The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition Interview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published the second part of their interview with CD Projekt RED, this time focusing on The Witcher 2 and its parallels with Game of Thrones, and sex in games and marketing.

Since it reads like a fluid conversation that picks up from the last part, it’s not easy to pick a snippet, and it’s definitely recommended that you read the full piece, but I’ll try to quote a couple of questions anyway :

RPS: Some pundits say Game of Thrones uses it as a crutch, though. People talk a bunch, so they use it to keep eyes on the screen.

Iwinski: I totally disagree with that, but I have a story [laughs]. We were showing Witcher 1 for the first time. and I think it goes back to a different cultural perception of sex. In the US, it’s pretty much a no-go zone. It explains, for example, why you have a very thriving porn industry which is a bit of a contradiction [laughs]. But, you know, business is business, one could say.

Back home [in Poland], though, it’s just a normal part of life. So with the famous or infamous, you could say sex cards, European journalists were like (Oh, cool.) And then we showed Witcher 1 to people in the US, and they were like [gasps in an impressively high pitch]. A lot of the key magazines treated the whole thing as a big feature, and they were writing how our programmer was excited about the sex cards in the game.

So there are different views on these things. But, for me, I read George R. R. Martin’s books after one of the journalists left our presentation of Witcher 1 and told me (Wow, it’s a bit like Game of Thrones!) So I went out and bought the books and read them straight [through]. And in the books, I think there’s even more sex and nudity than there is in the TV series. Is it problematic in the books? For me, it’s not. It just makes sense. It’s power, politics, and sex. It is how we are how we humans behave. It’s all about power, money, and sex. Come on, look at [E3]. Look at the booth babes.

So [Game of Thrones’ TV producers] can be accused of abusing that, but I think there’s a part of George R. R. Martin’s creation that. removing sex from it would be kind of shitty. It’s just a part of this world. And this world is really hardcore, you know?

That’s pretty much the same in The Witcher. It’s a little dark, but it’s real.

RPS: Right. And, by and large, Game of Thrones presents this unabashedly male-dominated world. I mean, many of the best characters are strong females, but the structure of society is almost comically male-centric.

Iwinski: And I think it’s exactly the same way in The Witcher. And while there were plenty of stories about the sex cards when we were showing the game, a few talked about the female sorceresses who have an immense power.

I think, at the end of the day, it’s all about making a great story. We’re not using things like sex for cheap tricks and draw some male audience to that. That’d totally make no sense.