In the wake of recent challenges, including the cancellation of Life By You and the troubled launch of Cities: Skylines 2, Paradox Interactive has shared its strategy for moving forward, taking into account the valuable lessons learned about player expectations and feedback.
Paradox Interactive Explains Recent Games' Cancellation and Delay
Players Have Expectations, and Some Technical Problems are Hard to Fix
Mattias Lilja, CEO of Cities: Skylines 2 publisher Paradox Interactive, along with CCO Henrik Fahraeus, recently discussed player attitudes towards game launches during the company's Media Day with Rock Paper Shotgun. Lilja noted that players now have "higher expectations" and are "less trusting" that developers will resolve issues post-launch.
Reflecting on the challenging release of Cities: Skylines 2 last year, Paradox Interactive is now focusing on being more thorough in addressing game issues. The company believes that involving players earlier in the development process can significantly enhance the game's quality. "If we could have brought players in to try it on a larger scale, that would have helped," Fahraeus remarked about Cities: Skylines 2, expressing a desire for "a larger degree of openness with players" before future game launches.
In response to these insights, Paradox has decided to indefinitely delay its jail management simulator, Prison Architect 2. Lilja expressed confidence in the game's gameplay but acknowledged "quality issues" that necessitated the delay to ensure players receive the experience they deserve. He contrasted this with the cancellation of Life By You, explaining that the delay was due to an inability to maintain the desired development pace. "So it's not the same kind of bucket of challenges that we had with Life By You, which led to cancellation," he clarified. "It's more that we haven't been able to keep the pace that we wanted," adding that some issues were "harder to fix than we thought" during peer reviews and user testing.
For Prison Architect 2, the primary concern is "mostly certain technical issues rather than design," Lilja stated. "It's more how can we make this technically high-quality enough for a stable release." He further noted that, given the current economic climate and squeezed budgets, fans have "higher expectations" and are "less accepting" of promises to fix issues over time.
Lilja highlighted the competitive nature of the gaming industry, describing it as a "winner-takes-all type of environment," where players are quick to abandon games that don't meet their expectations. This trend has become more pronounced over the last two years, based on Paradox's observations and market trends.
The launch of Cities: Skylines 2 was marred by significant issues, leading to a fan backlash that prompted a joint apology from Paradox and developer Colossal Order, followed by a proposed "fan feedback summit." The game's first paid DLC was also delayed due to performance problems at launch. Meanwhile, Life By You was canceled earlier this year after Paradox concluded that further development wouldn't meet the standards expected by both the company and its community. Lilja admitted that some of the challenges they faced were not fully understood initially, stating, "that's totally on us."
