author: Mathias Zulpo
The Witcher universe creator diminishes the game franchise's success
Writer Andrzej Sapkowski, the creator of The Witcher universe, has recently been rather vocal when presenting his views on the game series' influence on his literary work and how he thinks the sales of his books might have suffered as a result.
Before sinking into any detail, a bit of background information is needed. You might have heard of The Witcher Saga. Nope, it’s not the game trilogy, but rather a fantasy series comprising two collections of short stories and five novels, which actually gave birth to Geralt, Ciri, and all the stories surrounding the duo. The books were written by a Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski between 1992 and 1999, and, almost a decade later, were adapted by CD Projekt RED into what soon became one of the most recognizable RPG series in recent history (with the GOTY version of the latest title on its way). These are the facts, and now here’s the thing – Mr. Sapkowski seems not to have his facts straight.
During Polcon 2016 (a yearly Polish science-fiction convention,) Mr. Sapkowski expressed his utter discontentment caused by the fact that more and more people tend to dip into the books after having played the game first, suggesting that readers’ belief that the books were based on the game series might have discouraged some of them from buying the books. Which makes us believe that Mr. Sapkowski has no clue of what the game series actually is. Moreover, he consistently denies any connection between the novels’ rising popularity – and thus increased sales – among the Western audience and the games’ (which he considers non-canonic and irrelevant when compared with his literary work) success. Mr. Sapkowski even stated that the books had been translated to English before The Witcher’s initial release, which is false. Not only this, his perception of players enjoying the game franchise seems rather unflattering:
“I’ve never played the game. But I can ask [about its content.] I know a couple of people who played them. Actually, only a few of them, for I prefer to surround myself with intelligent folks.”
Mr. Sapkowski also called out Adrian Chmielarz, stating that The Vanishing of Ethan Carter’s creator – when he was still working on The Witcher game as a Metropolis Software developer back in 1997 – has not (contrary to CD Projekt RED) handed him a copy of the game. And while that’s true, it’s only because the Metropolis’ Witcher title never made it out of the development stage. However, even after taking that into consideration, Mr. Sapkowski was far from withheld, saying, “[If they didn’t want to give me a copy,] they could at least kiss my ass – which they hadn’t done, either”. But considering how the writer thinks of gamers, would there even be a point in dishing out the game to him?
The controversy surrounding Mr. Sapkowski’s bold statements is far from reaching its conclusion, and, frankly, will probably never do so.
