CD Projekt leaders recall a time when “dark fantasy” felt like a tougher sell, and how Game of Thrones flipped the script. Adam Badowski says that around The Witcher 3, the studio saw the tone as a business risk, only for the market’s taste to swing decisively in its favor.

It is hard to remember when dark fantasy was not a pillar of the industry. Who does not love tales that leave you chewing on moral knots for days? The perceived complexity can be a hurdle, yet in the last decade, once-niche games have broken out to a far broader audience.

Baldur’s Gate 3 remains one of the era’s most surprising RPG wins. After a twenty-year sleep, the series returned, and with the power of nuanced storytelling, it rose from CRPG underdog to a champion of the genre, and in some ways of all genres.

Back at the time of The Witcher 3, the obvious comparison was Skyrim, which had recently redrawn the open world RPG, full of experimentation, freedom and floating cheese.

“There are always other great games on the market, and you can learn from them, but like in music videos, you need to be fresh and innovative. You cannot be a copycat,” says Adam Badowski, CD Projekt’s joint CEO.

“We knew The Witcher 3 was a completely new offer for players, but I worried a lot about the business. Development was expensive and challenging; we had only one game in production, and The Witcher is a dark fantasy. I remember it was not that popular, and I feared whether people would understand the concept.”

Standard or high fantasy has always sold, while dark fantasy was rarer. “High fantasy was super well-known and loved. Everyone played World of Warcraft, but after Game of Thrones, something changed.”

It is impossible to deny how Game of Thrones carried grand, morally gray storytelling to the mainstream, widening the appetite for the style. Even FromSoftware caught that tailwind, with Elden Ring helped along by a whisper of George R. R. Martin. “Suddenly, people understood they really liked dark fantasy. That was the moment I thought, okay, okay, there is great potential.”

Source: PC Gamer