW3's development the same way they approached TW2. Just make it a
timed exclusive. Devote their full 200-person team to the PC version, and then devote a much smaller team of 20-30 people to porting it to the consoles for release 9-12 months later, while the rest of the studio works on (a) the TW3 expansions and (b) Cyberpunk 2077. Or save the console versions for the "enhanced edition", with all expansions included. They may have had to be a bit less aggressive with their marketing but not by much. Doing it this way may take a bit longer to turn a profit, but in the long run CDPR would have still made serious bank.
I also think that by approaching development this way...the game wouldn't have seen as many delays. It's quite probable that it would have been completed and polished up by Nov/Dec 2014 and released in February 2015 (to give it space away from Dragon Age: Inquisition). I also think the game would have been released with fewer bugs and issues on Day 1.
CDPR may have bitten off a bit more than they could chew with the way they approached the production of this game. That said, their post-launch support has historically been very good.
That seems to me like CDPR still suffers from a certain level of inexperience when it comes to advertising and presenting its games along with developing them. This is the first truly AAA game the studio has ever made, the second console game it has ever made, and the third game it has ever made period. It's the same reason the combat sucked in the first two games.
Part of the reason people like CDPR so much is because it's quite disconnected from the EAs and Ubisofts of the world and the way they operate, which makes it seem more humble. That's a double-edged sword though, because CDPR's lack of experience in certain matters compared to EA or Ubisoft probably makes it more likely to slip up with things like this -- showing off an open world game before they actually have it running in an open world.
Agreed on their inexperience. They still make "rookie" errors. Not just with the way they handled TW3, but also with the way they handled GOG, the way they talk about DRM, etc.
There's a reason why some people get a "marketing ploy" vibe from CDP/CDPR's whole pro-consumer stance.
CDPR and their parent (CDP) may have gotten big and popular a bit too quickly, and struggled to keep up with the heightened business and consumer expectations that come with that. Especially these days, with many gamers unhappy with the current state of the AAA videogame industry.
Let's just hope they learn the right lessons and don't turn into the Polish version of EA or Ubi.
One of the things Bethseda does better then most studios, wait long into development until you announced your game and know the core game is actually playable and what it will look like.
More studios need to stop with the vertical slices of a game that is in no way shape or form a full functioning game and labeling it as "in-game," yet and they have 0 idea if it will work or not work.
If they advertised that trialer as "target render" no one would be too upset, they could have simply told the truth as the game got closer to release about it not working as well and having ot change things.
All CD Project had to do in their initial reveal from 2013 was to put at the beginning of the video something like, "This is early footage and may not be representative of the final game when it is released."
Had they done that, all this could have been avoided. Hell, everyone should be doing that, especially with E3 coming up.
Yes. It is that simple.
Didn't some of the early videos, like the E3 2014 video, have "Work In Progress" in big letters at the top of the screen throughout the entire 35-minutes of gameplay?
"Work in Progress" may have been fine for the E3 2014 video, but clearer language would have been needed for the 2013 video. Also, when something is declared as "in-game" and NOT a tech demo...people generally expect that the final product will look like that, or very close to it.
