Blank Studio Q&A – Ex CD Projekt RED Devs Talk About Their Post-Apocalyptic Character Driven Game

Earlier this month, the dynamic and growing Polish gaming industry got bigger with the foundation of Blank, an independent game developer established by a handful of veterans who previously worked with CD Projekt RED (The Witcher, GWENT, Cyberpunk 2077) and other Polish companies like 11 Bit Studios (This War of Mine, Frostpunk), Rookiez from Warsaw S.A., Division 48 Studio, and Artificer.

Blank, headquartered in Warsaw, is already working on its debut project, a character-driven game set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Current employees include:

• Mateusz Kanik (CD Projekt RED) | Game Director / Co-Founder
• Jędrzej Mróz (CD Projekt RED) | Executive Producer / Co-Founder
• Marcin Jefimow (CD Projekt Red, 11 Bit Studios) | Executive Producer / Co-Founder
• Mikołaj Marchewka (Rookiez from Warsaw S.A.) | Managing Director / Co-Founder
• Michał Dobrowolski (CD Projekt RED) | Design Director
• Artur Ganszyniec (CD Projekt RED, 11 Bit Studios) | Narrative Director
• Grzegorz Przybyś (Division 48 Studio, Artificer) | Art Director

I’ve talked to Mateusz Kanik (who worked on all The Witcher games, GWENT, and Cyberpunk 2077) and Marcin Jefimow (credited for This War of Mine, The Witcher 3 expansions, GWENT, Soul Calibur VI, and Cyberpunk 2077) to discover why they decided to go independent, what kind of culture they want to instate at Blank, and what vision they have for their first game.

Many developers nowadays decide to branch off from triple-A studios to create startups. What were your personal reasons for doing it?

Mateusz Kanik: For me, basically, it was two things. One was that my previous company grew very fast into scale. that was bad for me. When I was meeting people at internal parties or even encountering them in the company’s corridors, I could not recognize anyone by name anymore.

It was frustrating for me because I’m used to working with people I know. Creating games in such an environment made me feel slightly bad. The second reason was that for some time, I had been thinking about making different games than I was making at my previous company.

I was dreaming about making games that are more film-style, more polished, and more refined in every aspect, something that is not achievable right now in huge open world roleplaying games because all the systems used in such big games are meant to work in all the possible scenarios.

Because of that, they are more generic, if you know what I mean. Even for the biggest companies, it’s hard or even impossible to achieve this kind of filmic quality for those huge games. It may become possible in the future, but it’s not yet.

That was when I started thinking about creating a new studio, because it also linked to the situation where the games are not perfectly finished when they are released. So I put this philosophy together to make a studio that would focus on quality by making smart and polished games.

That was the foundation for Blank. Marcin will probably have a different one.

Marcin Jefimow: Some of the reasons are actually the same, but for me, it was also that I started looking for something different. I spent seven years in CDPR. I needed a break. I took one, and then I figured like, Hey, what am I gonna do next? What do I really want to do?

Also, I figured that I could learn something new. Something that would be challenging. And definitely, founding a new studio is very challenging and brings you a lot of lessons.

Something you mentioned in the Blank press release at least is wanting to avoid issues like crunch, right?

Mateusz Kanik: Yeah. I mean, no one likes crunch. It’s a bad thing. But it’s also a more complicated topic. There is a crunch, and there are over hours. You need to be smart about this because when we are talking about a creative environment like game studios where creative people are working and creating basically art in some kind of way, they often want to pursue the maximum quality of their own work. Forcing them to go home when they want to polish something and put it to the next level is also not the best idea. I’m talking about over hours when they want to do this, they urge you to do it, and if you let them go home, they will feel bad about it.

But when the company is forcing people to crunch for a long time because they need to finish something on time and people are like having a kid, and they will be forced to miss the moments when their kid will speak or walk for the first time, that’s very bad and we don’t want such things to happen in our studio.

Marcin Jefimow: The one thing I would add here is that that wasn’t one of the reasons why we left our companies.

Mateusz Kanik: No, I agree. It’s not one of the reasons. It’s just that we don’t want to have a crunch policy in our company, but it was not the reason to form Blank.

Speaking about the studio, you said you currently have ten members and you are looking to grow about six times that amount. What is your policy regarding remote/hybrid work?

Mateusz Kanik: Currently, we do have an office. Our headquarters are in Warsaw. Some of us work exclusively from the office and some of us work hybrid. But we are open to everybody, including remote.

The pandemic shows that you can do a lot without being in the office together. This is a great way to recruit from all over the world. Previously, you were limited to your local field, and then when you hired people from around the world, they had to relocate. That’s always tricky since not everyone wants to do that. However, right now, we are open to recruiting all around the world and have both.

Are you looking to hire mostly expert talents or veterans, or are you also open to relatively fresh people in the industry?

Mateusz Kanik: Great question. We are open to both. Currently, we are looking mostly for senior developers because we want to make sure that we have a stable foundation for the company. There’s a lot of things to work out, like how we work together, how we plan our work, and so on.

However, later on, we will be open to hiring more junior positions. Game development is fun for us. We love doing it. We’ve been doing it for a long time and are happy to spread this knowledge.

In terms of the tools used to make your new game, did you already pick Unreal Engine 5, or are you open to other solutions?

Mateusz Kanik: We’ve picked Unreal Engine 5 for our first project at Blank.

Good to know. Another hot topic recently is the usage of generative AI in games. I don’t know if you’ve seen the NVIDIA tech demo from Computex 2023 and other such developments.  Do you have any interest in using this technology for your project? What do you think of it in terms of what they can bring to game development?

Mateusz Kanik: I would say we are pretty much involved with AI in this project. In terms of using it for the project, yes. we are using some of the AI support even at this early stage when working on the concept of the game, but I believe in the future, it will be even more useful now because this technology is evolving, and it’s becoming more and more useful in many different areas.

But of course, we need to remember that we need some kind of regulations for it to not become a problem in the future because there can be different scenarios when you think about it. That’s our perspective on this.

Marcin Jefimow: Yeah, I would add to that if I may. I would say that currently, we are not using, but testing pretty much. So we are trying to see where it would actually fit and what benefits it would bring.

I totally agree with what Mateusz said. We are observing the industry as well, seeing in which direction it’s gonna go, and we’re gonna make our solutions based on this.

Maybe we can talk a bit about the game itself. You said a few things publically, such as that Blank is making a character driven game set in an apocalypse. Can you perhaps expand a bit on that?

Mateusz Kanik: We wish to. But we can’t because we are very early in the production and all that we could we shared already. We will discuss further details in the future. I really wish to, though, as I believe we are working on something extraordinary.

You mentioned that some games are becoming too big. I’m guessing that means your game won’t be open world, that you’d rather make a more compact game instead.

Mateusz Kanik: For sure. I would say we are using a smart scope and smart production to make it.

Is one of your goals replayability, or are you more focused on delivering just a great single playthrough experience?

Mateusz Kanik: Yes, we are not abandoning our beliefs from CD Projekt RED. We are always thinking about making games with mature adult storylines that trigger emotions in people, so obviously, we are doing it the same way. Right now, we are focusing on the same things.

Of course, it will be different from what we were working on in the past in some ways. But we cherish the same values we had back then. So, you can find similarities in this. It means we are not making a purely gameplay-focused title without the story. We are making a story-driven game with an adult story and lots of emotional moments; this is all I can say.

Just a comment on the image that you shared. I’ve read people wondering about the main character, who’s smiling like she is going to school, but obviously, the setting is post-apocalyptic. She’s also carrying a baseball bat in the rear seat.  Can you speak to the kind of vibe that you wanted to share through this concept art?

Mateusz Kanik: Basically, what we wanted to achieve is nudging people to think about it, because we have hidden a lot of messages or twists inside the picture. The more you look at it, the more of those you will find, and then you’ll question what’s there.

We wanted to trigger people to look closely at the things they could find and question themselves, wondering why those things are there. Looking at your question, that seems to be working.

Does that mean you packed a lot of easter eggs in there?

Mateusz Kanik: I think it’s more than even easter eggs. You will see.

Since you have just founded Blank, is it fair to imagine we’ll have to wait at least a couple of years before we see the game or hear any new details about it? What does your timetable look like?

We are a studio that focuses on quality. So as soon as it is finished, it will be released. Not before.

As someone once said, a delayed game is eventually good, or something like that.

Mateusz Kanik: Yeah. I was raised in the age of Super Nintendo, and you had those cartridges. You couldn’t just download the patch and put it into the cartridge. You had to release a working game right away.

Maybe I can ask you a final question about the Polish games industry, which is thriving thanks to many new studios and projects. Would you say this is an opportunity for you, or are you perhaps concerned that finding talent may be a bit tough with so many other studios also looking? What’s your outlook on this?

Mateusz Kanik: Personally, I’m not concerned because we are hiring and it’s going pretty well. This is the first thing. The second is that having more studios with experienced game developers is producing more people on the market because they are also hiring lower tier professionals and mentoring them. In the beginning, it was just CD Projekt RED. Most Polish studios are formed based on people who got their knowledge and experience by working at CD Projekt RED. Now there are many more studios, so it will be better in the future.

I think it’s going to be fine. I mean, there are other factors that we can be worried about, but I think it’s not the amount of Polish game studios.

Thank you for your time.