I think it’s fair to say that when I sat down for a group chat with Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester and COO Susana Meza at PDXCON earlier this month, the last thing I expected to talk about was Crusader Kings’ e-sport potential. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, because the Swedish publisher and its development arm has been thriving on that kind of “wouldn’t it be cool if?” geekiness for years.
“I like to experiment with different thoughts occasionally,” ponders Wester, when I ask him if Paradox has ever considered taking the Crusader Kings franchise outside the grand strategy space. “One that I’ve been thinking about is; how would we develop Crusader Kings if it was an e-sport? If we totally built it into an e-sport. The way e-sports are built up right now is that you only have ice hockey, basketball, action-type games. Quick, ten to thirty minute games where something is happening all the time.
“I’d say Crusader Kings 2 could be the golf of e-sports. If you watch golf, it’s very, very slow. Like the guy’s slowly walking to the next hole, thinking about which club he’s going to pick. Very slow. Or something like the Tour de France. They’re cycling for like two hours or something in a row. In a way you’re watching it, but it’s very passive. That’s one way to watch sports, and I think e-sports can also develop in all these totally different ways. It’s a very interesting thought.”
That might sound like a crazy concept at first, but on further consideration it makes a certain amount of sense. Youtube Let’s Players like Arumba and Quill 18 regularly pull in huge audiences with their playthroughs of Paradox grand strategy titles. Apart from the fact that they’re providing a invaluable tutorial for getting into complex simulators like Europa Universalis 4, there’s something strangely mesmeric about watching someone drag unique stories out of a game which at first glance looks almost impenetrably dry.
“There is a big audience out there,” agrees Wester. “That’s actually what brought us to this way of thinking, because e-sports you always think it should be action-packed, everything going on at once. It doesn’t have to be that way. People watch things differently.”
Okay, so don’t expect Crusader Kings 2 to be filling out 100,000 seater stadiums in South Korea just yet, but it’s an example of the way Paradox likes to constantly evaluate both its existing properties and its future direction. When chatting to the team, the first thing you notice is the company’s candid enthusiasm and openness to trying new things. That’s often a great strength, but sometimes, as in the case of the studio’s ill-fated and now cancelled RPG Runemaster, it can also be a weakness.
“Runemaster was never meant to be an RPG,” admits Shams Jorjani, VP of the acquisitions division. “That’s why we ended up where we ended up. The original brief was ‘Europa Universalis in a fantasy setting’. Fred and I were thinking, OK that’s just going to print money. Let’s do it. Then it rolled into something else.”
“Probably we announced it too early,” says COO Susana Meza, “Possibly we should have cancelled it earlier. But because it was such a passion project for the developers we really, really wanted to make it work. By the end though, the development team admitted themselves that it hadn’t worked out. It just wasn’t fun.”
I get the sense that the project’s failure, while maybe not a huge disaster, has understandably made Paradox a little more cautious, maybe made the team step back and re-evaluate both its development in-house, and its acquisition of new IP. There were no new games announced at the PDXCON event this year, and though Wester hints that the studio has some interesting new projects in the pipeline, he’s keen to wait for the right moment to reveal them, and thus not “end up with another Runemaster.” Jorjani adds that while the studio isn’t ruling out another RPG, if Paradox does return to the genre they’ll focus on the development team’s established strengths.
“That idea, of fantasy grand strategy? We’d love to do that. An RPG? Let’s not underestimate how much tough work and skill is required in making one. So I think that maybe something that’s closer to Might and Magic, some mix or RPG elements and strategy, sure. But finding the right mix is key.”
That said, Paradox isn’t exactly shying away from further experimentation. Obsidian’s Kickstarted RPG Pillars of Eternity is on the way, a publishing partnership that Paradox hopes will reap dividends in the future. Side-scrolling arcade shooter Hollowpoint, meanwhile, from Scottish developer Ruffian Studios, is different to anything the company has published before. It’s set to join the upcoming Magicka 2 on PS4, a clear signal that Paradox is looking to push forward on consoles as well as maintain its core PC following. Though the game’s brand of gun-happy sci-fi might seem like a radical departure from what the studio is well-known for, its deep character customisation sub-systems and randomised maps and missions hint that maybe it doesn’t stray too far from what Paradox considers as its core gameplay pillars – replayability, depth, and potential for future expansion.
“For us, one of the realisations we’ve come to over the last few years is what we actually think of as a ‘Paradox game’,” explains Meza. “That means less focus on genre, and more focus on our core pillars. We don’t rule out any genre, if it matches what we as a company focus on, but there are definitely a few that we feel are a great fit for us. If you look at what Paradox has done in the past, you’ll see that there’s nothing that’s impossible for us to work on. We don’t have a shortage of great ideas at Paradox. The challenge is in choosing the right ones, and getting them out there.”
“As a company we’re looking to supply people with a certain type of game,” adds Wester. “Games that will be a part of your lifestyle, not just ones that you’ll pick up, play, and leave after a few hours. We hope that kind of philosophy will keep bringing players back to the company.”
