Last October, Paradox Interactive announced that they were parting ways with development studio Harebrained Schemes following the disappointing sales of Harebrained’s 1930s XCOMlike game, The Lamplighters League. Publishers made layoffs on Harebrained already in the run-up to release, suggesting pre-order numbers were low; ultimately, Paradox wrote it off as a $22 million flop. At the time of the “parting”, Paradox’s COO, Charlotta Nilsson, completely washed her hands of XCOMlikes, commenting that “a new project or sequel in the same genre is not in line with our portfolio plans.”
We ourselves were associated with the Lighthouse Keepers’ League. “A strong turn-based foundation and colorful scenery held back by grind, blind chance, and the need for efficiency over tactical variety,” was Sin’s verdict. But other stores were more delighted, and Steam users’ opinions were unanimous remains positiveeven now that Paradox has lost support. When I spoke with deputy general manager Mattias Lilja at Paradox Media Day earlier this month, I had to ask about the fate of the game and Paradox’s decision to move away from XCOMlikes in the future.
“When we released The Lamplighters League, it quickly became obvious to us that it wasn’t the game people wanted and we weren’t going to be able to save it,” he continued. “The review was OK – I liked it too. But it wasn’t a big audience that would mean it would be sustainable for a long time.”
(For context, Paradox has a habit of publishing games that can be played for years, even decades, with DLC and free updates. This business model, which predates Steam’s early access format, has led to some consternation among gamers about how much of the developer’s resources spent on paid DLC compared to the main game.)
“We’re starting to see that there may be a second place, but there isn’t a third – there may not even be a second place in the tactical gaming space,” Lilja continued. “So maybe there is only one game. There are certain species that are like this. They have one game and everyone else is kind of not catching up or finding real life, which is second choice in this genre.”
Paradox had forceful suspicions that the Lantern Keepers’ League would be a flop, Lilja confirmed based on the number of pre-orders. As such, apparently the mutual decision to part ways with Harebrained was made quite quickly after release.
“The decision was made very quickly at the time of launch. We can cheat a little by looking at pre-orders. It’s very sporadic for a game to have low pre-orders and then grow at launch. We didn’t see it, someone else could have done it. The opposite may be more true – good pre-orders but then needy post-launch sales, which can happen if you have a very niche product.
“That’s why we quickly came to an agreement with the creators that we had to go our separate ways. We won’t invest any more in these types of games, and they wanted to make more of them.”
In hindsight, I wish Lilja had clarified what exactly he meant by the “tactical game space,” which of course covers a range of subgenres and approaches, including Japanese tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics. I explained to him that by “number one” in the genre he meant XCOM. It’s also worth noting that if Harebrained has a reputation for producing tactical games, they’re not exclusively in the XCOM-like business – their previous project, Battletech, is a completely different mechafish pot.
One thing I did touch on is that The Lamplighters League isn’t Paradox’s first effort to publish an XCOM-style tactical game with this particular combination of grid and turn-based combat. The company’s previous forays into this format include Romero Games’ Empire Of Sin, which was released in 2020. Our reviewer Tom Senior called it “a wonderfully ambitious combination of systems wrapped around a charming, if extremely clichéd, caricature of the golden age of gangster fiction,” with some significant flaws resulting from said combination and far too many bugs.
Paradox at the time of release they stated that they were “dissatisfied” with Empire Of Sinalthough the disappointment was masked by the fact that 2020 would be the “best year in Paradox history.” So why did they continue trying with XCOMlike in mind?
“We really messed up the execution there,” Lilja told me. “The Lamplighters League is a competently made game, decently reviewed, and it really worked. The fact that Empire Of Sin didn’t work was unfortunately quite obvious and that was also our fault. So it didn’t say anything about it really. It was simply said that if you don’t make a good game, you won’t make it in any genre. Maybe we read it wrong, but yes, we didn’t release a good game and we are always punished.”
Speaking as a fan of XCOM, let alone Gears Tacticses and Mutant: Year Zeroes, I find the idea that there is extremely little appetite for games comparable to XCOM disturbing. Is this really more than a hunch from Paradox, and if so, how do they explain the situation? Is the audience for such games simply too miniature, or are people too attached to XCOM, a series that hasn’t seen a up-to-date installment since 2016?
Paradox artistic director Henrik Fåhraeus made a similar point later in the day when I asked him for his thoughts on Lilja’s assessment of the “tactical gaming space.”
“I don’t have data on this, but my clear impression is that for this target demographic, winner takes all,” he said. “We need to… well, we don’t have to, but we should consider why that is. Because it seems to me that, for example, the survival crafting genre is infinitely vast. But turn-based tactics? It seems like it’s more of a “number one or nothing” thing.
“On the other hand, I like other turn-based tactical games like Phoenix Point,” he added. “But there seems to be something to it. It would be interesting to delve into this. I think Lamplighters League is a good game.”
The ray of hope is that Harebrained Schemes is still alive and well. Their first post-Paradox project, Graft, looks great. The action takes place on a “dying space station” and allows you to voluntarily or unintentionally modify your personality by connecting cybernetic implants laced with the memories of their previous owners. It is also, as some readers have pointed out, a real-time game. Fingers crossed this isn’t an early sign of the great XCOM shortage to come.
