Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 director hopes “AI revolution” will allow him to make games faster

I would dare to say that what we did is the most complicated type of game that you can choose to make. Embracer had I believe it still has the idea that Lars who is an co is giving the studios a lot of freedom. So we had a lot of trust and we could do basically whatever we want to. Hello and welcome to the game business show with me Christopher Ding. Today we chat to Daniel Verra, the creative director and co-founder of Warhorse Studios, the team behind the monstrously successful Kingdom Come Deliverance Series. If you're new to the Game Business Show, we are a new publication all about the business of video games. We do two shows a week on a Tuesday and a Thursday covering all the latest developments in the video games business. We also have a newsletter and regular release bonus pieces for you to watch, listen to, and read. If you would like to make sure you don't miss a thing, head to the gamebus.com and stick in your email. That way, you won't. But hello Daniel. Welcome to the show. Hello. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Well, congratulations on the uh well the

early sales certainly of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. I saw it did two million units in two days. Uh it seems to have gone down very well. Uh has it met has it met your expectations? It did actually. My expectations were very very precisely almost identical to what actually happened. I I made some predictions and initial day I missed by like 90 copies. 90 copies. Yeah. Well, 900 or something. 90. So my expectation was something and it was really it was couple hundred thousand. Well, almost. And uh I missed expectation by 90°. I got it wrong. It was two. It's 2 million in two weeks. It's still amazing. But do you think you should become a games analyst? I think we could do some uh accurate predictions about the market. I don't know. I I had I had numbers from the pre-orders and comparison with first game. So, it was quite uh well easy or it was logical to to extrapolate the numbers from the

first game and stuff like that. So, it wasn't that hard. Is anything about the launch that surprised you? Is anything you didn't see coming? I was a little bit afraid if the game is good enough. Of course, you you are never sure what what people will think. The initial news were good. like there was a lot of people playing it in some test place and some journalist let us know how what they think about the game and we did some test reviews and stuff like that. So we knew that it's not going to be bad let's say but generally I'm very very happy and surprised how much some people praise the game and it's getting better and better after the release. So so a lot of people say it's the best game they ever played and stuff like that. every day I had a lot of messages. I played 150 hours and it's the best game I played in last 10 years and stuff like that. So that's what I didn't expect it that much. Uh it's much more

than what happened with the first game. So So I'm I'm very grateful for for for that actually. Well, it's reassuring to see it do so well particularly in in this market where big games you sort of you you think it be I mean I Kingdom of Deliverance first one was such a hit, so successful. You know, I would have I would have predicted this would do well, but in the market where Star Wars Outlaws didn't do what was expected of it and Dragon Age, the Valgard and so many big games just for some reason not not finding the market. The market seems difficult to predict. So, I was uh so well done for being so close to your estimates. Yeah, obviously reviewed well pretty much high scores across the board. There were a couple of mid-level scores I think you're a little disappointed in them, but does that does that hitting that 90 Metacritic number, does it matter as much as it used to? uh it doesn't uh but it is important in the first days uh of course so because the people look at those numbers and then judge if they will buy the game or not but generally when there are steam

reviews and user reviews uh it's for me and I I believe for many people it's much more important than so generally steam reviews are more important for me and they are even better so Currently we are like 93% or something which which is great. Uh it's awesome. Times have changed a lot. Uh it's it's it's a little bit different than it was uh couple years ago. Yeah. I guess with Steam reviews as well, they reflect all the changes you make to the game whereas critical reviews are very much, you know, the time it comes out. What do you think it is about the series that has, you know, resonated so well with players? cuz it's it's it started off you I think you said the second game was what you wanted the first game to be. That was your objective, but the first game really won people over in a big way as well. So, what is it about it that's been so um enticing? I'm really actually surprised that so many people are surprised by the success of the game. I I I since the

beginning, I was absolutely sure that it's a recipe for success if we do it right. I like similar games. There are very few of them. For some weird reason, nobody makes them anymore that much. So, generally, we are in the same genre, let's say, as Witcher or Reddit Redemption games. Actually, we pitched the game to publishers as Reddit Redemption with a sword 14 years ago. So, generally, it's a strong story, but at the same time, big open world, lot of freedom for the player. And the story which is very important and that's where a lot of games today fail in my opinion. The story has to be good by which I mean cool characters that you can relate to and humor and uh something they can kind of relate to and feel that it's them. And many games today when they have a

story it's just like some fill in some random or or they try to tell the player some message or something. But usually uh there are very few games like that and every time such game is published it's it becomes very successful. Uh so it's kind of weird that nobody Yeah. What do you think people rate them? We get stories like that in film though all the time, right? It's it's um I know I know I think I know what you mean. Any theories as to why you don't get quite so many well games like this cost? I have a lot of theories. I have a theory about it of course. Uh it's probably a little bit controversial maybe. Uh but generally if you look at the movies at least in the past Hollywood studios are based very differently than games industry. You have a producers that choose some script and then they kind of try to find money and they assemble the team and they give lot of control to the director. So

basically the the person who controls everything is the director and the producer and they give chances to even very young and sometimes even unexperienced people. So, so uh I don't know Brian Singer was very young when he was needed first X-Men for example and they give him a very important franchise reboot of superhero movies and he was a young director at the time. So Hollywood was at least in the past was willing to risk and try to do new stuff with new people and they knew that it's about good director rather than some committee. While in games you have a company that's that's making games and there's a board of people who are deciding stuff and director or writer is just one of them and very often doesn't have the final word. So it's there there's much bigger risk than it will become some uh basically corporate product rather than the piece of art.

Yeah. This environment also kind of uh repels creative people a lot. So u and still for a big game that similar to ours or RD or whatever you need a lot of money a lot of resources much more than for a typical movie let's say today we can say it and it takes much longer. So, so you can you can shoot a movie very quickly and then there's a lot of post-production of course but but generally you assembled a small quite big team but for a short time while in games you have a large team for years so this work for hire that works in Hollywood doesn't work in games industry I see it comes all from that and also and that's the controversial part a lot of people think that the cultural wars they are here. But generally, a lot of people think that it's some evil management that's forcing the creators

uh to do something. But I would say that uh it's the opposite. It's coming from the creators. Actually, I I would even dare to say that some companies are not liking it and they don't know what to do about it. Uh so so so but generally we can see it now even in movies that they are a little bit or sometimes a lot kind of for a non-existent audience I would say even in Hollywood they are currently making movies sometimes for non-existence audience and if you look at the old movies from the 80s or '9s I don't know spielback movies like ET extraterrestrial it's set in some small town uh with quite normal people. Everybody can relate to them. Uh they are behaving like normal people from small town. And when you like look at a lot of movies today, they are about people from California, rich people from California

very often that have very different problems that normal people have. So that's there is this kind of difference between what basically I would say that the creators are making movies about themselves or they are using cliches that they see in other movies and they kind of stopped doing movies about regular people that are still existing in the majority of the world USA or whatever. So I would love to see a movie from Montana for example and tell me some I don't know about any movie from Montana and when there is some it's I usually like it when there's not when it's different setting and stuff and the same can be applied to games. Uh when you look at the games from the '90s the scale of topics and different genres was I would I would dare to say larger than it's today. Hm. Well, certainly from the maybe from the AAA space. Certainly. I guess the risk of these AAA games are so high. You know, how you got 250 employees now, right? Yes. Chris, you've

been making the game for six years or was that how long it's been development for? That's a that's a that's I imagine that's a uh it's very tough. Yes. So, how have you got away with it then? How have you been able to uh uh uh say to Embracer Empire or Cotch and all those sort of people, you know? actually embracer had I believe it still has the the idea that Lars who is an co is giving the studios a lot of freedom. So generally we had a lot of trust and we could do basically whatever we wanted. So so there was almost zero outside influence on the creative decisions on the game. uh which is great if it works and when you are not insane. So uh I understand that the corporation wants to have some control over the final product when it invests a lot of money but generally we had a lot of freedom and it worked.

Yeah. Well and I guess you've you've got a proven track record well but I tell obviously 2019 it started development or something like that. Um and you had the lockdowns like you you started making the game and immediately COVID hit and you were locked down. How was that experience going through sort of early development when getting to the office wasn't always possible? It was weird. It was definitely probably a slowdown. Uh, initially it was very problematic, but then a lot of people learned to work from home and it's somehow working. I I was working from home uh in the final stages a lot because I was playing the game reporting bugs and for that you don't necessarily need to be in the office that much. But generally, yeah, it was it was a slowdown definitely, especially in the beginning when you didn't know what what's happening and if it's end of the world or not. But generally, uh the game is very complicated. There's I would I I I would dare to say that what we did is the most complicated type of game that you can choose to make. It has everything other games have

and sometimes even more complicated than other games. So we have it's an RPG but we have a combat system. We have a simulation of people. We have large open world with as good graphics as possible. We have mini games. Basically some part of our game could be standalone games on mobile phones or something. So it's really insane amount of work very complicated to to kind of put it together and make it the final product. It's interesting. There's a lot of conversation around AAA and I think it's cuz we've had a bunch of AAA flops recently um and around that whether or not that business even works. But then obviously something like this comes along and it proves that it it can um and that's not really a question there but I it's um I think it just shows that you you know a lot of lot of games lately have been really focused on one or two features and have tried to do those features really really well um to be able to make things on a budget and

and you know I've read the reviews. I've not played the game yet, but I've seen so much of the game um through stories on social media about comedy skits from what guards are saying and all this kind of stuff. These things used to be everyone was making these games at one point and now it feels like people are starting to pull back. So, you are proving that it you know there is no one way to approach this. I have to say it's kind of weird for me as well because when you look for example at the comparison of old games and new games which is very popular on YouTube now like look what this old RPG could do and what the new one cannot and sometimes I'm quite surprised because those features that are missing in the new games are actually not about assets. assets currently I would say are the most uh expensive thing to create the models that are much better than they were before but to program a feature where I don't know arrows don't disappear when you shoot them it's very

similar to 20 years ago if it worked in 20 years ago it should work today so it just nobody cares about it seems to me I guess and we we do have such attention to detail Well, we know that people like it and it works and it's kind of surprising to me that nobody cares about those details anymore. It might be because the games are really much more expensive to make and the asset creation is very complicated, but then it's still maybe it's about the focus of the people in charge that that they will kind of pay attention to the to such details and they don't. I I don't know. It's it's weird. H let's talk about the studio because obviously the studios doubled in size over the course of the game's development um almost. Has that meant have you had to change how you operate? Has that brought a cultural change? It's quite a big jump in in numbers. There's much more bureaucracy. All those sayings that when

you hire more people it doesn't mean more work are actually true but everybody knows it who who hired more people. Uh it's much more bureaucracy. Some of the things get even more complicated than when you have few fewer people. When you know everyone, you can just like do stuff by talking to people and all of a sudden you have meetings for everything and uh schedules and plans and everything. So it's much more complicated and it's definitely slow down. But I don't know the recipe how to make it less complicated. It's just goes with the size of the project, I guess. Yeah, we're seeing a lot of AAA particularly new ones that are starting up sort of try and keep the core team lean and using a lot of outsourcing or at least that's what everyone's saying. I don't know how people are actually doing that the at the moment. But I think they often say the same thing like it's nice when you can just walk up to people and see over their shoulder what they're working on and stuff and there's that and I guess you've gone from one to the other. But it, you know, if the

product at the end is still working, then then I assume you're still capturing a bit of the magic that you had before. Maybe it's al also sometimes, and I'm just guessing here, when you have a company that spends like $200 million on a game, they trying to kind of do a lot of versions and when they are not happy, they start from scratch and stuff like that, which makes the games more expensive. Maybe if they will just made more $50 million games, three would be flop and one will make money. Maybe it's they are so afraid about the risk potential risks that they spend a lot of money on everything and they iterate too much I would say and then when they could miss the ideal release date, times change and people don't like this genre anymore or stuff like that. So, they're getting faster, cheaper, and with more risk

would probably could solve some of those issues. Yeah, I think hopefully I I'm speaking to some investors in the last couple of weeks and they've been saying that they're they're backing companies that are not looking for those bigger budgets. They're they're I don't mean indies, but sort of double A. I don't even know what you describe them as, people making big games, but um on smaller budgets, leaner, faster. One of the things you mentioned there is, you know, you make a game that you think would be popular at now and in four or five years trends have moved on, the market shifted and changed and and then you're difficult to react and it's just feels a bit safer. Well, I will ask you about that cuz obviously we've seen lots of AAA studios struggling um simply closing embrace of course because your parent company's had some challenges. Um hopefully we've seen the the back of a lot of those and I know you've been following the situation. Do you have a view on it from um your son? I know that you've had success. you probably feel quite um stable in comparison, but what do you make of what you've seen in the market? So, this is a little bit weird because and it's hard to judge from here because I'm not that much aware of the situation in

United States, but I guess that the with the success and during COVID everybody was doing so great that that the expenses grew up too much and now it has to cool down a little bit. So some cuts are necessary but generally I don't know if the industry is doing bad. It's just like it was spending too much than necessary and the good times have ended let's say so now they have to adjust it again. But I would say that such situation is good for the indust industry. which of course is bad for the people who lose their jobs and stuff but generally it will clean the waters make people think about efficiency a little bit more. They will change directions with genres and and and stuff like that. They will kind of look at the industry with some fresh ideas. say uh hopefully so some

hopefully the things we are talking about will change that there will be more games that people want more a risk will be taken and and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of. And I guess that's going back to what you said before which is people making games for gamers as opposed to essay making games for themselves. And even though it's a lovely idea, uh it's not always the most um financially sensible um one. And and it's ultimately, you know, you can spend a long time making something that that the audience isn't doesn't react to. Hopefully. And hopefully maybe some people who kind of lost the spirit because of how industry works will return or start new companies and start to try to do new stuff. I would really welcome some fresh air and new stuff. I think I go along with that. I think um you look at the stuff that did well last year. Um it was you know stuff that either we hadn't seen before or we

hadn't seen for a long time. People bringing back stuff like Space Marine 2 for instance was a sort of game I hadn't seen for a while like that. And then I look at um the things that didn't do well and it was the stuff that you know might have been pretty good actually but it' been done before and it was and I and I guess when people got so much stuff they can play and watch and listen to or whatever. If you're going to try and convince people to play your thing and engage in your thing, you've got to give them something to get excited about, right? Rather than say, "Hey, this is like the other thing you like." What's your long-term goal for Warwolves? I mean, you've got to a certain size. You've just released this big epic game that's done so well. And um uh is it is it to continue on this track or or are you are you where you want to be? What's your what's your ambition now? I want to uh rest a little bit. Uh it was really it was really uh tough. I had some serious health issues last year from all the stress and stuff and stuff like that. So So I really need to slow down a little bit. Uh, I have a

lot of ideas what to do. Time is short. It It really annoys me that the games take so much time to do because I have more ideas than I have time definitely. Uh, so there are couple of projects that I would love to do and I would love to prepare them properly so it's not as chaotic. I hope that maybe AI revolution will kind of help with this that that in the future we will not be replaced by AI but we will be helped by AI a lot. So a lot of the things could get easier and faster. I hope that it will happen and it will it would be great uh if this would would happen. Uh so generally I have couple of big ideas that I would like to make that will require a lot of time and preparation. So, so maybe I will focus on those. Uh, of course that there are some DLCs for for the KCD2 and stuff like that, but

that was already announced mostly. So, so generally in the far future there are still couple of projects that I would like to do and in my opinion which have as big potential than than KCD. Mhm. You wouldn't expand the team further and just have two projects on the go at the same time. Is that not Is that not how you can is that not how you'd work? Uh I can't speak about these things, I guess. Oh, I see. Well, I I I apply congratulations again on the game being so successful. Um um it's a really difficult market to succeed in at the moment. Okay. And although it's an established series and it's obviously something that people know and love and you've got a big audience for it um on Steam and uh and console as well, then it makes sense to Didn't you launch it on Switch? You launched the original game on Switch recently, didn't you? Is that Yes. Yes.

Yeah. How was that? How was that experience? Uh well, it was done by uh Saber. It wasn't done by mostly. So So did you did you find Sorry, May I rephrase the question. Did you find that it cuz it's interesting I spoke to um fur axis recently about civilization on switch and they said actually the people that play on Switch are often the same people that play on the other platforms. They just they want to take it on the go with them. And I didn't know if that I was under did you did you find a new audience or was it the same audience? I I don't know. I don't know actually. I didn't have much numbers about it. But I have to say that I'm super surprised how they managed to squeeze it on the Switch. I I we initially we thought that it's impossible and they did awesome job and the game is quite fine on the switch. Uh so so that's a miracle I would say that that they happen to to make it possible on the switch but judging from my own experience also I have a Witcher on Switch so my wife could play it. So generally it's something as you said. Well excellent. Thank you Daniel for joining us. It's

been a real pleasure and um good luck with the game and and having that rest and um and whatever the big exciting projects that might follow. Okay. Thank you very much. And for everyone at home, that is it for the game business show today. If you'd like to hear more about what's going on in the games business, make and make sure you never miss a beat, head to the gamebus.com and join our free Substack. Until next time, thank you for listening. If you could be the creative director of any other game studio, which would it be? Does old studios count as well? Sure. Alive or dead? I would like to be part of the initial Fallout one and two maybe. Greatest album of all time. Oo, I listened to a lot of black metal. I like NSA for example a lot. Um, do you think we will all be streaming video games one day? Yes. In in Horizon. Yes. What's your proudest achievement? Probably this game and my kids. My kids, of course. My my wife. She will be. Will

Nintendo Switch 2 out sell Nintendo Switch One? I would rather say no. Are game subscriptions a good or a bad thing for the industry? It's okay. I would say it's it's PC or console? PC. And what is the greatest game of all time? Original Fallout Witcher. First RDR laser squad. Huh? [Music]