Sustainability crucial for studios’ success, says lead of Cyberpunk 2077 sequel: “Crunch avoidance is key

Cyberpunk 2077's Night City, illuminated by bright lights.

< period course=" credit report" itemprop=" copyrightHolder">(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

In CD Projekt RED’s case, to move away from its ” antique” methods, the studio created content teams, which saw ” a pursuit developer, motion picture developer, open-world developer, author, QA, atmosphere musicians, VFX musicians, SFX musicians” all collaborating on specific pieces of content together. Sasko describes this as having ” 22 various specializeds in one husk,” all with a shared goal such as making a certain quest. “And after that when we were examining that web content as supervisors, we were constantly taking a look at it with each other, as a group,” he adds. 

He explains that, to an extent, this process saw the studio ” relocate the choice making to the group,” too. Essentially, developers were allowed the freedom to make many of the choices surrounding their goal, so long as they remained within certain boundaries such as the wider story and theme, which were clearly defined throughout.

Later in the interview, Sasko says that this process used in Phantom Liberty’s development irons out ” traffic jams” in production. He adds: “If the team is making the right decisions, and then the leads and directors look at it and are like ‘This is very good quality,’ then it’s the best possible situation. You don’t have to change anything, course correct, or remove or add anything. The team did their job.”

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