The Death of the Author and "The Witcher 3"

        In October of 2007, Polish video game studio CD Projekt Red, released the first game in a series of revolutionary story-driven, role-playing experiences. The Witcher, as it came to be known in the U.S. was certainly not an instant success. However, it did present a myriad of new ideas to enhance the frontier of interactive storytelling. Throughout the game, players are constantly assaulted by moral quandaries in which good and bad cannot always be defined; this makes the player wholly responsible for their interpretation of the issues in this world and the ramifications of their actions; made all the more real when the setting is based on a best-selling Polish novel series of the same name by author Andrzej Sapkowski. According to CD Projekt Red’s website, this basis gave the game “credibility, authority, and exceptional cohesiveness.” Fast forward to 2018, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, is one of the most celebrated games of our time. Released in 2015, The Witcher 3, received numerous accolades for its dense and rich world full of stories and gameplay encounters that emphasize player choice in the most compelling of ways. It seems that The Witcher 3’s success has been embraced by everyone, with the exception of the source material’s author, “where's the room for depth or sophisticated language with which games could elevate culture? There's none." (Sapkowski, 2017) The animosity from the author is so great that he is now claiming CD Projekt Red owes him $16.1 million more in royalties as reported by Kotaku on October 2, 2018.

            While I cannot speak to the legality of Sapkowski’s claim, when I consider Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author theory, I must question the validity and actual worth of his authorship in relation to The Witcher 3. In his 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, Barthes asserts that any meaning found in a piece of literature is not and should not be attributed to the person known as the “author,” and instead insists that meaning is derived from the reader’s interpretation of the text. In addition, Barthes posits that “all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin” (Barthes, 1967). He suggests that while most authors think of their work as fresh ideas; because their ideas are generated by interpretations of outside influences, these ideas cannot necessarily be considered new or originated by the author. It is an interesting notion that has come about from Barthes’ position as a semiotician and structuralist in his pursuit of literary criticism. Semiotics is the study of signs, which, in this case would refer to anything that conveys meaning – this includes words, symbols, and myths. As a semiotician, Barthes searchers for systems of meaning within language throughout his literary critiques. His structuralist approach refers to how he “[examines] texts in order to discover underlying structures of cultural/symbolic meaning that are common to all of us” (Kingston-Mann, 2018). In addition, his approach to structuralism is Saussurean which sees an analyst or critic identifying both a signifier, referring to the sign itself, and signified which refers to the meaning that sign connotes. This theory of structuralism also insists that signs have no meaning outside of their structure. This relates directly to The Death of the Author in that allowing a reader’s interpretation of a text to be swayed by their knowledge or opinion of the author would not actually be a part of the literary structure that the text has built and thus the signs within the text should not have any meaning associated with the signs provided by the author’s personality.

In his books, Sapkowski utilizes myths and legends from the pantheon of European folklore in order to flesh out his medieval fantasy world with European culture. One such example is a creature that you encounter early on in The Witcher 3 known as a botchling. Without going into too much detail, botchlings are directly derived from a Croatian creature known as a drekavac that is so tightly wound into Croatian culture, that a village in Bosnia is reported to have had trouble with one as recently as 2011 according to news outlet 24 SATA. It seems that the representation of overcoming adversity in medieval Europe is so accurate in The Witcher 3 that even today certain parts of Europe continue to use folklore in order to explain what they cannot understand. In this case the signifier would be the existence of the drekavac and the signified would be a still birth or miscarriage as the mythology states that such an event is what creates these creatures. When considering The Death of the Author, it is interesting to me how Sapkowski can borrow so much from European mythology and folklore and still be able to claim authorship – even the titular Witcher is taken straight from the pages of Polish mythology.

When I first played The Witcher 3, I was completely enraptured by its depth and masterful design. It quickly became very near and dear to my heart, and I sought out not only its source material, but the author of that source as well. I had no idea at the time that Andrzej Sapkowski was a bitter old man who saw this new medium – video games – as nothing more than a capitalist function of society in that they can make large sums of money just by being vibrant and nonsensical. In his own admission, Spakowski states "I've never played any computer games, be it fantasy or others” (Spakowski, 2012). More recently, he has stated that "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Literature and video games are like East and West” (Sapkowski, 2017). These notions reveal to me that Sapkowski has no respect for the medium and his only interpretation of it comes from outdated notions that were built up by society in a time where video games depicted nothing but the violent or nonsensical. This is a very functionalist approach to literary interpretation in which he is allowing society to form meaning for him instead of – the structuralist approach - forming meaning from the actual literary system itself; in this case being the video game in question. Realizing the man who inspired one of my favorite video games approaches the medium in this way was heartbreaking for me. I did not let it ruin my love of the game itself, but when I got around to reading the actual Witcher novels I could certainly see a more embittered point of view than the one I usually use when playing The Witcher 3 – or so I thought. When considering the death of the author theory, I realize that I may just be associating my animosity toward Sapkowski with the tone of the book, and this is not likely to be the author’s intention. Following this realization, I re-examined my interpretation of Sapkowski’s relationship to the game itself. When I thought about it, I realized that Sapkowski is actually separated from The Witcher 3 through a number of layers. First of which, is that he had nothing to do with the actual writing in the game other than being the source for the characters and setting. By his own admission, "I don't feel like a co-author of the game” (Sapkowski, 2012). The writing in The Witcher 3 is all an interpretation of the universe portrayed in Sapkowski’s novels by the writers and game designers of CD Projekt Red. To take this separation a step further, as I stated earlier, the game has a heavy focus on player choice and thus the story is heavily affected by my interpretation of the events in the game world. Nearly everyone has a vastly different experience playing through any of The Witcher games. I know for a fact that the way I choose for Geralt – the protagonist – to act is vastly different from the way he is written in Sapkowski’s books. Thus, the meaning I derive from the various signs sprawling throughout The Witcher 3, are very much a product of my own interpretation by several layers of separation. Not only is it separated from Sapkowski, the author of the source material whose cultural values and approach to literary criticism is vastly different from my own; but it is also separated from the actual creators of the game themselves. In this way, I see that Barthes’ death of the author theory has substantially impacted my opinions on one of the most significant pieces of literature to me, personally, in the last decade. In accordance with the death of the author theory, I would say that Andrzej Sapkowski’s claim to authorship over The Witcher 3, is not quite as valid as he would have the masses believe.

   

References

Bajda, P. (2017, April 6) A No Bullshit Conversation With The Authors Behind The Witcher and Metro 2033. Waypoint (Brooklyn, New York). Retrieved from https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/wn938w/a-no-bullshit-conversation-with-the-authors-behind-the-witcher-and-metro-2033

Barthes, R. (1967). Death of the Author. UbuWeb. Retrieved from http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf

Gach, E. (2018, October 2). Witcher Author Threatens CD Projekt Red With Legal Action If It Doesn't Pay Him More. Kotaku (New York, New York). Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/witcher-author-threatens-cd-projekt-red-with-legal-acti-1829465193

Kingston-Mann, L. (2018). Week 5 Semiotics, Structuralism & Functionalism. [PowerPoint Slides]

Robinson, A. (2011, September 23). An A to Z of Theory: Roland Barthes and Semiotics. Ceasefire (London, United Kingdom). Retrieved from https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-barthes-1/  

Purchese, R. (2012, July 11). Ever wondered what the author of The Witcher books thinks about the games?. Eurogamer (Brighton, England). Retrieved From https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-06-ever-wondered-what-the-author-of-the-witcher-books-thinks-about-the-games