The Witcher 3 Devs Will Talk Tech, Music, Lessons Learned and Gamer-Centric Marketing at GDC

Giuseppe Nelva January 9, 2016 3:23 PM EST

CD Projekt RED will have an extensive presence at the Game Developers Conference that will be held in San Francisco starting on March 14th, and announced four panels that will bring us behind the scenes of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

The lectures will cover a wide range of topics, from tech to marketing, an aspect that is definitely worth discussing, as it was even praised even by Final Fantasy XV Director Hajime Tabata.

Behind the Scenes of Cinematic Dialogues in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Piotr Tomsinski | Animation Technical Director, CD PROJEKT RED

Non-linear storytelling is paramount for CD PROJEKT RED games and dialogues are one of the main means of its delivery. The dialogue system is one of the most advanced systems in Wild Hunt’s game engine and this talk will cover all of its features, as well as provide deep insight into how these features work. Additionally, the session will demonstrate the pipeline, tools and editor.

The talk will also touch upon animation problems we encountered during production, as well as provide applicable solutions via a step-by-step lesson on how we created Witcher-style dialogues with our tech.

Takeaway

This presentation is intended to inspire other game developers. It shows how to develop dialogue systems from scratch and how to improve and extend existing dialogue systems for AAA games.

Intended Audience

This presentation is intended mostly for animation/cutscene programmers, tool programmers and cinematic designers.

Here Be Dragons, or Lessons Learned in the Development of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Balazs Torok | Principal Programmer, CD PROJEKT RED

This talk will reveal details about many of the hardships faced while developing The Witcher 3. There are many potential pitfalls in developing such a huge open world game for 3 platforms. The speakers will be specifically concentrating on the most practical topics, namely on the challenges and how they were approached, how certain problems were discovered and how they were solved.

Takeaway

Attendees will see examples of how real world problems like memory management or rendering performance were solved in the development of The Witcher 3. This knowledge will be directly applicable in the development of other open world and/or new generation console titles.

Intended Audience

The talk is targeted at programmers and producers who work closely with programmers. This talk will aim to cover all the basics while introducing the problems. Familiarity with the new generation consoles might help in understanding all the details.

Slavic Adaptation of Music in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Marcin Przybylowicz | Composer, Music Director, CD PROJEKT RED

Mikolai Stroinski | Composer, Freelance

During this lecture both composers of the “Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” – Marcin Przybyowicz and Mikolai Stroinski will cover the following aspects of the critically aclaimed game’s soundtrack including: music design’s influence on narration in the latest installment of Geralt’s saga, beautiful ugliness of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt soundtrack, and redefining musical standards for The Witcher franchise – incorporating slavic folk music with modern approach to scoring – something that hasn’t been done before.

Takeaway

Attendees will learn how to overcome project’s limitations (such as small budgets, tight schedules, unforeseen difficulties) and still be able to create good sounding, original score which gains audiences’ attention.

Intended Audience

Composers, in-house audio/music staff, music supervisors, game designers eager to know more about relationship between music and overall narration.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Theory and Practice of Gamer-centric Brand Development

Marcin Iwinski | Co-Founder / Joint CEO, CD PROJEKT RED

Successfully managing your IP and taking your game to the market is as difficult as creating a good game. This talk will include an elaboration on the logic behind the decisions made during pivotal moments of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt marketing & communication lifecycle, thoughts on transparent SKU creation, and a comparison of the team’s actions with those taken by key industry players. The lecture will also deliver a set of best pre and post-release practices game developers can immediately incorporate into their business.

Takeaway

The lecture attendees will gain real-life applicable knowledge about designing the marketing and communication lifecycle of an AAA video game, with a special focus on SKU construction, planning additional content, and staying transparent to their audience.

Intended Audience

The target audience are game developers who plan to take their games to market, as well as video game publishers. No previous knowledge about the brand is required to understand the key points in the presentation.