Earlier this week CD Projekt Red, probably my favorite game developer at the moment, has announced they would delay the release of the highly anticipated Witcher 3. It is not the first time this occurs and as the polish company is known for, they are very open about their reasoning behind the need for additional development time. This kind of news is not new to this industry but unfortunately it is received negatively by the gamers who perceive this as failure to deliver. Here’s my analysis of why I believe this is actually a great step forward for the triple-A games market that’s been in decline for the past few years.

I’m an industry veteran with just about 11 years of experience under my belt in Quality Assurance as well as production management roles, so I’ve seen it all. From game designs being completely butchered to make release plans more realistic to critical issues (blockers) being overlooked in order to respect the original submission dates. Because making games is about generating revenues, just like everything else, direction often feels justified to potentially ruin the company’s name to satisfy stakeholders’ greed. Bad press surrounding a bad game is nothing that can’t be fixed with clever PR and elaborate marketing plans later on, but it hurts the supporters of this incredible medium; the players.

Greed

The biggest studios and publishers of video games are usually managed by businessmen who are all about the profit margin, not the long-term quality of the products delivered to their fans. The problem with this approach is the pressure put on the craftsmen, the developers, the artists to meet editorial demands in ridiculous time frames. More often than not, the hard working staff will be crunching through overtime hours near the end of a project because the management has to get those sales for Q4! Making video games is an art form, and just like any other, throwing money and forcing it won’t necessarily make it great.

Ubisoft and the Assassin’s Creed saga

A month ago the release of Assassin’s Creed Unity has created a scandal surrounding Ubisoft’s review embargo policies. The French publisher not only requested reviewers to post their final words 12 hours after the game launched, they provided a review build hiding the in-game microtransactions on purpose to avoid controversy and of course, the inevitable cancellation of pre-orders that would follow bad press. It is straight up criminal to lie to your fans but denying editorial information is simply digusting. Consumers should always have a way to validate a purchase.

It is obvious after all this that Ubisoft was well aware the game wasn’t ready for launch and wanted to prevent a loss of revenue based of metacritic scores. Had they simply allowed the developers to resolve the critical issues and release at a later time, Unity could have been a serious contender for GOTY in 2015.

Polish from Poland

When a game is designed to be ambitious and is clearly marketed as such to the masses, the priority for the creators should be to deliver on their promises. Not only for their sake, but for the passionate gamers around the world. Releasing flawed games is not anything new, but it sure looks worse since this new generation arrived.

This is where CD Projekt Red stands out. Following their announcement, they have stated the main reason behind The Witcher 3’s delay is the game isn’t up to par with their own expectations. Adam Kicinski, a member of the Board of CD Projekt, can be quoted saying the “Market is afraid of badly polished games on next-gen”, and I attend to agree. When you charge players 80$ (or more, depending on your region) for next-generation games, you better deliver. The social backlash and drops on the stock market is simply not worth the bet.

The Polish developer is all about that; polish. The game they envisioned is huge and they assessed it wouldn’t be as fun in its current form as they imagined. While some people may argue the delay is preposterous and not worth it, I’d tell them to look at another recent release who got it right; Dragon Age Inquisition. Arguably the best game of the year, Bioware was crafting this masterpiece since 2011. Considering the critical disappointment of Dragon Age II that same year, it seems the hit was hard enough to encourage a longer development cycle. EA and Bioware did announce a delay as well, but it was only for the duration of a month. The result speaks for itself; it was indeed worth it all along. The artists behind The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt are well aware of that, and we should give them the respect they deserve for being honest and showing the rest of the gaming industry the true way to build trust with us. Hopefully we’ll see some change soon.

Take your time, boys! I can’t wait to play one of the best RPGs to ever grace my computer.