Recently, representatives of CD Projekt Red, speaking at the Digital Dragons conference, complained that due to the lack of proper documentation, they literally have to rebuild the remake of the first "Witcher" from scratch, as many "old knowledge" turned out to be lost.
Now, a similar warning to colleagues was issued by the former director of the Dying Light franchise, Tymon Smektała. At the same conference, he admitted that if he could go back in time, he would force the Techland team to meticulously record every step.
According to Smektała, during the creation of the original Dying Light, the developers did not think at all that they were launching a long-running series. Therefore, descriptions of gameplay mechanics and individual functions were not updated, and many decisions were stored exclusively in the minds or on the computers of specific programmers and designers.
As a result, during the production of the sequel, Techland faced serious problems: the authors had to spend years reverse-engineering to restore mechanics, and bits of lore and chronology had to be collected from fan sites. Smektała admitted that he is still a little ashamed of this and urged young developers to keep documentation from day one.