zarx on 25 January 2012
Paradox Interactive may be a relatively small publisher, but it’s defined itself as a PC-first company that goes out of its way to make its customers happy. I sat down with CEO Fred Wester at this year’s PDXCon for a refreshingly frank talk about Paradox’s ongoing focus on PC gaming, his plan for the future, and the futility of DRM.
GameSpy: How big of a chunk of your business right now is PC gaming?
Fred Wester: It’s an overwhelming majority is PC. Over 95% is PC. And 97% of that is digital download. So we’re pretty much all-in on the digital side, and there’s been a transition in the past four to five years. It’s been very quick. I think people underestimate how willing customers are to change if the service is right. If you take what Steam’s doing for example, they’ve been the pioneers of PC gaming for the past years, and really shown that you can do some great services, and that people are willing to pay if the service is good. And that’s something that we’ve been sort of piggybacking on that as well.
Magicka: the little game that could...sell 1.3 million copies.
GameSpy: Would you ever put games on EA’s Origin?
Fred Wester: We want to sell on as many platforms as we can. Typically it means more technical support, but we want to reach customers where they are. We’re in discussions with Origin, and I hope to see our first titles there in Q1, so within two months.
GameSpy: What did Magicka’s success teach you about PC gaming, as opposed to other platforms?
"I think it shows that if you make a game that people just want to play, you will sell units."
Fred Wester: It was very interesting, because I discussedMagicka with several different companies and friends and people around the industry, who said that you can never reach more than 100,000 gamers with a game like this on the PC. Because it’s so console-centric, the gameplay is made for console, etc. And then, 1.3 million copies later on, we can see that they were wrong. And I’m very happy about that -- we didn’t expect more, so I’m very surprised myself, but I think it shows that if you make a game that people just want to play, you will sell units. Look at Minecraft -- four million units from one website. They’re not even using Steam. That’s impressive.GameSpy: How many copies would you have been happy with?
Fred Wester: I would’ve been happy with 150,000, and we’re 10 times that, almost. It would’ve been just break-even for that title, but it was still a student team, it was experimental for us, it was something new that we wanted to try to do. Being more like console-like gaming, if you will. A step away from the hardcore strategy that we’re typically known for. I’m really happy that it turned out so good.
Not many companies would make a game like Gettysburg: Armored Warfare
GameSpy: Is this the new Paradox, a publisher that publishes all sorts of games and not just strategy?
Fred Wester: That’s the idea. A Game of Dwarves, specifically, is a very good example of that. You’re going to see a mix between these traditional grand strategy games that we’re known for, some action-RPG games like War of the Roses, and more niche games, smaller games, indie-like games, if you will. A Game of Dwarves represents that, and Magicka as well.
GameSpy: What’s keeping you on PC primarily, when many other publishers have skewed toward the large console audience?
"We can basically make whatever game we wanna do and then publish it."
Fred Wester: It’s so much simpler to develop for the PC -- you can decide everything for yourself. So even though the numbers historically have been bigger on console, the PC is very rewarding because the audience is very knowledgeable about the games, they’re very hardcore, they’re very quick with their feedback, and we have a great relationship with our customers. And being the open platform that it is, we can basically make whatever game we wanna do and then publish it. And Steam is very generous about what games they bring up on Steam. As long as it’s not a virus, I think they’ll accept it.GameSpy: Why is Paradox still so anti-DRM in a time when most publishers seem to be clamping down?
Fred Wester: I’m so surprised that people still use DRM. We haven’t done that for seven or eight years, and the reason is that it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense from a gamer perspective - I hated it. I bought Civilization III when it first came out, and for the first three days I couldn’t play it. It installed some other software, and it just shut down. I had to contact Atari support three times before I even got help. And that experience is terrible.
"If you take something like Sony’s DRM, SecuROM -- it’s
a waste of money... And I know this for a fact."
No one should have to purchase a product that they’re unable to install because of the DRM. There might be other reasons, like the compatibility isn’t correct, or whatever. But people who purchase a game should have just as easy a time as those who pirate the game, otherwise it’s a negative incentive to buy a legal copy. And I just can’t see why people are using DRM still. If you take something like Sony’s DRM, SecuROM -- it’s a waste of money. It will keep you protected for three days, it will create a lot of technical support, and it will not increase sales. And I know this for a fact, because we tried it eight years ago, and it never worked for us. Two major reasons: it costs money and it makes you lose money, and the other is that it’s so inconvenient to customers. a waste of money... And I know this for a fact."
GameSpy: So why do they do it?
Fred Wester: I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of politics, especially in bigger companies. It’s simple for me being the CEO and half-owner of Paradox. I can basically call the shots I want to call, and if the board wants to ask questions it’s like ‘OK, we can take this into consideration.’ If you’re a CEO, you need to cover your back. And the people who ask, the board, know nothing about games. They’re there because they’re some investment company or something, and they ask “So what are you doing to protect our game from pirates?” And then they can reply “We’re buying this solution from Sony.” So I think it’s been a way to cover your back, previously. Now, I see no reasonable explanation for why people keep on adding it. Especially the kind where you have to be online all the time, like Ubisoft. I think that’s, to me that’s 2003.
For a reasonable fee, Magicka: The Other Side of the Coin adds vampirism to your game..
GameSpy: What makes a good piece of DLC for a Paradox game?
Fred Wester: It depends a bit. Sometimes we’ll release stuff that only changes the look and feel of your character -- you have the Magicka robes for example. Those started out as in-jokes on the Team Fortress 2 hats. They have their hats, so we’ll have our robes. And that is very optional and that doesn’t change any of the gameplay, and that’s very important for DLC. It’s a “Look at my fancy dress” kind of thing, without having people have to buy it just to play the game. Then you have the bigger DLCs that are whole levels or stages that actually add a lot to gameplay, that change the way you play the game, or the lead characters in the game. So that’s how we divide DLCs. One is for the show, and the other is the real thing, adding to the game. Pricing wise, obviously the fancy stuff is cheaper, and the other takes more to produce it, so it costs more.
GameSpy: There’s a big anti-DLC contingent in PC gaming that says “We don’t want a game chopped up so we can buy it in pieces, we want to buy the whole game!” What do you say to those guys to reassure them that they’re going to get a full game when they buy from Paradox?
Fred Wester: That discussion, that this should’ve been in the original game, is a very hard discussion to get into as a publisher or a developer, because you can always argue like that. If I buy a Ferrari today, I can always argue that the Ferrari that came out in two years should've been the Ferrari that I bought now. “Oh, that engine has 20 more HP than I do, so let’s upgrade my engine for free!”
"Adding things over time, I see as a great win for both publishers and developers and customers."
So the argument is somewhat valid, maybe, but the way I see it is that we can release a game, we can do it specific with less risk, with a lower budget, see if it works, and then if people want to buy extra stages or extra robes or whatever it is for Magicka, then they have the option to do so. If they feel that the original game doesn’t live up to its promises, for the $10 you paid for Magicka, they didn’t have enough fun for $10, then that’s bad, and we have to work with the original game. But adding things over time, I see as a great win for both publishers and developers and customers. But I can see why people have the other stance as well. It’s an ongoing discussion that we’re taking part of and trying to learn what people want to buy. But I’ve also learned that the most vocal people on the forums aren’t typically our customers either. So you have to balance what people are saying.GameSpy: You’re getting into free-to-play with Salem. Do you see that as a big future for Paradox, or are you going to stick with selling games?
Fred Wester: Free to play is a really interesting perspective - it takes a really different approach to gaming than I’m used to and that Paradox is used to. We normally manage our products based on the product lifecycle and what campaigns we do, whereas the free-to-play companies analyze the customer. “Well what did this guy buy, and how do we get him to buy the next item?” We don’t really have that statistical backend to do that, so I don’t think we’d be very successful in the coming year. But after that, it’s definitely doable for us, and we’re ramping up to do it.
"Free-to-play and the retail model are basically somewhat the same thing: you’re delivering a good game to the customers."
But free-to-play and the retail model are basically somewhat the same thing: you’re delivering a good game to the customers. I think some people are fooling themselves, thinking “Well we’re free to play, so everyone should try it.” That’s not the case. People are skeptical toward free to play. “Oh, it’s free to play, that means it’s kind of budget and bad.” So you have to have a balance on that as well. I think Salem works very well, because once people are in the game and try it, they can try it out, and they’ll start liking it. And a lot of the fancy items you can buy mean nothing for the gameplay, it’s just for the show. So I hope that we’ll get a big enough group to play Salem, and a big enough group to pay for it, because that’s obviously how we’ll continue to develop it. But it’s going to be a very interesting experiment, as a first game. You’ll see more of that from us as well.
War of the Roses ain't for pansies.
GameSpy: War of the Roses is your biggest game ever. What inspired you to make that leap of faith into bigger-budget games?
Fred Wester: I am somewhat of a romantic when it comes to English medieval times. Knights in shining armor... I think it’s like some sort of boy dream I have. I’ve been wanting to create this game for a long long time. We’ve published the Mount and Blade series previously, and they’ve done tremendously well for us as well. We’d discussed doing some War of the Roses stuff, but Mount and Blade, although they have MP capacity now with Warband, that’s more of a sandbox RPG. And I’m like, I play quite a few action games myself, like Counter-Strike and games like that, and we want to have a more action-packed experience. And there’s no really good super focused medieval combat melee experience game like that out there, so we said let’s go all in on this kind of game and do the best that we can do. We even added extra resources, and though the game looks really great, we just want to put extra polish on release and take the target group by storm, so they’ll say “Yeah, this is great.”
GameSpy: And your experience with Mount and Blade suggests that the audience is out there?
"It’s you I’m fighting. You and me, sword and shield. There’s a romantic touch to that if you ask me."
Fred Wester: Absolutely. I also think that there is a multitude of shooters, and I don’t know why no one does something like this. It’s so much more...not innovative, maybe, but more like interesting. Because another soulless shooting game...to go up against Call of Duty or Battlefield, it’s very hard to do that. You need an edge, something that makes your game speak outside of the original target group of the original Call of Duty and Battlefield players. They’re very picky with what they do. I think War of the Roses will attract a lot of these people as well, because they’ll be like “Oh, this is not a competitor of Call of Duty, but I can check it out and see what’s this all about.” And it’s also the feeling of seeing who you’re fighting. When I played CS:GO over the weekend in the beta, I was killed 20 times for every time I killed someone. So it wasn’t a very good experience in that aspect. But really fun, really fast-paced you know. But you never see the guy you’re shooting. Not all the time, anyway. All of the sudden you’re dead, and you see some sort of flash and there he was, then there’s his name. In War of the Roses, you’re going to see the person in the eyes. It’s you I’m fighting. You and me, sword and shield. There’s a romantic touch to that if you ask me. You can see if someone’s shooting at you with a crossbow, and you’re like let’s get over there and kick their ass.
GameSpy: Thanks for your time!
Spy Guy says: Gotta love a CEO who isn't afraid to talk some smack when he sees his competitors doing something as absurd as putting annoying DRM on their games. This is the difference between a guy who's hired to run a company by the book and a guy who started a company because he loves gaming!
http://au.pc.gamespy.com/pc/magicka/1216907p1.html
Paradox are great, we need more publishers like them IMO
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