Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy writer, essayist, translator and a trained economist. He is best known for his six-volume series of books The Witcher, which revolves around the eponymous "witcher," a monster-hunter, Geralt of Rivia. It began with the publication of Sword of Destiny (1992), and was completed with the publication of standalone prequel novel Season of Storms (2013). The saga has been popularized through television, stage, comic books, video games and translated into 37 languages making him the second most-translated Polish science fiction and fantasy writer after Stanisław Lem.
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, and Marcel Zeschuk. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.
Gorky 17 is a turn-based tactics tactical role-playing video game developed by Polish studio Metropolis Software and published by Monolith Productions for Microsoft Windows in 1999. The game was later ported to Linux by Hyperion Entertainment and published by Linux Game Publishing in 2006. The AmigaOS 4 version was released in 2015.
The Witcher is a 2007 action role-playing game developed by CD Projekt Red for Microsoft Windows and CD Projekt on OS X. It was based on the fantasy novel series The Witcher by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The game's story takes place after the events of the main saga.
People Can Fly is a Polish video game developer based in Warsaw. The studio was founded in February 2002 by Adrian Chmielarz, previously the co-founder of Metropolis Software, together with acquaintances Michał Kosieradzki and Andrzej Poznański. The studio's first game was Painkiller (2004). Its success led to a deal with THQ for the game Come Midnight, which allowed the studio to expand. After the game was cancelled, People Can Fly found itself in financial trouble. Epic Games acquired a majority share in People Can Fly in August 2007 and collaborated with the studio on projects such as Bulletstorm (2011) and Gears of War: Judgment (2013).
Geralt of Rivia is a fictional character and the protagonist of The Witcher series of short stories and novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. He is a magically enhanced monster-hunter known as a "witcher", who possesses supernatural abilities due to his mutations.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a 2011 action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red, based on The Witcher series of fantasy novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. It is the sequel to the 2007 game The Witcher and the second main installment in The Witcher's video game series. It was released for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, OS X, and Linux.
Western role-playing video games are role-playing video games developed in the Western world, including The Americas and Europe. They originated on mainframe university computer systems in the 1970s, were later popularized by titles such as Ultima and Wizardry in the early- to mid-1980s, and continue to be produced for modern home computer and video game console systems. The genre's "Golden Age" occurred in the mid- to late-1980s, and its popularity suffered a downturn in the mid-1990s as developers struggled to keep up with changing fashion, hardware evolution and increasing development costs. A later series of isometric role-playing games, published by Interplay Productions and Blizzard Entertainment, was developed over a longer time period and set new standards of production quality.
The Witcher is a series of six fantasy novels and 15 short stories written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. The series revolves around the eponymous "witcher", Geralt of Rivia. "Witchers" are monster hunters given superhuman abilities for the purpose of killing dangerous creatures. The Witcher began with a titular 1986 short story that Sapkowski entered into a competition held by Fantastyka magazine, marking his debut as an author. Due to reader demand, Sapkowski wrote 14 more stories before starting a series of novels in 1994. Known as The Witcher Saga, he wrote one book a year until the fifth and final installment in 1999. A standalone prequel novel, Season of Storms, was published in 2013.
CD Projekt S.A. is a Polish video game developer, publisher and distributor based in Warsaw, founded in May 1994 by Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński. Iwiński and Kiciński were video game retailers before they founded the company, which initially acted as a distributor of foreign video games for the domestic market. The department responsible for developing original games, CD Projekt Red, best known for The Witcher series, was formed in 2002. In 2008, CD Projekt launched the digital distribution service Good Old Games, now known as GOG.com.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a 2015 action role-playing game developed and published by CD Projekt. It is the sequel to the 2011 game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the third game in The Witcher video game series, played in an open world with a third-person perspective. The games follow the Witcher series of fantasy novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski.
11 bit studios S.A. is a Polish video game developer and publisher based in Warsaw. The studio was founded in 2010 by former members of CD Projekt and Metropolis Software. The studio is most known for developing Anomaly: Warzone Earth (2011), This War of Mine (2014), and Frostpunk (2018).
The SXSW Gaming Awards were awards given to video games during the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), held in Austin, Texas typically in March of that year. The Awards were part of the SXSW Gaming Expo which is part of the SXSW Interactive branch of the festival.
The Witcher Battle Arena was a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by CD Projekt Red. The game released for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices in 2015, and was playable until the end of that year when the servers were closed.
Tajemnica Statuetki is a Polish-language adventure game developed and published by Metropolis Software House for DOS-based computers in 1993. While it was never released in English, it is known in the English-speaking world as The Mystery of the Statuette. The game was conceived by a team led by Adrian Chmielarz, who used photographs taken in France as static screens within the game. The first title in the adventure game genre that was produced in Poland, its plot revolves around a fictional Interpol agent named John Pollack trying to solve a mystery associated with the thefts of ancient artifacts around the world.
The Astronauts is an independent Polish video game developer based in Warsaw. It was formed in October 2012 by Adrian Chmielarz, Michał Kosieradzki and Andrzej Poznański, who had founded People Can Fly in 2002 but left that studio in August 2012 after it was wholly acquired by Epic Games.
Adrian Chmielarz is a Polish video game designer, programmer, creative director, producer and writer specializing in adventure games and first-person shooters. Chmielarz has co-founded and led Metropolis Software, People Can Fly and The Astronauts. He is one of the most prominent Polish video gaming figures, and has been described as one of the "most divisive" figures in the industry.
Katharsis is a horizontally scrolling shooter from Polish developer Metropolis Software House and published by CD Projekt in 1997.
The Witcher is a fantasy action role-playing game series developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. It is based on the book series of the same name by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, acting as non-canonical sequels to the story of the books.
Poland is a major video game market and home to one of the largest video game industries in the world. In 2022, Poland became the world’s fourth largest exporter of video games and Polish publicly-traded gaming companies were worth over €12 billion. The game studios in the country employ around 10,000 people and release almost 500 new games annually.
