Lead Designer Tymon Smektala On Shaping The Future Of Dying Light 2 Alongside The Community
Dying Light 2 had a remarkable launch, selling more than three million copies in the first weekend and remaining in Steam’s top ten best-selling games throughout February. Despite early success, lead designer Tymon Smektala has no intention of resting on his laurels. “It’s easy to release a game and enjoy its initial success,” Smektala said on this week’s episode of TheGamer Podcast. “But then you have to build the longevity of the game. That’s exactly what we aim to do at this point.”
Techland is planning to support Dying Light 2 for the next five years. The original Dying Light is well known for the half-decade of updates it received, including a new-gen upgrade just this week, but that wasn’t always the plan. Smektala says the team thought they were done with Dying Light after it released, in part because the critical reception wasn’t particularly strong. “There was this moment where we started reading reviews, and the media wasn’t really into the game, so maybe the atmosphere of the studio went a little down,” he says. “But then we started seeing what people were writing online and how they were getting really excited about gameplay. They really gave us back the confidence that we needed. We felt the community really supported us so we wanted to give that love back.”
Related: Open World Games Could Learn A Lot From Dying Light 2
This time, post-launch support was planned from the very beginning. Smektala says that knowing from the start that they wanted to continue working on Dying Light 2 long-term allowed the developers to plan better and take a more thoughtful approach to add-on content. “It’s definitely different but I hope in the end the effect will be the same,” he says.
Part of that process involves gathering
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