The Witcher 3 was not well received by its partners during promotion: the gameplay was too ordinary

Adam Badowski, Co CEO of CDPR, recently stated in an interview with PC Gamer that they encountered difficulties in promoting The Witcher 3 to their partners during its development because the game’s gameplay was “quite conventional” and the partners did not believe it could successfully combine narrative experience with an open world.

That was the biggest challenge at the time, because you know, it’s obvious for us now to combine narrative, cinematic experience, and open world, but at that time, it was extremely challenging. Whether it was for our team or for the entire industry, it was the same. And for some people, they really didn’t believe it could be achieved

They focused on the gameplay aspect, and the gameplay of The Witcher 3 was indeed quite conventional at that time. It integrated combat, character development, and magic elements, but the design of the magic part was relatively restrained because it needed to be consistent with the tone of the ‘Monster Hunter’ character. Therefore, it was indeed difficult to find particularly innovative breakthroughs in the gameplay dimension

Budovski admitted that the process of promoting this game to others is very tricky, because it is difficult to clearly explain the core charm of this game, whether in the presentation or even through the script. Moreover, requiring the other party to read the script first and then experience the first two series of works is already a very difficult task.

I think it’s better to use the game itself to infect people than to go to great lengths to explain, “he said.” That kind of detailed explanation is not very meaningful because ‘infectiousness’ will stay in people’s minds and can arouse their genuine interest, allowing them to connect with the game from a personal level

This is also why Budovski particularly admires game trial demos. He explained, “Trial versions are not a mainstream practice in the industry because developers usually believe that making trial versions will only take up the entire game development time, and some trial versions may even have pre arranged false solutions. But in my opinion, trial versions can inspire everyone because you can see the prototype of this game, see the real game content, and experience it firsthand. So before the release of The Witcher 3, we made many independent trial versions