CD Projekt's Pawel Sasko tells the inspiring tale of how an Estonian beet farmer in Australia became a senior quest designer on The Witcher 4
One of the big strengths of CD Projekt's Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 RPGs is that they're so extensively moddable. That's great for players of the game, who get to take advantage of new features and add-ons the original developers never imagined, but it's also good news for budding game developers who dream of one day working in Warsaw. In a lengthy interview with Flow Gaming, CD Projekt's Pawel Sasko said the studio draws extensively from the modding community when it's hiring.
«Half of the quest team [on Orion, the codename for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077]—the quest team is the team that builds the quests, it's like 24 people right now—half of that are former modders,» Sasko said. And not just modders of The Witcher and Cyberpunk: Sasko noted that lead quest designer Błażej Augustynek started out as a StarCraft modder, and said the recently released REDkit modding tools for The Witcher 3 were developed by a team made up entirely of modders.
«I always advise young people when they ask how to get into the industry, I say, 'Go mod. Just go and learn how to mod',» Sasko said. «Start from modding something. There's so many toolkits, so many ways to do it, and really, [some] of the best people that we have are former modders.»
To emphasize his point, and presumably the fact that you never know when your big break is going to come, Sasko related the tale of an Estonian beetroot farmer in Australia who ended up joining CD Projekt several years ago after Sasko noticed his work.
«There was a video on YouTube that appeared about a guy who, completely without a modding toolset, started remaking Witcher 1 prologue in Witcher 3. I saw that video and I was like, 'Damn this is such a high quality work',» Sasko said. He asked another employee, who was also a former modder, if he knew the guy, and it turned out he did, so the studio made contact and asked him to submit his CV.
«He sent me the CV and we did the test, the test was wonderful,» Sasko said. «He was great. He did a great
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