The Two Best Game Developers Just Formed A New Studio
Developers from CD Projekt Red have left the company to make a brand new gaming studio called Blank.
A group of high-profile developers and industry veterans from CD Projekt RED (CDPR), who helped make The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, have departed the studio to form their own crunch-culture-free game development studio called Blank. They’re joined by other industry veterans from other smaller studios, driven by the desire to make well-crafted gaming experiences.
According to ComicBook, the new studio was founded by Mateusz Kanik, game director and co-game director of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, along with Jedrzej Mroz and Marcin Jefimow, both of which were the executive producers on the aforementioned games. They’re joined by Mikolaj Marchewka from Rookiez from Warsaw, S.A. The new game development studio is called Blank, and the main focus of the company will be to make unique gaming experiences by introducing novelty instead of relying on clones and predictable entries.
Apart from the aforementioned CDPR staff that worked on both The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, the studio is also comprised of several other members who make its skeleton crew. The first order of business for the new studio is to expand and hire at least 50 additional personnel to support the development of its unannounced project, which, according to the team, will be a character-driven game set in an apocalypse setting.
But perhaps the most interesting bit of news associated with the formation of the new studio is the team’s renouncement of crunch culture. As one might imagine, developing triple-AAA titles such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 is most certainly stressful, and there’s plenty of overtime associated with the development as the game approaches its release date. Considering the current state of the gaming industry, which relies heavily on crunch time, the newly-formed studio is attempting to take another approach.
Admittedly, there are plenty of wrong things with the gaming industry, ranging from outright dictatorship to sexual misconduct. But the game development alone has been corrupted at its core. Most companies now rush out gaming titles to the market, often delivering a sub-par gaming title for a pre-order price. So, we pay them, and then they deliver a crappy game. On top of that, they promise to bring the game up to what they expected it would be. And the cycle perpetuates.
Well, Blank—as the newly formed studio is called—is looking to change that.
Ultimately, it will likely be many years before we get a gaming title developed by the nice people who gave us Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher, considering the current size of the studio and just fresh everything is. Despite its shabby state, the gaming industry is still a shark tank when it comes to profit and competition, so it’s entirely possible for other studios to try and push Blank out of the market. Sony has been doing that for years, and they have been very open about it, despite deliberately harming Xbox sales in their own market.
