Paradox’s Fredrik Wester is stepping down from his CEO role in a few weeks’ time, and to mark the occasion he’s been tweeting some downright fascinating stories from the company’s early days.
While now known as the home of grand strategy on the PC, Paradox hasn’t always been a development and publishing power. It used to be an upstart little company scrambling to hold things together, resorting to some novel tactics to keep the money coming in (and the games shipping out).
Here’s a selection of some of the better tales Wester has been recounting:
Starting a few days early – when we released Victoria – an Empire under the Sun in Germany (Dec 2003), it couldn’t be installed without a patch. This led to me and @producerjohan spending the better part of Xmas vacation burning and sending CDs to our German fans.
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) June 29, 2018
We had a very low budget for the manual for Crusader Kings, so Yours Truly decided to write parts of it during evenings and weekends. I was probably the only one who was happy with the result, one of the first forum posts was “Who wrote this manual, it’s terrible”.
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) June 30, 2018
4 months before the CK launch, our US Publisher went bankrupt. In order to get the game out in the US we put up an e-commerce site in two weeks and sold 5000+ games in the first week. We spend 2 hours per day picking, packing and shipping games after work hours (2004).
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) June 30, 2018
Our proudest moment was a big order (8 copies) to the @Blizzard_Ent HQ in Irvine.
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) June 30, 2018
I presented HoI2 to the Atari North American sales team for the first time at a sales conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Last minite fix was to remove all numbers to hide the fact that we could only afford a $50.000 global marketing budget.
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) July 1, 2018
My standard reply was “Have you checked our user forum? That’s a great way to find help”. I have especially fond memories of the infamous “Pearl Harbour Bug” in the original Hearts of Iron…
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) July 2, 2018
The reason I took back support in 2008 was after complaints from people on how much time support work took from their regular job (no dedicated support back then); I could hear my own voice in one of these meetings: “How hard can it be?”. Sometimes it’s better to just keep quiet.
— Fredrik Wester ???????? (@TheWesterFront) July 2, 2018
We’ve long lamented the way that video game companies are always so secret, even about the most mundane and trivial things. It’s rare we ever get to hear these types of stories in games, the kinds that define our understanding of the process of making movies, TV and music.
Whether studios and publishers think they’re embarrassing, or just bad for business, it’s nice to see somebody opening up and giving fans – of a company that in 2018 is one of the most successful in all of PC gaming – an insight into their early (and relatably human) days.
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