While the Witcher video game series has been around for nearly 10 years now and has garnered plenty of critical acclaim, the series has actually existed a lot longer in book form. The series of books began in the early 90’s and were written by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski, and the popular games have only served to result in many more people checking out the books.
However, despite the increase in book sales that the games have gotten for his books, the author actually feels that the games have had a negative impact on his books. He recently spoke with Tygodnik POLITYKA, where he said the following:
“Seeing a picture from the game on the cover of my book, many fans assumed that the game was first. And respectable fans of sci-fi and fantasy hold such derivative books in contempt … I have to keep explaining to the fans that I wrote the book 12 years before the game was made and that the Sandworm is from the game, not the books. You couldn’t find a Sandworm in the books even if you tried.”
He goes on to voice his frustration against game writers, saying they “write game-related stuff exclusively for money. And surely they write in a sloppy manner, half-heartedly.”
Finally, he ends by saying his biggest problems aren’t with the games themselves, but the perception that they have created when compared with his books. “The issues that I have thanks to the games are not at all caused by the game itself. I am not envious of the game’s undeniable success, I’m far from it. There is but one original Witcher. That one which belongs to me. And nothing will take it away from me.”
The Witcher video game series seems to have come to an end for the foreseeable future, as Geralt’s story ended with the Blood & Wine DLC and developer CD Projekt RED is now developing the sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2077.
