The recent PDXCON 2019 show in Berlin was host to a lot of exciting announcements about Paradox Interactive's upcoming video game releases, including the reveal of Crusader Kings III and an in-depth look at Surviving the Aftermath. Both of these games offer unique experiences with interesting takes on their genres, but that's not all Paradox Interactive is currently working on.
Screen Rant had a chance to sit down with Paradox's Chief Business Development Officer Shams Jorjani for an interview about Paradox's future endeavors, the possibilities offered by services like Google Stadia, and the big screen aspirations for the World of Darkness franchise.
Paradox games have generally been limited to specific platforms like PC and consoles. Have there been any discussions about bringing Paradox games to Google Stadia when it launches?
Nothing that has been confirmed yet. Well, we’re definitely in talks with Google Stadia, I think it’s a really interesting piece of tech. Cloud-based gaming has a number of strengths and weaknesses and our games generally tend to play to the strengths of the platform and counter the weaknesses of the tech. Our games are generally not latency heavy; they’re pausable, they’re slow, so you don’t have to have a fast input to set it up. And our games are generally niche and unique, so if you’re a platform holder like Google and wanted to launch a new platform, you want to have quite a wide array of types of games, and Paradox fits the bill quite nicely for a certain type of game. So we’re looking into it, Some titles are closer than others, but it’s new tech and we’re not gonna launch anything immediately, but we’re definitely looking into it.
Are there plans to bring existing Paradox games to the Nintendo Switch in the future?
Every single project we start we ask ourselves “How can we get this to Switch?” It’s a natural part of how we start projects, but there are major limitations on hardware and screen and usability and UIs that prohibit us from doing it widely. But every time we ask ourselves “How can we do this?” So hopefully we can do it. The Switch is pretty good in terms of graphical output, but our games are not graphically demanding; they are very CPU dependent. The amount of, you know, cycles that need to be simulated per millisecond in our games often outstrips triple-A games.
Mobile phones are becoming more sophisticated in terms of hardware. Is there any intention towards pivoting towards the mobile market because of the huge audience and the fact that Paradox games would fit the format quite well?
Yes, mobile is super interesting, but we run into two major issues. One – our business model is not suitable for mobile as it’s premium and mobile is largely free-to-play. Premium doesn’t do well… and, to be honest, if we go to the effort of moving to mobile then we want to win big rather than win small, so it would need to be free-to-play. Apple Arcade is changing this slightly so I think maybe that’s a better fit for us, but we still run into the second issue which is getting most of our games to work on a small screen and that means a lot of UI and UX elements. That’s one of the main limiters.
Surviving the Aftermath is entering Early Access on the Epic Games Store. Has there been any discussion with Epic regarding timed exclusives for future titles?
Yes, of course they want to. That’s no secret. If they could, they would probably snap up every single game they could as a timed-exclusive. But that’s not necessarily something that we’re interested in. I mean, the only reason we’re doing it for Surviving the Aftermath is that it’s a great thing for this game specifically. Imperator: Rome wasn’t released on Epic exclusively nor have the other games that have been announced. So, I think that on a general level I can’t speak for Epic but my assumption is that they want as many titles as possible, but every game team makes the call for themselves and they offer quite a bit of money which is great for struggling developers and for projects where anything you can do to pad the longevity of the game is a good fit.
It was mentioned during the conference that there are more games planned in the future for the World of Darkness properties and right now there are games for Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse in development. What would be next in line, in your opinion, for a World of Darkness property to be adapted after those two.
I’m personally hoping for Wraith and Mage, those are the ones that I think are ripe for doing a lot of stuff with, and Hunter as well. If there is a tier-one where the things are the lowest hanging fruit, then that would be Vampire and Werewolf, then tier two would definitely be Wraith, Mage, and Hunter. But the beautiful thing about the World of Darkness is that there is so much to explore, so we’re doing Vampire now but we’re not doing Dark Ages Vampire. That in itself has as big of a world as Masquerade.
Are there are plans to adapt the World of Darkness properties into other mediums outside of video games, such as TV shows and movies?
Yes.
Was the decision to delay Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 partly motivated by the packed schedule for the original release window of the game in March 2020?
No. It was mainly because the game needed more time. We thought that it would overall be better for the developers, their working lives, what’s good for the game and the long term success of the game to give it more time in development. Maybe Q1 is particularly crowded, I don’t know, to be honest, because at the end of the day we can’t control what everyone else is doing, so we have to do what is best for ourselves and roll the dice. We try to avoid Q4 as a general rule, but trying to dodge a bullet in Q1, Q2, or Q3… you’ll still get hit by plenty of bullets.
Great, thank you very much for your time!