Adam Badowski, CD Projekt Red

I don't know at all. I don't know which street is Marszałkowska or which are the Jerusalem Avenues, unfortunately. But I know exactly where Zachodnia ends and Kościuszki begins here in Łódź. So after 20 years, people who achieve a lot can say to ourselves, 'I don't know that either.' But yes, it's not as hard as I thought – for over a dozen years, even with poor eyesight, it's hard not to notice how much the city has developed and changed. 20, 30 years ago, seeing that potential wasn't so obvious, and that love, I think, could have been difficult. I've said before that for me it was a banking city, and because it was overshadowed in size, it had great energy. We lived that energy as young people, walking through those old tenement houses that are super beautiful with Art Nouveau. Now it's emerging, and more people can see it. We looked at it over the years, and that's what happened. But we didn't know that underneath it was a cake – our city passed the test and used its potential. It's a difficult topic because for a long time it was in hibernation, and only recently got the bulldozer and is developing. But you can see it's very prestigious. I think in 10 years it will be one of the best places in Poland. I’m convinced of that.

I always, always wanted to make games. That was my biggest dream, just like that. And my education is more of a private matter – it's not really connected to my profession. How it worked out is that my parents sent me to a high school for the gifted, and I was really happy there. I needed air, and philosophy gave me that. I thought about philosophy: 'Nice, nice,' but it was more that I simply wanted that knowledge, and at the same time I knew I would do something else. First graphics, then 3D digital graphics, and then games. And above all, I encourage everyone from different fields to go into games because you don't need an engineering degree. For people who are afraid of the lack of prospects that everyone talks about – I'm proof that it depends on us. We can play on this board.

Knowing how to manage people – first of all, it's an atypical group of people. They're absolutely diverse individuals with talents and personalities. I hope I'm a good boss. I manage a group of about a thousand people, that's roughly how many we have now – a small team. But honestly, we're a bit unusual in the management of CD Projekt because there isn't a single professional manager on the board – someone who comes from a big corporation. The company was created by founders from scratch as a family business. Then when we started making games, it was really a garage company of 30 people. When we had 30 people, we wanted to conquer the world. We told everyone we wanted to make the biggest, best RPG in the world, and everyone bowed their heads – our partners in the US, like the company Banner, and our friends who helped us a lot. We learned everything from scratch, literally in the garage. Then we had more breakthrough moments, more crises. And we slowly gathered that knowledge by looking at the biggest players, learning from them, and making tons of mistakes. Yes, we learned that way.

It succeeded from the very beginning of the first projects. I felt an incredible drive – for me, the greatest privilege was being able to make the games I played as a child. I analyzed games. To this day, I don't play games for pleasure, unfortunately. It's my work. So I'll ask you a perverse question: is it still a passion? Do you still feel proud that you can do this in life?

No, it's not like that. We have terribly tough projects, very long and exhausting. It's not easy work; it's very hard work. And of course, I need some kind of break – I don't know, a few weeks after we finish – I need to catch my breath. But I know I'll come back because building worlds is addictive. We build worlds from scratch, from the most basic things like locations to social systems. That's addictive – I won't be able to leave it even for a moment.

To be honest, I would be lying if I said I can set boundaries. I think that when my son goes to elementary school, there will definitely be the question, 'What does your dad do?' He'll say 'computer games,' and that will be a wow moment, I imagine. So I allow myself to think a little more calmly that I would like to spend time with my wife, who is gentle and complements what I might forget. But without success in private life, it's hard. In our country, people don't like to admit that, but we can learn that it can be different.

In the Polish language, games are called 'gry,' which implies play, mostly for children. But we make games for adults – really for 18 years and up. So essentially, we tell stories, and we want them to be active, interactive. That's what differentiates us from film, books, or comics. At the same time, games integrate a huge number of elements that are pure art. They can be as popular as comics, but there are deep comics, deep tracks. We have directors, over a dozen writers who have written great books and publications. We have artists and engineers, because everything is coherent with technology. That's the difference: this medium is a bit different, but the team looks like a film crew – maybe a bit bigger, maybe we have to build our own cameras and tools. But the story is polished exactly the same way as in any other medium.

The team is composed of artists and specialists from every field, because our project is multidimensional – horizontal and vertical, everything is very complex. We hire people from all over the world from different disciplines. Sometimes we try to shape people internally because there are certain areas where we have proprietary methods. For example, we built something called a 'quest' – a place where we have an internal academy. We are able to find specialists from these fields worldwide, and we look for artists and engineers globally for potential collaboration. They can also come to us. And we have the privilege, the luck, that we make games that people enjoy playing, and that attracts specialists because we built the CD Projekt brand. We always say we want to make games that are 90 – meaning quality. That quality is what draws many developers to us directly, because they know they can express themselves creatively here.

Well, it's difficult. As I said, this work isn't for everyone. Working on long-term projects requires a certain stubbornness and calmness in character. I'm calm, I have high endurance, but I know that we have a borderline level – but below the line, you have to keep swimming toward the goal. Without the people I work with, who can take the baton at the right moment, I wouldn't be able to do it. Because there are moments of doubt. And when I have buddies at work who just turn the baton and say, 'Okay, let's go another 100 meters,' that's how it is. It's a team game, and the team is crucial. We have many veterans in the company who have been here for years, and they know there are ups and downs, and in the end we'll all be happy, and we need to support each other in the process. I'm saying this as a task. But because it's hard, long work, it's super important that your work requires you to stay up to date – not just delegating tasks but you can't disappear for six months. Do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years still doing this, or maybe it's time for retirement, to pass the baton to successors?

Successors will come, and that's very good because fresh blood is needed. I think I will still be making games for a long time. I have experience. I don't know if I'll be on the board forever, but we have a small idea to invite more and more people to lead these projects because we have an incredible number of ideas. But I think I'll still be circling around this topic for many years.

Well, there are different games, and not all are super art. That's true. But we try to make ambitious games that tell stories about the world. Cyberpunk is an example. When we started a few years ago, some of the social threads in the game seemed a bit infantile even internally – like a breakthrough social moment, a depression on the edge. And suddenly it turned out that everything was probable. Our game is a commentary on the world, and we want to engage in that area. I hope it matters to our players, because it mattered in the world of film – there are many such quotes. And in Cyberpunk, there will also be many hermetic quotes.