Witcher dev CD Projekt Red explains Multiplayer Programmer job ad
"There's still a lot of space for innovation in the RPG genre."
Don't take the Multiplayer Programmer job at advert for CD Projekt Red to mean, unequivocally, that The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk will feature multiplayer.
The studio's head of marketing, Michal Platkow-Gilewski, told Eurogamer that everything's still at an ideas stage, and this new hire will help them understand what will and won't work going forward.
"As for the job ad: this post should be named Multiplayer/Online Programmer," Platkow-Gilewski told us. "I don't want to comment on what this guy will create, it's way too early.
"We want to bring to the team someone experienced in this field to evaluate our concepts and ideas. He will be one of backbone elements of our R&D.
"We believe that there's still a lot of space for innovation in the RPG genre. At this stage of our games' development, we want to explore all possible directions, check what would be cool, what's feasible and - always the most important for us - what suits our games the best."
The Multiplayer Programmer job advert advertised for someone to "prepare our engine for challenges of upcoming online component of our future games", which probably means, "prepare our engine for the upcoming challenges of adding an online component to our future games".
"We believe that there's still a lot of space for innovation in the RPG genre. At this stage of our games' development, we want to explore all possible directions, check what would be cool, what's feasible and - always the most important for us - what suits our games the best."
Michal Platkow-Gilewski, head of marketing, CD Projekt Red
Responsibilities will include "creating a roadmap of changes necessary to add multiplayer to the Red Engine", and "helping in design and implementation of multiplayer changes to existing systems", among other things.
The advert also cited PS3 development experience as a plus. CDPR hasn't released a game for PS3 yet, only Xbox 360 - but that's not to say the studio hasn't been interested in Sony's machine.
Besides its main story campaign, The Witcher 2 added an Arena mode post-launch. Here, hero Geralt could battle increasingly difficult groups of opponents fame, fortune, power and points. Those points - your score - would be charted to a leaderboard. It was the first babysteps towards competitive multiplayer in The Witcher 2.
Whether the ideas CD Projekt Red has for the future are a continuation of that, or perhaps a nod towards co-operative play, we'll have to wait and see. But it would be a leap of faith to start shouting "MMO".
The Witcher 3 hasn't been announced yet, nor confirmed. But Cyberpunk, the sci-fi RPG, has been announced, and is being built by a second and new team at CD Projekt Red.
Michal Platkow-Gilewski said that atmosphere around the office as two games are being worked on in parallel "is better than ever". There's a "beautiful and refreshing" air of collaboration, of everybody chucking in all kinds of ideas, and sky being the limit.
The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are aiming for 2014/2015 and will be simultaneous PC and next-gen console releases.