![]() ![]() ![]() Then I got more requests every week so my sister helped me. “We started delivering products to local shops, then to another town. “At the time we had a different legal situation here, sort of like in China, so it was OK,” he says. They did, and just like that Marchewka became a video game distributor. He visited local shops, asked if they would carry his borrowed games. He comes off as a man who will bounce back, time and again, and he is clearly the driving force of Techland.Īs a kid, Marchewka would trundle his wares into Wroclaw to trade at a local market. He doesn’t hesitate, when speaking, not even in a second tongue. Marchewka has a fighter’s build, squat and fit. So I kind of borrowed games? I copied them.” Especially for the Amiga, which was a relatively new computer at the time. In the town I lived in … you couldn’t get many games. I had my C64, and then I bought my Amiga, Commodore Amiga. “When I was younger, significantly - more than 20 years ago - I was in secondary school ,” Marchewka says. ![]() Into that vast chasm of history, in the early 1990s, charged eventual Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka. It’s a span of time, and a cultural history, that makes the advent of things like video games read like a pimple on the face of time. It is, all of it, a reminder that for all the wonders of the modern world, people have been living, working, fighting and dying here for thousands of years. Just down the cobblestone street, ancient buildings housing offices and restaurants jostle for space with a modern mall, complete with a KFC and a McDonald’s. A stroll through the city’s old town, situated on an island in the Odra River, is like walking backward in time, with the occasional stark reminder of the modern world.Īcross the street from the Radisson hotel, in a parking lot, stands a monument built to contain the Racławice Panorama, a gigantic, centuries-old circular painting depicting the 18th-century uprising against Russia. The city itself, nestled in Poland’s southwest corner between Germany and the Czech Republic, is ancient, saved from the devastation of World War II by remoteness and luck. In spite of its success, it was not the game Techland wanted to make. Dead Island was supposed to be a very different kind of game, and it was released too early, some think, and too broken. Making games is a hard business, and maintaining a creative vision in the face of publisher demands and market realities is frequently impossible. To erase the festering memories of all the setbacks, the heartbreaks and compromises that made Dead Island not quite perfect. Dead Island was Techland’s first international hit, and it was a whopper of one, pushing over 5 million units.Īnd yet underneath the pride and self-congratulation there burns a fire to do it again, but better. Just as anyone who’s been in love remembers their first love, anyone who makes video games remembers their first international hit. Heroes, zombies, weapons, plastered over every vertical surface, larger than life. Walk inside and, just past a small and somewhat messy lobby, you’ll see the wall art - all Dead Island. This is the place where Dead Island - the blockbuster tropical island-set, melee-happy, weapon-crafting zombie apocalypse game - was made, and the place that, in many ways, was made by Dead Island. You hesitate to boil down a company that’s been selling games for over 15 years to just one title, but they’ll acknowledge it themselves. And then there’s the place with the new cars and motorcycles. There are some houses here and there - small, cottage-like affairs, with well-kept yards. There’s some sort of office complex to one side, across a barren field. Here, in this semi-industrial part of the Polish city of Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotslav, with a rolled R), the building could not be more obtrusive. A striking black and red building with a glass front, like a race car. By Russ Pitts turn a corner and there it is: Techland. ![]()
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