Paradox's Extraordinary Honesty. Company Sees No Chance to Threaten XCOM Brand in Tactical Game Category
Paradox sees an opportunity to challenge Firaxis Games' Civilization studio, but in the tactical market, XCOM is too strong a competitor not only to the publisher of Stellaris and Crusader Kings.
Paradox Interactive has no intention of making another attempt at dethroning the XCOM series from its seat as the ruler of tactical games. This conclusion was reached by the leaders of the publisher, including the company's deputy president, Mattias Lilja.
It's no secret that The Lamplighters League was a big disappointment, also for Paradox. The new work by tactical game experts from Harebrained Schemes did not gain much popularity, and in terms of ratings, it is not a title that ranks at the top of contemporary tactical games.
Tactical King XCOM
However, Lilja draws attention to another problem. He emphasized that during the "business analysis" of a venture's success, it is important to look at the chances of the title in the context of its "place" in the market: is it possible to become a leader or at least the "second, third, fourth or fifth" best player in a given category? And will it be "sustainable".
Clearly, in the case of tactical games, the answer is a clear "no". Lilja believes that " XCOM is the only thing in the tactical market that works" and few other representatives of the genre manage to secure a spot themselves. Paradox saw no point in investing in games with "decent ratings and not a large number of players".
Of course, Harebrained Schemes wanted to continue their adventure with the genre. Hence the decision to separate both companies, as Lilja mentioned in an earlier interview.
XCOM 2 dominates the market of turn-based tactical games.
This could only be seen as an attempt to whitewash Paradox after the failure of The Lamplighters League. Nevertheless, there is something to it, because despite a large number of turn-based tactical game releases, no title from this genre has matched the results XCOM2.
For context: XCOM 2 is still being played by 4 to 6 thousand concurrent players on Steam alone, even though it's been 8 years since the release of the last expansion to Firaxis Games' work (via SteamDB). Meanwhile, even in its best period, The Lamplighters Lights did not reach a four-digit peak, just like many other representatives of the genre.
Even once more popular newer titles like Battletech, Marvel's Midnight Suns, Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, Expeditions: Rome or Wizards' Tactical Breach have not had as many players as the second XCOM for a long time. Heck, none of these games even came close to the record of over 133 thousand Steam users in the game, which the second part of Firaxis' cycle achieved almost 9 years ago. Even those that had the support of a recognizable brand.
Paradox and smarter risk
A similar problem apparently occurred with other new projects. As we have already written, Paradox Interactive may have felt "too confident", which resulted in investments in new genres to expand the publisher's portfolio.
The catch was that the competition in these markets was very strong. Life By You was canceled because – as Lilja said – the title wouldn't stand a chance against The Sims 4. The 4X strategy game Millennia also failed to threaten Civilization's position, although in this case the deputy president of Paradox assesses the project more positively and sees greater potential for competition from Firaxis Games. However, he quickly added that the company is currently "not too good and too small" to compete with the "big" and experienced developers of Sid Meier's Civilization 7.
This does not mean that Paradox is completely giving up on experimenting, but - as Lilja emphasized - the company must be smarter when taking such risks. The company also does not intend to abandon teams just because their first game did not satisfy the publisher.
"We are also looking at teams that may be more interesting than the first game they will make. If we want to do interesting things, we have to take risks - but we have to do it wisely."
We already know that in practice this means placing greater emphasis on pre-production with the participation of small teams. This will allow for early detection of key issues in projects at an early stage and should facilitate avoiding costly cancellations, as in the case of Life By You.
