Phantom Liberty Game Director Says Cyberpunk 2077 Successor Is in the ‘Fun Phase’ of Development

22.02.2024 - 10:05 / ign.com / Projekt Red / Gabe Amatangelo

“Most companies die with a bad launch, this one actually came out stronger.”

That’s a line from New York University’s Stern School of Business professor Joost van Dreunen, quoted in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. He was describing the transformation undergone by developer CD Projekt Red from the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020 to the triumphant release of major DLC Phantom Liberty late last year. And it was with understandable pride that Phantom Liberty game director Gabe Amatangelo opened his talk at the 2024 DICE Summit, quoting that exact line.

Amatangelo went on to describe to DICE attendees just how CD Projekt had accomplished such a monumental task, focusing on the most difficult part: rallying a discouraged and frustrated team around a belief that such a thing could be done. When Cyberpunk 2077 launched, he said, it seemed everyone around them knew that something had gone wrong at his company. The woman who worked at the local coffee shop. His landlord. Everyone. The perceived failure was almost inescapable.

That left Amatangelo with the critical job of rebuilding internal morale. He led by focusing on positives, encouraging the team to celebrate the elements of the launch that had gone well. He worked to build trust, so that developers who needed help felt they could ask for it. And he worked with the team to come up with a handful of key drivers that would enable the production of the DLC to be a success. These included distributing ownership over decision-making and other checks so that the game director role wouldn’t be a bottleneck on production, integrating and empowering QA closely with the rest of the team even in early development, and just…setting aside time for developers to actually play the game. A lot.

After Amatangelo’s talk, I spoke with him about how the team is carrying these lessons forward into its next Cyberpunk project, currently dubbed Project Orion. In addition to what he shared in his DICE talk, Amatangelo expanded on a number of learnings he’s carrying forward into the new game. He emphasizes the importance of contingency planning and the need to share backup plans both up and down the chain of command – and to have multiple backup plans, just in case. He tells me about the importance of putting oneself in the player’s shoes when establishing a new story or world, and imagining what they might hope to see or do in that space so that you don’t let them down.

And he reiterates the importance of making sure studio environments are environments of trust. “One technique, and a lot of the guys and gals that work for me know that whenever I put an idea forward, because of my position, sometimes people might not want to challenge it. So if I see that vibe, I'll