Lessons learned from the Paradox podcast - Season 2

Paradox Interactive is a company that's both making and publishing games. In their podcast they talk about the business of video games, and if you want to listen to it on your own, you should search for The Paradox Podcast on iTunes or wherever you can find popular podcasts. I've earlier summarized season 1 and this is season 2:

S02E01

• What many people forget is that game companies want everyone to be happy because then people will buy their game. 
• As said before, Paradox is trying to find a balance between free updates and dlc you have to pay for. Free updates includes stuff like tech-systems, improved AI, and new UI that makes it easier to play. Paradox actually made some research to discover what people wanted to pay for: new UI features, things that gives you more power to control things, and "flavor" that makes something unique so you can go to another area in the game you haven't been able to see before. 
• You can't look 12 years into the future when trying to predict where the game industry will be. 
• Limited time and money is actually good when making games because it forces you to actually release a game. More time and money will not necessarily make a better game. 
• Paradox has failed making games. For example, when they realized that the game Runemaster wasn't fun, they stopped developing it. 

S02E02

• Paradox is trying to release a Linux version of their games. The Linux version is not making money because it costs money to also support Linux and not that many Linux users are buying the game. But they argue it's good to always have your "doors open." By saying that I think they mean that if Linux becomes a big gaming platform in the future, the know how to make games for Linux.  
• The CEO of Paradox argued that one of the reasons Paradox is successful is because of their relationship with the players. 
• Paradox will soon get a new CEO who has experience from the gambling industry, but no experience from the game industry. The current CEO argues that Paradox will still make the same games but they will try to reorganize the company to make it more efficient to develop those games.   
• Don't interfere with people in creative industries. When Paradox is buying a game company, they stay away from those companies and let them do their special thing. 
• Don't forget that you also need to sell your game to someone. Everyone in the organization should understand where the money should come from to be able to make better decisions.

S02E03

• GDC is more about the meetings and less about the talks. 
• It's easier to sell a game based on a known intellectual property, like Star Wars, than to invent a new IP. Included in IP are also brands, themes, and code like the Unity game engine. Example of a theme is World War 2, which is not a protected IP so Paradox can use it to help people understand what to expect from a game. It's common in the game industry to license an IP, like using Unreal game engine when making the game or making a game based on the Mad Max movies.
• It's a challenge to create your own IP. Cities: Skylines is a successful game where you build your own city. But what defines CS? You can argue that the blue bird telling people what's going on in the game is an IP. One test you can use to see if you have an IP is to ask yourself: Can I cosplay my game? You can cosplay as the bird, but you can't really cosplay as a building or a road. 
• Paradox is generally not licensing IPs because they want to focus on the long-term, and using someones IP is short-term because the other guy might stop you from using the IP. But they published Battletech which is a licensed game based on the MechWarrior universe. 
• When you have an IP it's important to manage the IP to not destroy it. Each time a bad Star Wars movie is released, the value of the IP is diluted. If you release different games based on an IP where each game is doing its own interpretation of what the IP is, the IP is also diluted. This is also why free fan-games are generally not allowed. The value of the IP might be diluted if you make a Star Wars game even though no money is involved. 

S02E04

• Even though Paradox has made many games they haven't really figured out how to teach the players how to play the games. For example, the older generation who has played SimCity will think it's easy to play Cities:Skylines, but the younger generation will find it harder because CS doesn't have a real tutorial - only small boxes with text appearing above the buttons you should press when you have just started the game. Also the new game Surviving Mars got criticism for being too hard to learn. 
• To make sure the game is easy to play you can release it as an "early access" at a lower price so people can buy it and give you feedback before the final release. But Paradox is instead releasing their games with a full price and then give you free updates based on the feedback, which is similar to "early access" because no-one knows what "early access" actually is. 
• Users who review your game are sometimes doing it for political reasons. So a game can sell well even though it has a low score. 

S02E05

• Paradox has its own convention called Pdxcon. The con is nearly profitable because you have to pay a ticket to be able to attend, but Paradox has seen that they get a boost to the announcements they are making at the con compared to if they had had the show at E3 where many other games are announced and what you announce is lost in the noise. 
• Because many games are updated over time, it becomes harder and harder to judge them by looking at reviews. 
• Good reviews generate more sales if the game is new, but good reviews don't matter if the game is a part of an established series of games. 
• Newly released games should get a score above 80 to sell well. 
• Some are giving reviews for political reasons and some are giving "odd" reviews. For example, I read a review where someone gave Pubg a bad review despite having played it for hundreds of hours. If you've played something for hundreds of hours and just paid $30 for it, was that game really bad? Paradox argues that a good idea is to give trusted members a larger part of the final review score. This is not a new idea because many people have earlier trusted larger magazines, but now these magazines have been replaced by individuals like you and me.  

S02E06

• As said before, intellectual properties are important, and now Paradox has decided to make more money by licensing their ips to physical board game publishers. According to their research, they realized that their fans wanted to give them more money and you can only add so and so much to a computer game, so they needed to come up with something else.  
• Let your players create the game they want because they will do it for free and you can spend your time doing something else. You accomplish this by giving them the ability to mod the game. Out of the top 5 games on steam, 4 started out as mods. Counter-strike is one of them! 
• Paradox doesn't encourage people to pirate their games, but they will not chase them. They argue that if people play their games, it will strengthen the eco-system around their games so more people might in the end buy their games.
• Other medias Paradox might be interested in are movies and television series. But their previous idea to extend their games into books failed.   

S02E07

• Paradox is not only developing games, they are also publishing games. One of the games they published is BattleTech, and now Paradox has decided to acquire the studio behind the game: Harebrained Schemes. 
• This was not the first game company Paradox bought. Other recent acquisitions/investments include White Wolf, Triumph Studios, and Hardsuit Labs.
• Today you not only need to be able to make a game, you also need to be able to market the game because so many games are released each day. Yes, most games are not worth playing but it's still difficult to show the players that your game is worth playing. This is why Harebrained Schemes decided to sell the company so they can focus on making games and Paradox can focus on marketing their games. 
• Acquisitions in the game industry have a bad reputation. One of my favorite games was Command & Conquer developed by Westwood Studios. When Electronic Arts acquired Westwood Studios the game series went downhill and now Westwood Studios doesn't exist anymore. 
• Paradox is acquiring companies to grow and they want to grow by adding more IPs, which has been discussed before. Since it's difficult to come up with your own IP, it's easier to acquire someone else's IP. Harebrained Schemes's IPs are the BattleTech universe and Shadowrun. 

S02E08

• The focus of E3 is mainly on AAA games, so if you are making a smaller game it will fall between the cracks. But E3 gives you a good chance to meet other people, and you don't have to meet them at the main event - you can meet them at the hotel.
• When you announce a new game it's also important to tell people what they can expect from the game. This is why game companies show gameplay and not a movie when they announce a new game because it's easier to show what people can expect from a game by showing gameplay. But there are exceptions to this rule, such as Cyberpunk 2077, which doesn't show any gameplay. 
• Even though prices are discounted when the Steam summer and Christmas sales are happening, game companies make a lot of money from the sales. But Paradox also has other sales during the year, such as when their convention is happening and when they release a new expansion pack for an existing game. 
• Yes, profit per sold game during a discount will be lower but more people will play their games and Paradox will thus get more long-term customers. These customers will buy new games from them at full price and new expansion packs for the game they bought at discount. So you have to think long-term and not focus on a single game.  
• Some argue that discounts are a bad idea because people will see the product as something bad because it's always so cheap to buy it. 
• If your game is selling, then why should you lower the price of the game? For example, the game Pubg ignored the Steam summer sale the first year because it was the top-selling game on Steam, so why should they lower the price? The next year, Pubg participated in the summer sale because it was no-longer a top-selling game. 
• When Paradox during a weekend decided to give away a six year old game for free, it ended up on the top-ten list on Steam. What they could see was that more people also bought the expansion packs for the game they got for free.