Paradox Interactive delayed its prison management simulator Prison Architect 2 indefinitely in August, commenting at the time that the game had significant performance issues and its system-driven design was proving tough to tinker with. This came a few months after publisher Crusader Kings washed their hands of the original creators of the sequel, Double Eleven.
Speaking to me at Paradox’s Media Day last week, deputy CEO Mattias Lilja provided a bit more insight into this decision, suggesting that advanced players now have “higher expectations” and are less trusting that developers will fix issues. Creative director Henrik Fåhraeus also shared his thoughts on what Paradox learned from the disastrous launch of Cities: Skylines 2 in behind schedule 2023. In particular, he stated that they need to provide early access to the game for real players, not just testers.
“We are confident that the gameplay is good,” Lilja said of Prison Architect 2. “However, we have had quality issues, which means that in order to give players the game they deserve, we have decided to delay it. So it’s not the same kind of series of challenges that we had with Life By You that led to the cancellation. It’s more that we weren’t able to maintain the pace that we wanted, but when we did peer reviews of the game, user tests and so on, people If you share your opinion with us, we will get pretty good feedback, except for some issues that we have to to fix. Some of them are harder to fix than we thought.”
I asked what specific problems the modern creators of Prison Architect 2, Kokku, were struggling with? “It’s mostly technical, not design,” Lilja continued. “It’s more about how to make that technically high enough quality to be released in a stable version.” But he added that there’s also a degree of calculation, based on Paradox’s sense of players’ tolerance for imperfections, even in early access releases.
These are, of course, rather vague characteristics, but there are some specific points of reference. One of them, of course, is Cities: Skylines 2, which launched with performance problems so grave that the developers from Colossal Order decided to postpone the release of the first paid DLC for the game. While the underlying performance issues appear to have been largely resolved, some DLC packs have been criticized as rushed and irrelevant, prompting Paradox and Colossal Order to issue a joint apology and propose a summit to gather fan feedback.
“Cities 2, it’s an experience – we knew we would have some problems, as with every version,” admitted Lilja. “We had more of it than we expected. We definitely should have caught some of them. But also The Lamplighter’s League, which got pretty good reviews but didn’t attract the following that made it last.” Paradox’s impression that audiences are more picky and sensitive also comes from “talking to others in the industry and seeing how their games are doing,” he continued.
I’m always curious how gamers perceive shoddy technology – one person’s FPS drop is another person’s reason for a refund. Are there any particular technical issues that people are more sensitive to, I asked?
“This is not a new problem,” Lilja said. “People should have high expectations. Just to be sure, we should make sure we check and check again. I would argue that some of the problems that we had in Cities 2 are some problems that we didn’t notice that we didn’t really fully understand, and that’s entirely up to us.”
When I spoke to him separately, Fåhraeus admitted that Paradox knew Cities: Skyline 2’s performance needed improvement – they simply miscalculated how much players would care about it. “We were aware that the performance wasn’t great, but we underestimated how it would be perceived by players – how serious the perception by players would be,” he said. “So I think one of the takeaways from Cities 2 is if we could invite players to try the game on a larger scale, that would help. Going forward, we need to ensure we communicate with players and be more open, and that too quite early on if possible.”
“We use these tools and we have used them in the past, but maybe we have been a little bit worse lately and we need to get back to that kind of openness with players,” he admitted.
It sounds a bit like Paradox is trying to outsource some of its testing to players. Couldn’t Paradox improve the technical reliability of its games by expanding its internal testing and QA team, I asked?
“It depends on what we’re trying to fix,” Fåhraeus said. “QA is great at finding specific bugs. It doesn’t work very well with the player’s experience of the feature – how tough it is to achieve goals. We also conduct user research tests, encourage players to try the games and see how they feel, see how they react. This is another great tool we have, but at some point you need a gigantic number of players to really grasp all the issues.
I wonder if you – yes, you! – I think at this stage people generally have less patience for mistakes. I’m not sure there’s anything to it myself, but I will say that recording, sharing, and making a massive fuss about a game’s technical issues has never been easier. I’m also curious if you think Paradox should make another Sims-style life sim after the Life By You dive, and if you currently have any hopes for the gas action RPG Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which Paradox is now carefully describing as a “spiritual successor, not a game of the same type.
