CD Projekt RED - What Andrzej Sapkowski Thinks about the Games @ Eurogamer

Eurogamer has an interview with the Andrzej Sapkowski, the author behind the Witcher books. He has some interesting points about games:

 "I do not play computer games as they are far beyond my sphere of interest," he remarked. "I've never played any computer games, be it fantasy or others. Sometimes I read through dedicated gaming magazines or watch television programmes. Graphics and technology, sometimes, I admire. I cannot say anything about the plots, though. Apart from the fact that some types of games seem to lack any story whatsoever. Those seem to be all about the hack and slash."

And Sapkowski's take on the Witcher games:

The Witcher game told an alternate story with The Witcher world. Was Sapkowski happy with it?

 "The game - with all due respect to it, but let's finally say it openly - is not an 'alternative version', nor a sequel. The game is a free adaptation containing elements of my work; an adaptation created by different authors," he noted. "Adaptations - although they can in a way relate to the story told in the books - can never aspire to the role of a follow-up. They can never add prologues nor prequels, let alone epilogues and sequels.

And here's his take on the crossover between books and games:

"I realise that current times accustom us - which I find terrible - to the strange convergence of media and the freedom of mixing them. To me as a writer, the idea to write 'adjuvant content' and create something 'complementary' to a game or a comic is an absolute pinnacle of idiocy."

There's no chance of The Witcher games influencing the outcome of the The Witcher books, then.

"I will definitely skip any 'alternative ideas'," Sapkowski promised. "It'll come easily to me anyway, as I don't know any of them. And even if I knew, it would be funny and silly were I to write based on the game's suggestions. I suppose I have made myself clear when I said that I will never accept any ideas and concepts of 'complementarity plots' and 'building coherent stories'. A story can only be contained in a book."

After the interview with Sapkowski, Adam Badowski from CDPR chimed in to say this:

"Our cooperation has a strict and defined direction. I can't imagine Andrzej Sapkowski playing a game to do research for the new novels. This is unlikely and would look like writing a book for a game or movie release, which ends badly in most cases; the novel winds up in a collector's edition and then covers with dust somewhere on the gamer's shelf. "We want to develop The Witcher's universe in other media, not only video games. We have Mr. Sapkowsk's blessing and what we create is in line with his vision of the world, no matter how the saga will evolve.