The Witcher 3 & Cyberpunk 2077 with Marcin Iwinski - GDC developer sessions

[MUSIC] Great! Hello and welcome to Lobby's GDC session. Some special little Podcast we put together because the Game Developers Conference is on just a couple blocks away and theres a bunch of interesting developers and media people in town. So we said. Why not get a few of them in here, record some videos, and also put them on the Lobby podcast feed. So if you're listening to this, thank you so much, we've got a bunch more of these coming. And if you're watching, make sure you subscribe cuz we've got two or three more of these coming later in the week. And I'm very happy to be starting this off With man of the hour, Mr. Marcin Iwinski. Congratulations, you must be sick of winning Game of the Year awards. The Witches 3, Wild Hunt wins yet another one, congratulations. [FOREIGN] You know what I said. No, I said that today. Focus where we do it in Polish. You won't know if you don't speak Polish. [LAUGH]. Yeah, don't know if it be a translation, but it's usually. [LAUGH]. Thank you very much for having me here today. No. Thanks for coming on on such short notice, as well. All I can say is [FOREIGN] was that pronounced right? Does, does that work? You could work on it. Yeah. [FOREIGN]. [FOREIGN] [FOREIGN] [FOREIGN] [FOREIGN] All right, yeah. Couple drinks in me, I might pronounce it better [CROSSTALK] Yeah, okay, okay. Congratulations, on winning yet another awards. What did it feel like signing up there? No, no, no, no, that's, not your [UNKNOWN] that's another awards, game of the year, the game developers choice, here in the US. It's, it's really, really very meaningful. Because, It's among to help developers here, and among the votes from the development community. We are getting the game of the year. So this is special. This is not just another work, and we are very honored and very humbled, and actually Last night, during the ceremony, I felt like it might not be us, actually. Or, for a moment there, I thought, yeah, her story, but there no [UNKNOWN]. [LAUGH] Yeah, they didn't get that wrong last time, like it's a gamer award. They did only five last time, yeah. I mean, you won, you know, we'll get to the sort of games, the GDC awards in a second, but you won game of the year A lot of places during the year in the hard to win game of the year. I mean, you had a solid game, you had a fall out game, you had Rocket League which a lot of people were very, very interested in. That must make it feel even better, right? It's great. It's great. Yeah. And what was it like being on that stage considering, had you been on that GDC stage before, winning anything? No, which one it's not and which one I don't remember, I think we were not even nominated. So you've come along way in Definitely, that's actually what I said during my speech that, in our case you have to make three games. [LAUGH] We had to make three games to get onto this stage. Yeah. And I was thinking about the leap between those The Witcher 3 specifically [UNKNOWN] with Witcher 2 which is, what you've done something which I don't think many studios have managed to do. You have this very focused role-playing game with a big fan base around it. But you were still known as that kooky European studio who kind of like makes this really hardcore traditional RPG But in the space of- Okay that's a good point of view. Thank you very much. [LAUGH] Yeah but it's actually you're very right. Look at your market now in America is huge. You've gone from that. It's number one market in the world. Right. As far as 40% even a little above 40% of our business. But, [CROSSTALK] To it too, right? It definitely wasn't, but, it's also, it is partly due to the game. And, maybe the fact that, when we released the PC version, The emotion of what wasn't so smooth, that I still remember one of the reviews saying, on the editor, who was the gay man playing games that he died 50 times in the prologue, we probably maybe a little bit too difficult but come on he should have played on [INAUDIBLE]. [LAUGH] We wer tough guys [INAUDIBLE] But it, the the fact I mean. The, sort of the main problem with going massive in the US was the fact that we were PC only. Right. Yeah. So then it is really tough. It probably, I know, five years earlier, it would have been easier. But getting into retail, getting the, the appropriate budgets. And I'm not talking about gigantic marketing spending, but just for people to notice the game. It is really tough because I mean, you guys, sorry, you guys might like it. So you might write about it. But still, then the gamers coming to the store. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] GameStop, or going to Amazon or Best Buy. And they don't see the game, somewhere on the shelf. And I've seen. We are coming here for years. And that was probably one of the most frustrating part of my job. Like doing the store checks, and going to stores, which and which are W. Okay, it's over here at the very bottom. We should have called A-Witcher. [LAUGH] It would have been a bit better. But, Here in the U.S. especially, you need to go with a proper budget and then in order to have this budget you have to go multi-platform. Right. Then you know, the PC gaming it's great here but it's mostly digital. So, to make the game visible and to go up against big guys. Hm. But, I don't know but that's the release. You see at Ubisoft you have to be mutli-platform and I think that was the main problem. With the Witcher Two in terms of visibility and massiveness, particularly here in the US, which was not really the case in Europe. I mean you eventually got what what you do on consoles as well. Yes, but then again, it was a year gap. So you didn't have to sort of joint marketing budget. The fact that Witcher Three was great game, big game, but then coming out. At the same time, on two platforms. So we could really push it out there. And then, you know, your important game. Also, if you look how the retailers look at it. It's like, eh, it's just a PC game. And then it's automatically different. It's a multi-platform, it's the big RPG. And then- Then it gets the posters, and people in the store know to tell people about it. Exactly, exactly, yeah. I mean, now we're at the stage where people Presumably before it would have been like I want to play a role playing game when they talk about Skyrim and things like that. You must go into a Game Stop now and people say have you heard of Witcher 3 World Hunt. I think the gamers do not realize it but it really takes a lot of effort to get to the position where When you come to Gamestop and say hey, can you recommend me a good RPG game, and they say, that's The Witcher. [LAUGH] Guys, believe me, it's not easy. And it's not cheap either. [LAUGH] Yeah, so, but in those like four or five years, or however long a watch, you did end up turning, what was like, those get, like, Witcher 2 is a fantastic game, and the people like get reviewed while, And people who played it really loved it, but the delta, the gap between that and where you are now is huge. I think you're very right in what you're saying and then okay, so one thing was making a great game. Right. And then that's always the first and the utmost important thing. Like with [UNKNOWN]. But then getting it out there and getting people to talk about it because The perception for example the retail was, hey let's look how well the Witch 2 sold and compare it to Skyrim. [SOUND] Okay, that's a small, cocky hardcore game from somewhere in Europe. Yeah. [LAUGH] From Russia, Thank you, Danny, yes from Russia, somewhere around Russia. Right. By the way, where is Russia? [LAUGH] I have people call me Scottish all the time. [LAUGH] Okay. You are Scottish, aren't you? [LAUGH] On Saint Patrick's day I will be. Yeah, and then, but, but seriously, so, sort of, Making sure that people commit to it, and that they wanna put it out there, in front of the store. That, that was also, that was also quite challenging. And although yet, I mean great support from our partner here, Warner Brothers, and they have some muscle. That's also very important. And again, it's probably not, not, the daily concern of gamers, but Thanks to it we are able to go wider and get more recognition and visibility and then more gamers because of that play the game and probably to a certain extent because of that the game got even more popular so it's like you know like a.>>Domino effect.>>Yeah in a yeah it's it's it's a domino effect so to speak so.>>Were were you surprised at how successful it was or how well it received it was. Yes. Really? Yes, I mean you can never plan that. You can never expect that and I don't think you should. Because if you planned it something will be the best game in the world and you will sell the most in the world, I think you have an ego problem. Mm-hm. And so we always try to be humble as much as we can. And humble I don't mean Humble not talking that our game's going to be great but we don't want to make assumptions. That's the rule of the world. Of course, it's great in our industry because you show the bits and pieces with the guys like you and with your critical opinion and then we go to the trade shows, BD3, Games Con and what not and these are just sort of Early metrics. Was [UNKNOWN] there? Did they like it? I'm not sure if you remember that every time I did three, we're handing you a questionnaire and asking about your opinion. Yeah, yeah. We're really analyzing all this All these votes very carefully. So you can [INAUDIBLE] they like this, they don't like that. Maybe we should tweak something, or we should turn something, so it's a constant iteration, but then comes the day one, and that's the moment of truth. Yeah, and then you sold, what was it, like four million copies in the first, few weeks, something? We sold, we sold, six million copies in the first six weeks. How much of that, this is a very particular question, but do you know how much of that was digital against retail? Like, It totally depends on the territory. In the US, Really. Yeah and it depends on the time, on the precise moment, because initially, especially a lot of the core audience is getting digital here in the U.S. So I'll say in the U.S. it was probably initially 60-40, 40% being digital, so huge digital. Wow. Yeah, digital went really well and, From what you heard from the first, the first parties. Because I mean, PC mostly was digital, obviously. Yeah. In the US. With that, we were one of the best cases. And, and I think when, when gamers plan the projects these days, they factor in a few things. Hm. So if they want to keep the game, they want to. Really own it and not just play it and trade it back, they go for digital. Yeah. If they thing, hey I'll just have some fun for a moment and I'll trade it back and I'll get some money back, they go for the retail. So a lot of people really wanted to own it, which I think it also shows How strong the community is. And I'm always very grateful for that. Yeah. And we were talking about hype before. It, it definitely seems from at least our perspective that the [INAUDIBLE] two, three over the course of a long period, like three years, was kind of like ramping, ramping, ramping, ramping and then going up. You, you kind of seem to have the opposite problem with Cyberpunk, right? Well, like you barely said anything about it. But people are freaking out about it. Are you suggesting a different curve here? [LAUGH] [LAUGH] But I think people are like, you've shown one trailer, right? One really good trailer? Yeah. And I even feel like when that trailer was shown, people probably didn't register who CD Projekt were. Whereas now, somebody sees that and they say [UNKNOWN], and they go the Witcher 3 people. And right now, they, [CROSSTALK] It's even more. Right now they, they see this trailer, from a totally different angle. It's like yeah, that's going to be real. So think, honestly speaking again, I really wanna be humble. So right now, we have the success of the Witcher 3 because a lot of people played it. And, it's even more responsiblity. We had a conference last week, talking about our financial staff and And our strategy, and [UNKNOWN] said that, first of all, I mean the fact that Witcher performed so well allows us to be even more ambitious with Cyberpunk. But right now, it's on our shoulders to deliver here. So yeah, next time you will hear about Cyberpunk we'll show something, and It must be **** great. Yeah, how can you say more ambitious than Witcher? Witcher was like, I was 130 hours on it finish [UNKNOWN]. No, Witcher 3 was like a tiny DLC. [LAUGH] Even your DLCs are big it seems like. No, they're expansions. Yeah, sorry, sorry. [CROSSTALK] DLCs are for free. Expansions is what you pay for. Yeah if everyone could follow suit that'd be great. What do you mean by bigger? What do you mean by [UNKNOWN]? No, no, no. Come on we have to stop here. We're not talking about cyber bot. I'm not joking bigger. I think people really expect something great and that's what we have to stand up to and deliver. That's So let's put a cork in that. Stop here and let's continue our very interesting conversation. Last question, is the studio really excited about working outside the form? Yeah, definitely are. They definitely are. Big shift. It must be exciting. It is super exciting, it is super exciting and forgetting that we're working on it for quite some time already so it was a lot of people Where you know, maybe I don't know. Drawing the weapons are working Medieval environment for years and suddenly, you know guns and armor! Yeah! And mutants and implants. That's cool! Excellent. And you're excited about it as well? Yeah, I'm excited a lot lot. I'm excited a lot, that. I'm just prepping my [UNKNOWN] books collection and I have a solid ton of reading. A lot of that. Especially my favorite, Philip K. ****. Right now I'm into The Man from the High Castle because of all the Amazon shows. I want to finish reading it before I start watching the, But, yeah. Then, then it's whole cyberpunk all over again. Excellent. Well, while we're on the, on the topic of putting corks in conversations, you also mentioned like a, a. [LAUGH]. Another project you might be working on as well? Did we? Yup. Apparently. Yeah. And, and the. This project is a cork actually. And we have to put this cork. [LAUGH]. In various places, you know? Are you really think [INAUDIBLE]. You started a new genre as well. The, okay the The name of the project is project cork. [LAUGH]. So, let's cork it here, Danny. Is there- He's good. He's really good. You're better. [LAUGH]. All of them. How does it feel coming off this big game you were working on for four or five years? And then, cuz you're an independent studio and what was it 250 folks you have working at Warsaw. At the [INAUDIBLE] side it's almost 300, in total it's 500. Is there a worry when you say okay, we've got blood and wine finished and then presumed dates close enough, then [INAUDIBLE] and this other project. Is that as big as you want to go because that seems like a lot. I think that as long as we feel that we can unleash our creativity and we have control over it I think we're good. And you will see when we show something. You'll be the judge. HAve you had people interested in, you guys have been incredibly successful and you're almost very staunchly independent, have you had people try and come in and. Yeah, a que of them. Yeah. And they're lining up in front of us, honestly speaking. What's that like? There's no more. I mean, it's funny, I remember when we were into big trouble, it was probably 2008, we were still learning the distribution business. There was a big economical slowdown, economic crisis in the European Union, so we had to restructure. And at that time, We're talking to a lot of possible investors. We really needed some capital to finishing off Witcher 2 and then restructure our distribution businesses. And, there was really nobody that wanted to work with us. We ultimately ended up with And during the stock exchange getting the funding and you know, maintaing our independence but it was a hard lesson and I learned really well that people are offering you money when you really don't need it. Right. And really don't need it and we don't want it. We We were never looking for anybody from outside to come and enter the company with funding because we would have to give part of our independence away and We know what wer are doing, like, for example we started a discussion talking about, going to other [UNKNOWN] retailer and talking to them. Yes, so we're talking directly to retailers. Of course, we have distribution partners all around the world. But, when we are hyping the game, we are talking about the game, we want to make sure that, This is our industry, this is our message. And before when, which one we had publishing partner we couldn't do that. Yeah. And it was so frustrating and then what was delivered to the market wasn't really truly ours. Because, I don't know, we couldn't put this in the box or do that with the box. They're small things but they matter Yeah. And You remember, probably, the letter, yeah? Yeah. So, sometimes things like that, you kind of imagine that how hard to convince somebody else out there who thinks that this letter doesn't make sense. I don't want to go into details, but we had a couple of discussions like that. Yeah. So that's also part of the independence, despite the fact that maybe they would think, hey, Witcher 3's too big. Just cut it in half and you'll make more money. Yeah. Or like, why are you giving away 25 pieces of DLC 3. Yeah, that's perfect example. Come on, we can come up with a nice XL-shit, and what do you want? [LAUGH] $2 million out of it? Yeah, probably, because we can probably make it ten in XL. No problem, you know? On the other side of that sort of transaction now, the DLC, the free DLC, what was the onus behind it? Was it good will mostly? Yeah. It was like respecting your foundation. What's it like behind the other side of that transaction? Do you think people? Do you think it gave more, you know Buying power to the consumer to buy this game. Like they feel like it was better idea. Or they think they were taken care of like it was something you do again. How do you feel? I thought that was you respected me as a consumer. That's what I felt. And I don't feel that way a lot. Thank you Danny. [LAUGH] Thank you so much. [CROSSTALK] Yeah. But that's Some people will not notice it. Right. Some people will feel like you do. Some people will maybe not trade their game back. And some people they'll maybe talk to their friends and tell them how cool it is. And that's all it is. Yeah. And I think that's great. I had a discussion Well, a month ago, maybe with, one of the publishers, I have a good friend there. And, we have lunch, and, they say wow [UNKNOWN]. It was such a smart plan, with these DLC's. Hey but, it wasn't a plan, it was, I mean of course we had to plan the production but we just want to do this. It's a genuine move and so we think it's a cool standard, we would like other people to do it. But a lot of people started analyzing Like also from a more financial perspective it makes sense. But if they do something like that, and even the motivation that, like I'm gonna put another 2% of additional sales in dressers, I'm good with that. It's fine. Yeah. Just I would like to see more things like happening. I would like to see it in older games as well But if they do it for that reason they're sort of missing the point as well right because the point wasn't about finances. But maybe they'll understand one day and still gamers will get some free deals. It will be cool. Yeah. It's kind of sad that that's what you did with something so outside what we're used to right. Yeah, that's, I remember, I think it was, it was, in your comments section. And, so we released a statement, saying that there are free DLC's, and one of the first comment Commons, was, one guy. Hey, they must've ripped it out from the game. [LAUGH] And right now, they are giving it for free, just for the sake of great PR. And then I see some people talking about it, and then, somebody said, man what, why do you worry? It's for free. [LAUGH] And this slows the discussion, but what's so beautiful, so, People are so suspicious. Not because they are suspicious by nature. But, because there are so many different and strange, and maybe purely monetization oriented tricks performed on them in the past that That just, hey, somebody's giving something for free, it smells, it must be a trick. I said, no, there was no trick, and I think we've proven that with Goodwitch three. The other thing that I feel like a lot of big publishers are doing at the moment as well is trying to create big online games where they suck people back in and again and again and then use that as a funnel to sell extra content. I mean Destiny's a pretty good example of that. But every game seems, Ubisoft have basically put online connectivity into every single game they make, regardless of whether or not it should or not. You guys don't deal in online multiplayer, it seems like, anyway. Is that intentional? Is there any sort of, do you feel like you're [UNKNOWN]? We do not do multiple projects, we do not release Very often to yes we're definitely interested in extending the time gamers are spending in our games and what do we do we don't mind we'll see. Right now we did it with the And don't forget that this is the third installment of the series. And this is the first time we were doing expansions. We've haven't done it before, just because we didn't have resources for that. So we are doing expansions our way. And if One day, we'll do online, we'll do online our way. It will be different. Do you think, then, looking forward into, if you're talking about cyberpunk and your other projects, is this kind of the end for The Witcher for a while then? Once Blood and Wine is out? It definitely, definitely, definitely does. That's a closure, and I was asked About it before, they'll be Witcher 4 or whatnot. But monthly saying, yeah we love the world, we are huge fans of Subcowski's writings. But yeah, if something will happen maybe somewhere down the line but we don't have anything planned. Honestly speaking, there is nothing We are working on right now. I think we need to rest. We spent the last, what, 14 years in this world with others. But right now is the cyber punk time and we have really to put everything we've got and then some and deliver here. It's a little bit sad. To say good bye to Girl and I was crying just before the interview, just a little. But it's like, it's your magnum opus right? You're sounding on the GTC stage because of it It is, okay, so let's bring an example. You're watching your favorite TV series So they tell you they will end and it's ending, and it's kaboom, [NOISE], it's a great ending, it's really ending. And you understand that it's over and you accept it, and you have a closure and it's great. So for me, that's the preferred scenario. And in contrary you have TV series which goes on and on and on Yeah and it's like spaghetti western going for 10 years. And then at a certain time you drop out, and you don't want to have anything to do with that. And I think we've seen it with some games recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I mean how many Call of Duty's are we deep in, or Assassin's Creed you can say the same thing as well. So you guys are Like it does important to you to, I guess have that really good IP. I think stay strong even if you're not using it. Yes, of course. And so maybe we'll come back. Maybe we'll tell some different source at some point. But right now, really, I think we promised several Long time ago, and right now it's just time to do some work here. Do you think Witcher fans will play Cyberpunk? Do you think other fantasy fans or? I definitely hope so. Yeah. It's all about telling great stories and leaving great experiences, yeah. So, I don't think people are like, I'm only into fantasy RPGs, if there's anything else, I will never touch it. [LAUGH] No, it's like, wow that's a cool game. [CROSSTALK] I mean a good game, though. Yeah, and a good game will get people to play. Like I remember Oblivion was a game that, there were friends of mine that only placed first person shooters. But, because it was a good game. Like, they'd never touch like that Tolkien ****, but like they were all loving the game. So like, you know, people who play Skyrim, they probably don't play Fallout, yeah? [LAUGH] Right. [LAUGH] On that point, actually. Last week in your presentation You had a goal that was that City Project would be one of the three biggest developers in the world. Are you there yet? I'm not sure how it was translated to English. [LAUGH] I'll say that one of the three best developers would be probably, I don't wanna Used to this scale because it's meaningless if we'll have a head count of 10,000 then you sort of fulfill this goal. Sorry, yeah I meant best in quality not in terms of size. Do you think you're there? I mean, the awards would say you're there at least in 2015. Yeah but I really think we have something more to prove. discussion before and we actually had internally discussion who we think is the role model for us and really when I look at what Rockstar achieved Right. I would like us to be there and having the Witcher franchise It's, it's definitely not enough, to say that we were there, so, I think let's, let's wait and see for cyberpunk. And then we'll judge. I, are you more or less stressed now than you were like, ten years ago? Cuz now you've got, a decent bit of success, and money in the bank, but you seem to still be setting these high goals for yourself, like as a company. Actually the level of stress ten years ago, which was very different because quite often we were fighting for survival. We were doing a lot of different things. And then Moving from the distribution business to the games development, I think that's where we want to be, we know right now exactly what we want to do. We wanna develop amazing story telling experiences and great games, and deliver them directly to gamers, so that's also GG's part of it. And I think the worst for me is when i struggled and I wasn't sure what we should be doing. RIght. We were doing a lot of things, and then you're working just 40 16 hour days and then you build something for a year or two and then half of it falls apart and then your restructure, my God, no. I love the place where we are today and we are happy of course There is a lot of, I don't wanna call it stress. I'll say maybe self-inflicted pressure. Right, yeah. But it's good, that's what motivates us and that's what will never allow us to be lazy, cuz, I mean, we're reaching high. Since the very beginning of the company and right now we just have proved these awards that you mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation, that we are on the right path. Did those awards mean a lot to the team, back in Warsaw? A lot, a lot. Really? You can't imagine. What was. Well, well. Please factor in that we, we, we don't, we're coming from Poland. Hm. And I want to say. I don't want it to sound like we have complexes or anything like that. But in a way, we have more to prove. Yeah. Because we are coming from a country where, you know, the. Games development didn't have such a history, it wouldn't have access to all these tools, resources. So everything we were doing had to always be way more global and way more thought through. [UNKNOWN] an American company and an American developer could release a game. And if it was successful in the US, [SOUND] yeah, okay, they're done. And maybe Five years down the line, on the next game or third game in a row, they would do some European [UNKNOWN] through these strange languages [LAUGH]. I don't want to say that's the general thinking, but I saw a lot of cases like that. But the size of the market was automatically, Making it easier for you to success just locally. We could have never succeeded with Witcher One just in following. Initially, from the very beginning we said okay we want our games to be played all around the world. And it was easier for us in Europe and in US came with the the US came really commercial success with [INAUDIBLE]. So we really have to adapt. And then make, this makes people proud. And yesterday, so we go towards the, the game of the year and the best techno, technology. Yeah. And one of your guys, actually one of the. Programmer. She was, she was picking up. And he, she sat like, yeah, I couldn't believe. We'll be better than dice. [LAUGH]. You, you know? You. This is the, this is the real ****, you know? People say our attack is better. Of course, it's, it's, it's an award. You can not compare it. These our different things. But, but that, that's very, very personal. Yeah. And all these awards are very personal. Especially after four or five years of work. I'm probably, the one that is not needed in this equation, [LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE] the game. [LAUGH] You just got to sit back and do business relations. Yeah, some jobs about [INAUDIBLE] story and. [LAUGH] yeah, look confused in the back up shot at the Game Awards and. So speaking about your competitors or everyone else out there, if there was like another franchise that you'd love to do, like to make, to like take over production on. Like owned by somebody else or [UNKNOWN], what would it be? [LAUGH] I think We had a lot of those discussions but I think we have just enough on our plate right now. And so. In a world that Cyberpunk doesn't exist and The Witcher and you're just done. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. No, no, no I'll not answer. It's-- What we do requires 100% or actually 200% committment. So, We are not into buying and owning IPs just for the sake of buying and owning them, We actually were approached by a load of people with really cool IPs that we love to make a game. But we said hey, if we do something we have to have full creative control so we have to own the IP. But again, for the sake of full creative control. So cyberpunk was a choice from the heart and I think also it was good karma, because we just had a great opportunity to acquire the rights. But I think we'll stop here for a while. Yeah, you think this will be like the Witcher another 14 years you want to build up brand or? Yes exactly and you know I'll give you the exact. [LAUGH] Of 77, 78, 79. And I maybe wrong but a quarter or two. [LAUGH] Is that a scary preposition though, to like take on something and then you're like, okay, like your [UNKNOWN] your methodology, the mentality you guys have like we're gonna do this **** properly. Yap. We're gonna take it seriously. Yeah. We're gonna do something big. Yeah. And it's a new IP, so new IP you need to get out the gate. We're committed. So we'll take as much time as needed, and we wanna make it huge. So that is what's on our mind, and I To business side of international development. I talk to media, I talk to gamers, so our phase in many conversations and I represent the company. So of course I had, hey let's may acquire this or that and And when we start discussing and we all come to the same conclusion that, if we invest into something, and I'm talking about investing our time, we have to focus. Because we cannot do it right if we'll do, Even two or three things at the same time. Yeah. It's just not possible. And it's really regardless of how many people you have on board. Again- It's just like a mentality thing, or? It's a mental- a little bit look at rock star. Right. Why, why there isn't a game every single year? Yeah. There is a reason for that. So yes, you can have a different model. Be, I don't know, the FIFA model or [UNKNOWN] model. But I don't think it's our model. Yeah, and how was it you were able to do that whereas companies like Ubisoft or Activision can't? What is it about your, presumably you have shareholders that also want to make sure you guys are turning a profit. What is it about that, that you guys aren't beholden to that? Is it just your mentality? We are crazy. [LAUGH] Yeah, and we openly tell our investors. And I mean, if you have seen our conference, we talk a lot about values, about philosophy. And there is a reason for that. And the fact that we are quality-obsessed, and And we just wanna send a very clear message to our investors that it's not a short term thing. It's not like hey, expect amazing results every single quarter and crazy growth. We think that if we concentrate and focus and work really hard for a longer period of time, the effects will be there for them. Cuz they're also very important for us. But it's not hit and run. This is not like, hey. I'm making 100% upside in just two years. No. You might not. You might even lose some money. Hm. But if you, if you believe in what we believed, and we share the same belief and the same values, you will get a great return of your investment. We proved that [INAUDIBLE], it's a very different thinking to the usual. Also is stock market thinking, but I think it's right. So we know that some investors will never invest in us, and some investors will leave, but we're okay with that. Yeah, and you're in a pretty strong position there. And presumably as well, coming off the back of that. I hope so. [LAUGH] What was your favorite part of Waltones? Cuz you were kind of like, like you said, you weren't developing it, you were obviously like, getting builds of it as it was getting made. But when you finally sat down and played it, what was your, what was one of your favorite parts? [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, [LAUGH] I, I actually, did all the question marks. Everyone of them? Yeah, I have a couple left. But I would say everything about Valenza which is [UNKNOWN] [UNKNOWN] Yeah, but actually, so maybe I'll put it differently. What I love about RPGs are the subquests and the freedom of exploration, and one of my favorite Games is Fallout one and two. I love them. I play them a lot and even recently I started playing Fallout one for a moment. You played Fallout 4 yet? No. [LAUGH] No no. I'm not playing Fallout 4. I have it on my list but This is the one difficulty I have, that it is a gigantic time commitment and I know that if I start I won't be able to stop. Now what is it about people making games that take 200 hours to complete now a days, ****? Actually you are laughing but I have three kids. Right, yeah. And then I travel like crazy doing all this stuff for the company. So I really have to plan my gaming sessions right and sometimes if I'm able to play a couple hours a week it's a lot. So In order to finish, Witcher 3, and finish it with all the question mark on all the [INAUDIBLE] [CROSSTALK]. I would go for summer holidays with the family, and from 7pm until whatever, AM time, I can play, and actually, just when I finished the workshop. Really? Yeah. When did you finish it? During the summer. Okay, [UNKNOWN] through. So, what have you been playing since then? That fits into those little pockets of time you have. I've spent some time with Darken's Dungeon. I like just kind of I don't want to say old school because it's not old school but it's like the true RPG experience of maybe a little bit for me. Yeah [LAUGH] That's, I've been far emblem I just got a new one. Yeah just bought your 50 S you said. Yeah that my [LAUGH] 50 yeah because it's not that I burn through them really quick, but when I'm annoyed with it, I'm not a collector. People are always laughing that on my desk at work I have nothing because I either sell things or I throw them away. Or I give them, wait, I don't like to have to, [CROSSTALK] You're a good distributor. Yeah, yeah. Then you [UNKNOWN] With the DS is it, if it was gathering dust because I didn't have anything to play, I was asking my friend to sell it on Ebay. So he sold three or four of them. [LAUGH] And I just go the fit, because I mean, Fire Emblem is out. Pefrect.>> Yeah. Yeah. So. I'm wondering, when he'll be selling this one. [LAUGH] Once Birthright is done. I'm losing, I'm losing a lot of money. And each of them would be like 80%. [LAUGH] Fair play. Did you play any of your other competitors last year then, you didn't play Fall Out Four, you said, did you play Metal Gear Solid or Rocket League. I'm not into the sporty games at all and so. The last Metal Gear Solid was on the GameCube for [CROSSTALK] Twin snakes you placed, really? Yes, yes, that's the one. Wasn't even made by [UNKNOWN]. The next one, yeah, the next one I have on my list is definitely Fall Out 4, but again it's like the [UNKNOWN] factor, it's a bit spooky. [SOUND] 100 hours. Martian do you have this done? No I don't. Scary. Definitely what I'm interested in most in games, personally as a gamer, it's [UNKNOWN] RPG experience, or the story telling. Or ideally both. Sometimes even more the story telling, and the perfect model for me, in terms of timing, was the Telltale model. RIght, okay, yeah. So I really enjoyed the Walking Dead, the Walk Among Us and I'm looking forward to the next one. I still haven't played the Mishown mini series, the reviews are mixed so wait and see. Excellent, thank you so much [UNKNOWN] for coming in, really appreciate it. You've got a talk on later today about [UNKNOWN]. Yeah the [UNKNOWN] actually so I hope it will be interesting. So you just spoiled it all. On this. No. But you all release it later on, won't you? Yeah. Please. [LAUGH] Actually, I was just thinking, was it Obama you gave the copy of Witcher 2? [UNKNOWN] Prime minister. Prime minister. Prime minister [UNKNOWN]. Gave President Obama copy of Witcher 2? No, the collector's edition. And actually when they call us [BLANK_AUDIO] I mean, so far, emperors was trying to calling. And the reception thought, it was a joke. [LAUGH] So they actually contacted one of the, big, big newspapers that, we were working with, in Poland, and asked them to get in touch with us. Yeah, yeah. And we see what that is, it was a joke, but we gave them a version. And then, on the TV in the evening, [LAUGH] [LAUGH] But you know, that's an old story. But then, right before rate three when we, saw The Witcher 3 for the first time, it was probably a week. Obama was in Poland. Right. So that was his second visit. After the first one he got to, it would be pretty good timing, I have to say. [LAUGH] And then, so he's standing with, prime minister Toosk, and he's starting his talk, thank you very much, But I mean, it's reminding me again, and la la la la la. And thank you for the gift I got, The Witcher 2 game, which is a symbol of Polish invasion. Aw. And we were like. Beautiful! Yeah. [LAUGH] So. So, it was amazing. And then quotes all over, and That's awesome. Yeah, that's great. So would you give President Trump a copy of Witcher 3? We'll see that. [LAUGH] We'll see that if this'll be the case. Let's worry next year. [SOUND] [SOUND] Yeah, you're not worried. You know. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Well maybe you are. We have some stuff going in Poland, so you might be hearing, you know? Yeah. Same here in Ireland. [LAUGH] We have our Trump already, so. Or actually a couple. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Yeah. I can appreciate that. Marcin Iwinksi, thank you so much for coming in. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure, thanks. I really do appreciate it. Cheers. [MUSIC]