![]() In September 2003 CD Projekt Red commenced work on its first proprietary RPG, set in Andrzej Sapkowski’s universe – The Witcher. When it turned out that the franchise exploitation and game development rights were for sale, we felt like we had won the lottery. It was a grand return to Andrzej Sapkowski’s literature which we had voraciously consumed in our high school and college years. That’s when someone floated the idea to do something with ‘The Witcher’. – After porting our first console game to the PC we got hooked and knew we had to carry on. The company also secured exclusive distribution rights for Ubisoft releases on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles. In short order CDP.pl became the official Polish distributor of Atari, Cryo, Konami, Microsoft, Sega and others. The success paved the way for further distribution agreements covering such global hits as Diablo II and Baldur’s Gate II. – a smile appears on Marcin Iwiński’s face On the first day alone we sold 18 thousand copies. People lined up to buy the game and wholesalers got in fights over the product. – We had to rent out an external warehouse. CD PROJEKT had proven that Poles were ready to purchase legal games given sufficient product quality. The game ended up selling over 100 thousand copies – a new record. At first he said it couldn’t be done but then he took a look at the code and declared that it might be possible. I also had a programmer friend – Maciek Marzec. He knew about audio processing and postproduction, and had ties to the movie industry. Deep down we felt that players would welcome such a game, that they would buy it if only it were offered in Polish – says Marcin Iwiński – My own dad was involved in making documentaries. – We began analyzing the concept in minute detail. The game was Baldur’s Gate and CDP.pl enlisted the voice talents of Krzysztof Kowalewski, Piotr Fronczewski, Wiktor Zborowski, Marian Opania and Jan Kobuszewski, among others. The next milestone for the Company was its first full videogame localization. – reminisces Marcin Iwiński, Vice President and co-founder of CD PROJEKT S.A. We would order a batch of discs, then retail them on the bazaar. It was a pivotal moment as the first CD-ROM releases were just starting to become popular around that time. By the time school was out we had both become truants, skipping classes to play games. I walked into the class and there was an empty seat next to him, so I took it. Michał handled sales while Marcin took care of communicating with suppliers and arranging international shipments. They could often be found trading games at the Warsaw computer bazaar located at Grzybowska street. They began forging contacts with their foreign counterparts and importing new releases to Poland. Marcin and Michał, both avid gamers, sought access to new games. Trade activities spilled out into the streets, bazaars and open-air markets. It was an era of transformation, with the Polish economy taking on an entirely new shape. Computer games in the 90s – could one turn a profit on that? Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, a pair of high school friends who shared a passion for games, believed so.
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