Digital Dragons - Techland: 10 Lessons We Learned from Dying Light

If there's one thing the second day of Digital Dragons injected directly into our veins, it's a healthy dose of realism. After analyzing capital flows with investors and survival strategies in the Xbox ecosystem, it was time to give the floor to those who shape video games, line of code after line of code, facing the most ruthless judgment of all: that of time.

We sat in the audience to listen to Tymon Smektaa, a figure nothing short of legendary in the Polish scene: first for ten years as editor-in-chief of the country's main specialized publications, then a game designer, and today, deservedly, Franchise Director of the entire Dying Light series at Techland. With over a quarter-century of experience under his belt, Smektaa took the stage not to celebrate himself, but to lay bare a ten-year journey, made of crazy intuitions, unforgivable blunders, and an intellectual honesty that, for us at Gamesurf, made us jump out of our seats.

Here are the 10 definitive lessons learned from managing one of the world's most famous horror franchises.

1. Be brave: have the courage to do it your way

Techland's first rule is only trivial on paper: don't be afraid to deviate from the beaten path. Smektaa recalled the early days of the progenitor's development: he tried to set the jump to the "A" button on the controller, but the programmer responsible for the parkour system glared at him: "You don't jump with A here". From then on, it was clear that Dying Light would do things differently. The game didn't want to be a trivial Dead Island. While the market saturated users with titles based on mindlessly slaughtering zombies, Techland chose the path of courage: focusing on escape through a natural movement system. If you want to create an immense franchise, the fear of changing the rules must disappear. 

2. Define the pillars (and never touch them again)

Everyone in this world has great ideas for stories, quests, or bizarre mechanics. The hard part, where most productions collapse, is knowing how to crystallize those ideas into "gameplay pillars" from day one, not halfway through development. For Dying Light, the player fantasy was crystal clear: to make the player feel like a survivor within a quarantined city. From this vision, three inseparable pillars were born: natural movement, melee combat, and the day/night cycle. Having this compass allowed the team to filter out any subsequent errors: if a mechanic strayed from the pillars, it was discarded without regret. 

3. The first chapter writes the franchise's DNA

Every single decision, even the most foolish, made during the development of the first game will reverberate through everything you do in the next ten years. Lore, timeline, characters, and even nomenclature remain carved in stone. Smektaa shared a tragicomic anecdote about this: "When we decided to kill a character in the first game, we didn't even think about reusing them in the future. When we had to resurrect them in the spin-off The Beast, it was a narrative nightmare". Even generically calling zombies "infected" at the beginning created devastating internal communication chaos about who should do what. Treat documentation like a relic: it will save your life. 

4. Talk about your game. Then talk about it again

It's not enough to show cool trailers with electronic music. You need to explain your game to players, constantly, until you're sure they understand exactly what they're getting their hands on. Only then can you build recognition and, above all, manage public expectations, avoiding negative reviews due to misunderstandings. The first Dying Light was partially snubbed by specialized critics, but gamers loved it from the very first moment. The reason? They knew exactly what they were buying, because Techland had talked about it without filters. 

5. Respect your community's hunger

In Techland's initial ideas, post-launch support for Dying Light was meant to be minimal. Then, the epiphany: players were literally hungry for that world. The team indulged this hunger, creating a monstrous commercial long tail that combines free updates and paid DLC. After 8 weeks, the first patch arrived, after 16, the Bozak Horde mode, then the gigantic expansion The Following, leading to continuous support that lasted 10 years, culminating with the next-gen patch. This never-severed umbilical cord allows the game to continue selling copies years later, maintaining the software's significant price and avoiding early depreciation in bargain bins. 

6. The devil (and identity) is in the details

A video game doesn't become unique for its grand systems, but for its micro-details. At the launch of Dying Light 2, Techland realized with horror that they had left behind elements that fans considered fundamental: the fluidity of certain transitions, the physical trajectory of impact weapons, the amount of blood on screen. How could this happen? Simple: performance anxiety for the engine change, accumulated stress, and the mad rush to meet milestones made the team lose sight of the small things. Never run so fast that you forget the details. 

7. The game is no longer yours: listen to negative feedback

This is a painful lesson Techland had to digest right after the launch of the second installment. When you publish a title, that game ceases to be the property of the developers; it becomes the property of the millions of players who experience it, dissect it, and build memories and emotions upon it. You need to be community-driven and not just customer-centric. Players often don't know how to technically express a problem and express themselves in the worst possible ways, but the emotional frustration behind their insults is real and must be listened to. And remember: data and telemetry say a lot, but they don't say everything. In fact, it's precisely the negative comments that give you the vital information your head-over-heels fans will never tell you. 

8. Quality over quantity (even if fans ask for the opposite)

Modern gamers want everything, and they want it now: hundreds of weapons, boundless maps, weekly updates. If you try to please everyone, collapse is guaranteed. Smektaa's lesson is an invitation to slow down: you need to take the necessary time, do all the tests, lower the hype, and obsessively focus on the core mechanics. Only the excellent quality of the gameplay foundation will save the project, not the sheer volume of filler content. 

9. Build a Core Team and protect memories

When you decide to turn a game into a franchise, you desperately need a solid group of veterans. You need people who remember every single step, every line of code, every mistake made, and every sacrifice in the past. Written documentation is useful, agreed, but the atmosphere in the offices, the emotions, and human memories are not replicable on an Excel file. Clearly, teams change and grow, but the leaders' task is to transmit that emotional baggage to new recruits, making them feel part of an organic mechanism where everyone is rowing in the same direction. Also because the juniors who are fetching coffee today will be the directors who will have to face the stage tomorrow. 

10. Keep the game's soul alive

The last lesson is a kind of poetic manifesto for the entire industry. During the development of a title, catastrophes will happen, deadlines will be missed, bad things will occur, and systematic unforeseen events will arise. Despite all this mess, the ultimate goal of those who run a studio must always be one: to protect the team, preserve people's health, and, above all, never lose the pure love for the act of creating video games and for the people who will play them. 

Because without that soul, only cold pixels remain. And players, rest assured, notice it immediately.