The Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski has a strained history with CD Projekt Red, developer of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and other video game adaptations of his book series, and the writer has shared plenty of controversial opinions about video games in the past. The video game series reached peak popularity with The Witcher 3, which is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs of all time.
After a long dispute over licensing concerns, Sapkowski recently reached a new deal for The Witcher with CD Projekt Red. The agreement allowed CD Projekt Red to keep licensing rights for The Witcher-themed video games, graphic novels, board games, and merchandise, and the deal appears to have satisfied Sapkowski's issues with royalty payments, clarifying "the needs and expectations" of both Sapkowski and the developer. While CD Projekt Red has said The Witcher 4 will never happen, this deal gives the publisher the opportunity to continue producing other Witcher-related products. The popular Netflix series, however, is unrelated to CD Projekt Red's games, instead being based on the books directly.
Sapkowski had to negotiate this deal with CD Projekt Red because he was too "stupid," he said, to believe the games could amount to anything when the developer first approached him. In an interview with Eurogamer, Sapkowski said CD Projekt Red initially offered him a percentage of The Witcher games' profits, but he refused, instead preferring a lump sum up front. He thought there would be no profits and expected nothing more out of the adaptation than "a big bag of money."
Sapkowski has since acknowledged CD Projekt Red's success and the quality of its games. Still, Sapkowski told Waypoint he believes his books made the games popular outside of his and CD Projekt Red's home country of Poland, not the other way around, since English translations of all his books were already released in the West by the time of the first game's 2007 launch. It's possible the games had a bigger impact than Sapkowski is willing to admit - the success of Netflix's The Witcher series led to 500,000 book printings, after all. But, as Sapkowski said, CD Projekt Red "bravely conceals the game's origins," choosing not to advertise the fact that they're based on his books except in the fine print, so it's possible not many who played the games later read the books. Even the Netflix series' Geralt, Henry Cavill, said on Jimmy Kimmel Live he didn't know The Witcher was a book series until after he met the show's creators.
Sapkowski does not play games himself, but he knew he wasn't qualified to write one when CD Projekt Red asked him to collaborate on the original Witcher game. He told Waypoint his refusal to contribute was partially due to his belief that, "If you claim you can do everything, you can't do anything," but Sapkowski also just doesn't think video games can tell good stories.
"How much substance can there be in the lines of text when the hero walks through the woods and talks to a squirrel? Where's the literature in that? Where's the room for depth or sophisticated language with which games could elevate culture? There's none."
In short, Sapkowski acknowledges that the games are "a high-level product" (even if he hasn't actually played them), but has a low opinion of video games as a storytelling medium. He also has a troubled relationship with CD Projekt Red, due to the earlier legal dispute and the games' lack of credit for the source material. Still, even if he has no particular love for the games, he seems happy to let them exist in their own world as an adaptation of his work.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released on Xbox One, PS4, and PC in May 2015, and came to Nintendo Switch in October 2019.
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