CEO of GSC Game World studio, which released STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl on November 20, Yevhen Hryhorovych told why the game was released with flaws and how the team works in two locations — in Kyiv and Prague.
CEO of GSC Game World studio, which released STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl on November 20, Yevhen Hryhorovych told why the game was released with flaws and how the team works in two locations — in Kyiv and Prague.
According to Hryhorovych, the only way to develop and release the game was to split the team and make it work in two offices in two countries — in Kyiv and Prague. He admitted that he would really like to stay in Ukraine and create games here, but, according to him, it is almost impossible now.
The GSC Gameworld team says they are still adjusting to the new reality of being split into two locations and with an uncertain future for Ukraine. Hryhorovych believes that the studio has now changed forever. «It’s like evolution,» he says. «Evolution cannot go anywhere in the past…it gets you to where we are now, and it is impossible to go back to a place that was safer, better, warmer. We’re in this state, and unfortunately we can’t go back, but we can move forward, and we can be better.»
At the same time, the creative director and wife of Yevgena Maria Hryhorovych added that if the team had stayed in Kyiv, they would still have released the game in one form or another. «I can’t imagine that we would give up in this theoretical situation,» she said, «because giving up is not even about our culture. It’s hard, but you will do it. Why? Because we have no choice. Why is Ukraine at war with the great evil — Russia? Because we have no choice.»
Speaking to Eurogamer, Hryhorovych compared the development of the game and its delays to running several marathons. «It’s very difficult to explain your condition when you’re in a very intense workflow for many months leading up to a release, and you’re working on what you normally can do, and at the most stressful and overloaded time,» he said. — You have absolutely no strength, and you decide — should you take another marathon? And you just can’t say «yeah, let’s do another marathon because you’re already broke.»
Hryhorovych admitted that it would be impossible to fix all the bugs in the game, even with more time to polish the game. Therefore, with the end of the year and the key sales period approaching, it was decided not to rest on our laurels and release STALKER 2 in its best condition.
«You are so tired that you will simply die if you say: 'Let’s run an additional marathon,'» Hryhorovych noted. We didn’t have the opportunity to say «let’s do more». We had a chance to say, «Let’s do as much as we can up to this point — release date.» After that, further patches and story expansions can always be added,» he added.
As for fixing the bugs, Evgeny Hryhorovych said that this was the easiest part compared to the creative process of creating the game itself.
