DIGITAL DRAGONS
What does Poland’s key game dev conference have in store?
When the Digital Dragons event debuted in 2012, Poland’s place in the global game development pecking order was very different to where it is today. The talent was there, but the game that changed everything for the country’s development scene, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was still years from launch. Now, though, the country is producing a host of high-profile titles, including more than a few Edge cover stars of recent years – and the makers of most of them are present in one form or another at this year’s event, taking place in Kraków on May 19–21.
It’s overly simplistic to credit the region’s success to a single studio, but it’s notable how many Polish developers emerging today can trace their origins back to CD Projekt.
We wrote about one, The Thaumaturge creator Fool’s Theory, in E394’s Studio Profile, and CEO Jakub Rokosz will be on a panel at Digital Dragons to discuss the realities of running an indie studio in Poland, alongside representatives who’ve followed other paths.
As for CD Projekt, if you’ve been wondering just how it rescued Cyberpunk 2077’s reputation with last year’s Phantom Liberty expansion, then developers from the studio are practically queueing up to tell you. The conference includes no fewer than nine sessions on the game’s making, covering everything from environmental storytelling to quest design, and the creation of randomised content for the ‘endless’ Vehicle Contract and Airdrop activities dropped into its open world as part of the expansion. In another strand, Alexander Radkevich will detail how CDPR localised the game’s script into Ukrainian in just a year.
Alex Bereznyak’s session promises “some things which will make history in the next couple years”
Practically ever y major Polish developer you could name is represented on the conference schedule somewhere. There is Bloober Team, currently at work on the remake of Silent Hill 2, and also People Can Fly, which we’ll admit to still thinking of primarily as the developer of Bulletstorm, despite the fact that it now encompasses studios around the world and has six unannounced games on its slate. Then there is one of the true veterans of Polish development, Techland, whose history stretches back much further than the Dying Light series, into the 1990s.
From the latter studio, senior level designer Uroš Rudolf’s talk offers a fascinating perspective, as someone who came to Poland from his native Slovenia in 2016 seeking a way into the country’s game industry. Meanwhile, perhaps the most unusual session comes from Aleksandra Sokólska, currently working not only as a narrative designer at Flying Wild Hog (Trek To Yomi) but also as a professional NPC for live-action roleplaying games, who will be sharing what videogames can learn from LARPing.
Wit
