“Go and learn how to mod”: CD Projekt lead says “half” of the people making quests for Cyberpunk 2 right now are former modders
Cyberpunk 2077 sequel Project Orion, otherwise unofficially known as Cyberpunk 2, is in very early production at CD Projekt Red and its new stateside studio, and around half of the folks currently roughing out the RPG’s quests started out as modders.
Pawel Sasko, Cyberpunk 2077 quest lead and now associate game director of the sequel, discussed the team’s makeup and the value of mods in an interview with Flow Games (thanks, PCGamesN).
“Half of the quest team [on Cyberpunk 2], the team that builds the quests, it’s like 24 people right now, half of that are former modders,” Sasko says, explaining that some had been modding Witcher or Cyberpunk, while others, like the game’s quest director, modded the likes of StarCraft.
“Half of the team is modders, and we also have modders in other departments,” Sasko continues. “There’s a small team called Jigsoft that’s composed only of modders. It’s around 20 of them and they’re working with us. I don’t want to call them an outsource because they’re really not, they’re a part of us. We’re working together on various things, and Jigsoft did the modding tools for The Witcher 3.”
Sasko is full of praise for mods and modders, and readily encourages aspiring game developers to get their hands dirty by modding whatever they feel passionate about. “I always advise young people, when they ask how to get into the industry, I say: go and mod,” he says. “Go and learn how to mod. Start modding something. There are so many toolkits, so many ways to do it. Some of the best people that we have are former modders.”
Mods were, of course, instrumental in getting the once-ruinous, now-resplendent Cyberpunk 2077 into a state that you could describe without wincing. Directly mirroring Sasko’s perspective, some ideas that started as mods ended up becoming full features in later updates, like a working metro for Night City.