In the world of video games in 2018, it’s hard to find many other publisher that have more good will from gamers than CD Projekt Red. They’re responsible for The Witcher series of games on PC, which not only are great games, but CD Projekt Red has been rather outspoken about just making good games without all the financial shenanigans companies like EA pull with loot crates and every other monetization trick in the books. They’re also responsible for GOG.com, which offers DRM-free games, checking off another box in offering things gamers really want but very few places are offering. Yesterday they announced they’re opening a new mobile studio called Spokko, which is veeerrrrrryyy interesting.
Normally I’d write this off as, “Oh neat another big publisher getting in on the mobile bandwagon," and just assume whatever they’re going to release is just going to be their IP shoehorned into a Game of War style game or some other popular format- Like a The Witcher flavored Clash Royale clone. The thing is, that is very much not how CD Projekt Red operates. The company loudly and openly hopes that free DLC becomes an industry standard, along with a bunch of other gamer-centric beliefs that makes it almost impossible to believe that they’d release some kind of “me too" freemium mobile game.
As far as what they’re releasing, that’s anyone’s guess. It’s apparently an “interesting idea based on one of [their] brands" and they mentioned that Spokko “represents an entirely novel creative angle." Spokko’s Maciej Weiss even has said, “We have substantial experience with casual game development, but this time around we want to work on a far more advanced and ambitious project, offering new possibilities for gamers."
None of that says cookie cutter free to play mobile game to me, which has me awful excited. We’ll just have to wait and see though, as if they’re just announcing the studio, it’s going to be quite a while before something is released.
