Pawel Sasko, the associate game director on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel (known as Project Orion at CD Projekt RED), has spoken to Aftermath about the importance of sustainability in game development, and that avoiding crunch is crucial to keeping studios from going under.
CD Projekt RED evaluated its development process for the production of Phantom Liberty, which Sasko believes changed the company for the better after a number of staff left the studio following the troubled Cyberpunk 2077 launch.
Sustainability is incredibly important. To be able to, when you are finishing up a project, have a team in a state where they haven’t been doing crunch or overtime or anything, that they are able to go into the production of the next thing, which means delivering something earlier, which means having a product you can sell as a studio, which means having the money to sustain. That requires your production to be structured in a way where it does not require those spikes, those moments when suddenly there’s an all-hands-on-deck approach.
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Sasko revealed during the same interview that development on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel is still in the early stages, with CDPR also working on the next instalment in The Witcher franchise alongside it. The studio previously revealed why it opted to move its team to Boston for Project Orion, stating it ‘felt more culturally familiar to Europeans.’
[Source – Aftermath via Games Radar]