Painkiller creator baffled by Expedition 33's small, mostly-new core team

Pcgamer reports that Adrian Chmielarz, creator of Painkiller and current creative director of Witchfire, said in a recent interview with Gamesindustry.biz that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has confounded him by raking in enormous success despite being built by a core team of around 30 people and a large list of contractors.

Chmielarz compared that roster to Witchfire's similarly sized group and highlighted outsourcing, saying: "Obviously, we didn't make Witchfire with 26 people, because we use outsourcing, and Sandfall Interactive used a lot of outsourcing—when you roll the credits on Expedition 33, it's 10 or 15 minutes long. But still, that doesn't change the fact that the core team responsible for the vast majority of the game and the ideas and execution is around 30 people, half of which are new. So it's the biggest mystery in gaming right now."

He also questioned how the studio achieved its cinematics, adding: "A more complex one is that I couldn't understand how such a small studio can produce such high-quality cinematics. But then when you watch it, 99% of these cut scenes are actually theatre plays, meaning the characters do not interact with the environment … It takes a lot of effort and time to match animations with the environment, because even an act as simple as moving a chair to the right suddenly becomes a super, super complicated thing."

Key Topics

Culture, Adrian Chmielarz, Sandfall Interactive, Witchfire, Painkiller, Outsourcing