"Expectations for full-price games is very high. You need a large budget to have a ch

Recovering from a big bet that didn't quite pay off can be one of the toughest things a games company has to go through. There's an expectation of constant growth, that your titles will get bigger and better each time, but sometimes the scope can expand beyond your capabilities as a studio.
This was the case with Sniper Ghost Warrior 3, the 2017 open-world first-person shooter by Polish developer CI Games. The game was more ambitious than anything the studio had made to date, yet didn't have the impact or sales the company needed.
Just three months after its launch, CI Games admitted it was a "big mistake" in aiming for the AAA shooter space, trying to stand alongside titles developed by bigger teams with much bigger budgets.
<figure class="small">The game was by no means a failure, but even the one million sales it managed did not prevent CI Games from significantly downsizing a year later. CEO Marek Tymiński tells GamesIndustry.biz the total sales are now close to 1.5 million units, which -- while still not up to the company's own expectations -- is "not a bad result."
</figure>In 2019, the series returns with Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts, and Tymiński is confident the game will rectify the mistakes made with its predecessor, with CI Games determinedly avoiding comparison with AAA games.
"We have fixed most of the problems that SGW3 had, but competing with major games is tough and requires large teams," he says. "Our internal studio is only around 35 people.

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