Adam Badowski, co-head of CD Projekt Red, admitted that before the release of The Witcher 3, he had serious doubts about whether players would like the game's dark atmosphere.
In an interview, he said that only the success of the series "Game of Thrones" convinced him that the audience was ready for cruel and adult fantasy.
We knew that "The Witcher 3" would be a new offer for gamers. However, I had many concerns about the project, including from a business point of view. Production was expensive and complex, and the studio was much smaller at the time.
He noted that in those years, the RPG genre was associated with lighter and more heroic worlds like Skyrim and World of Warcraft, and "The Witcher," with its moral ambiguity and heavy tone, looked alien.
"The Witcher" is a dark fantasy genre. I remember that it was not very popular then, and I was worried whether people would understand its conventions. But when "Game of Thrones" became successful, I thought: "Okay, people really feel it, they really like this darkness." This became a turning point for me — I realized that we have huge potential.
