Two developers who worked on The Witcher 3 while at CD Projekt Red have departed the Polish company to form a new studio called Wickerman Games.
Lead by Chris Hardwick and Dan Cordell, the two UK-based developers worked on a host of AAA developers including Electronic Arts, Starbreeze Studios, Codemasters, and The Chinese Room. They met while working at CD Projekt Red on The Witcher 3.
They describe themselves as fans of pen-and-paper RPGs like Traveller, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, Shadowrun, and of course Dungeons & Dragons, and their desire is to marry their love of these RPGs with creating video games.
According to their press release, the studio wants to attempt a new approach to designing role-playing games. Thanks to their obsession with the pen-and-paper variety, they'd like to create games that employ the concept of dynamic storytelling and give the player a ton of freedom—as much as the rulset would allow, anyway.
They write: "Layering simple systems on top of one another to allow for some truly emergent gameplay. Choices should matter and have a dramatic effect on the outcome of the plot and as such the game world needs to be built in such a way to accommodate this."
Additionally, the studio intends to be transparent and share as much as it can of the development process (barring story spoilers, of course), providing gamers access to prototypes, 3D content, and more.
They also mention that they'll be sticking to the principles held by CD Projekt Red with regards to how it treats its customers and staff.
"If we learned anything from our time at CD Projekt Red, it's that treating your customers well, really just makes life better for everyone involved, after all it is your hard earned cash you are parting with. As the old saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it" so we shall also be offering content DRM free (where possible) with a substantial amount of post-release support."
Source: The Escapist
