In order to avoid bumpy development like in “Cyberpunk 2077”, the studio head of Rebel Wolves has taken appropriate measures. He now explained what these are in an interview.
With Rebel Wolves founded Konrad Tomaszkiewicz opened his own development studio in February 2022. This is one of the three lead developers of “Cyberpunk 2077”. He also worked as game director on the RPG masterpiece “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”.
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Tomaszkiewicz took a long break from his job in the spring of 2021. He realized that he no longer wanted to work for a large company like CD Projekt RED in the future. For this reason he opened his own studio.
The Rebel Wolves team has been working on one since its inception dark single-player role-playing game. In a “narrative sandbox,” the player will have the opportunity to complete quests of various types in the order they wish.
A significantly smaller team for more influence
At CD Projekt, Tomaszkiewicz worked with several hundred people, now there are only about 90 people. The developer enjoys working in a smaller environment as he missed “daily contact with the rest of the team.”
His team should remain small. There were so many developers at work on “Cyberpunk 2077” that individual groups felt isolated and disorganized. CD Projekt was expanding rapidly at the time, making it less efficient and limiting the creativity of its employees. Tomaszkiewicz wants to avoid something like that.
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“If you're a programmer or designer and you have 20 other colleagues on your team, the area you can work in is pretty narrow. When you work in a company like ours, you don't have 20 colleagues, but five colleagues. “You have to do more, but at the same time you have a greater influence on the game,” explains the studio head.
No self-developed engine
Furthermore, Rebel Wolves uses Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 in its first project. His former employer also uses the proven game engine in his current projects so that he can concentrate on the actual development. Using the in-house engine was one of the reasons for the technical difficulties of “Cyberpunk 2077”.
Another important lesson Tomaszkiewicz learned: avoid too early an announcement. The cyberpunk RPG only appeared eight years after the first trailer. The pressure on the developers was high and there were several postponements.
The infamous crunch was also an issue during “Cyberpunk” development. At Rebel Wolves we therefore try not to force employees to work overtime.
“When we make decisions here, we first think about what we can do to make the team motivated and happy,” explains the boss.
By the way, the mentioned single-player RPG shouldn't be too large in scope. So players won't have to invest over 100 hours of playtime to get everything done.
Source: Bloomberg
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