As a seasoned gamer with over two decades of gaming under my belt, I must say that the journey of Stalker 2 has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. From its long-awaited release to the subsequent wave of praise and criticism, it’s clear that this game has captured the hearts of many.
The leader of GSC Game World, the studio behind Stalker 2, has discussed the challenges faced during its development, particularly the intense work pressure (often referred to as “crunch”) experienced as they strived to meet the game’s release deadline amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Title sequel to Stalker, named Stalker 2, was unveiled on PC and Xbox Series X/S towards the tail end of November, following a series of significant postponements and a shift in half of the development team from Ukraine to a new studio base in the Czech Republic. Despite the ongoing conflict, half of the staff opted to stay put in Ukraine, making progress challenging. The tumultuous path Stalker 2 took to reach launch and the extraordinary hardships the developers faced during this period is the central focus of the 90-minute documentary titled War Game: Crafting Stalker 2.
The release date for Stalker 2 was pushed back from its initial September launch, as announced in July. At that point, GSC Game World explained that these additional two months were needed to address some unforeseen issues, or simply put, to iron out any bugs.
But Stalker 2 launched with a number of bugs and features that do not work properly including A-Life 2.0, which governs the way life operates across the open-world. Following a screening of the documentary at BAFTA in Piccadilly, London, iggn.ru spoke with GSC Game World CEO Ievgen Grygorovych and creative director Maria Grygorovych about what went wrong with A-Life 2.0, but also more generally about the game’s development and launch.
One of the major concerns surrounding GSC has been whether they could postpone the release of Stalker 2 to fix its issues prior to launch. However, both Ievgen and Maria stated that this was impractical due to the intense workload the team had already been under in the months leading up to November.
(It’s worth bearing in mind that English is not Ievgen or Maria’s first language.)
Maria remarked, “Creating games isn’t easy; there’s a lot of competition since players can compare us to numerous other companies. Many of these companies have larger budgets for development. This makes it particularly challenging for us, as we are an independent studio without the support of a larger corporation to fall back on.
Though we didn’t quite meet our desired level of completion prior to the release, to the best of our ability, we couldn’t have done any better.
As a gamer, I understand that GSC Game World put in their absolute best effort to ensure Stalker 2 was ready for launch, given the challenging circumstances brought about by the ongoing war. In our situation, we were doing everything feasible under the circumstances – taking into account the time constraints, our resources, and the fact that a significant portion of our team doesn’t have electricity during certain parts of the day, making it impossible for them to work effectively.
Ievgen and Maria acknowledged that it’s challenging for GSC to offer excuses when dealing with customers, as these customers have invested their money in a product they anticipate functioning effectively regardless of production conditions. However, they expressed hope that the documentary might foster some understanding towards the employees.
As a gamer speaking, I can’t express enough how challenging it is to share that half our team experiences power outages for extended periods each week, and some even struggle with sleep due to constant threats from drones and missiles. It’s an ongoing situation, and it’s hard to imagine how anyone can survive under these conditions when they can’t rest or work because of the lack of electricity. To add to that, many of our team members are struggling to keep warm during the cold weather, as Russia targets energy infrastructure responsible for heating homes. Despite working in the game industry, it’s difficult to find the right words to discuss these issues.
“We can’t say to a player, look, it’s hard to make the game,” Ievgen added.
As a dedicated fan, I echo Ievgen’s sense of pride in Stalker 2. To me, it’s like constructing an immense ocean-going vessel and navigating it across the vast expanse of the Atlantic. Just like Maria, I share her optimism that the foundation GSC has laid will resonate with players. “We hope that people can sense the game’s presence… It may not be the flawless masterpiece we envisioned, but it’s a soulful game.
Wow, I can’t contain my excitement! It looks like fans have been eagerly waiting, as Stalker 2 managed to sell a million copies in just under two days. Plus, it’s currently garnering a ‘very positive’ review rating on Steam, with an impressive 84% of the 64,872 user reviews being positive. I can hardly wait to jump back into the Stalker universe!
Instead of being content, Ievgen aspires for something greater. Specifically, he hopes that Stalker 2 will eventually earn a 90% user rating in reviews: “For any creative mind, the goal is to create a work that 90% of people admire, not 85%, not 83%, not 86%. We aim for 90. ‘But 89 is still good!’ No! 89 begins with an eight and we want to begin with a nine. After six years, it’s like striving for perfection in a child’s eyes.
Afterward, Ievgen acknowledged his anticipation for a more unfavorable user rating on Steam for Stalker 2 than what was eventually received, considering the known bugs that gamers might encounter upon release.
I thought we’d achieve far less than what we actually did with the audience,” Ievgen admitted. “We were concerned about that… we understand the game was released in a state that we wanted to improve. Releasing a game always means there are bugs, and we know about half of them. We wish we had more time, but that’s not an option for us. It was beyond our capabilities to do any better than we did.
He went on to explain: “As developers, we encounter far more issues within the game than typical players usually experience. Most players never come across 99% of the bugs present in our game. We are aware of numerous problems and often pondered, ‘what if these unresolved issues affect the players?’ This thought added to our stress because we couldn’t predict how many people might encounter this problem or others we haven’t even identified yet. It was a very tense moment for us.
I had concerns that the player reception for Stalker 2 might be even more unfavorable than it currently is, but our aim remains to make it even better.
How about rephrasing it like this for a more conversational tone: “Hey, should we postpone Stalker 2 once more? Ievgen mentioned that the team’s energy reserves are completely depleted, suggesting that developing the game is like running a long marathon with no energy left.
He stated, “For a few months, we were putting in about 16 hours of work each day.” Using the marathon analogy, it’s like running for miles and there are only 10 kilometers left to go, but then someone tells you that you have another 40 kilometers ahead. You’re exhausted, and though you can’t complete the task right away, you keep going because you want to finish. However, as time passes, you realize that you still have some distance to cover, and it seems impossible to reach the end within the given timeframe. But remember, this isn’t due to a lack of effort – you’re giving everything you’ve got, and with more time, you could accomplish it.
Of course, everyone has their limits, which means we can’t actually halt time, rewind it, or improve it as we might wish.
To help you survive in the Zone, we’ve got a list of Essential Stalker 2 Tips and Tricks, plus a guide on Things to Do First in Stalker 2 to help you through the early game, and Things Stalker 2 Doesn’t Tell You – everything we wish we knew before we started playing. Save time scouring the wasteland with our Artifacts checklist and locations guide, and every Stash location we’ve found so far.
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2024-12-06 17:57