Interview | Frederik Wester

By Christos Reid

Digital distribution is seemingly the way of the future. Steam, GamersGate, and now even consoles are bringing us escapism without the packaging. But what of the people behind the scenes? I caught up with Frederik Wester, CEO at Paradox Interactive to chat a little about digital markets and helping out the indie scene.  My questions are big and bold, Frederik’s responses in normal text.

When did you first realise digital distribution was a method you’d be interested in exploring?

We started examining everything just over four years ago, starting to take our first small steps into what would later be GamersGate.com. When we first launched our games was around January 2006, just over three and a half years ago, and just over three years ago we founded GamersGate because we found out that we need to reach customers, especially in countries were our games aren’t sold, since our games are pretty niche; you can’t find them in South America, or most smaller territories where they’re just not sold in stores. We realised we were missing out on a lot of opportunities here; we got an email from a guy in Argentina saying “I would rather pay you money than pirate this game, so is there any way I can actually order from you?” So we started with a web-shop four years ago, and then three and a half years ago founded GamersGate.

Do you think there are any key differences between GamersGate and Steam? I know Steam uses an actual client whereas you use a browser-based interface. Are there any other differences you can think of?

Yeah, there are quite a few other differences, I think. I can’t say too much about GamersGate as I’m no longer representative of them, as Theo [Bergquist] is the CEO there now. But I’d say the main difference is we always wanted to be “all PC games, for everyone.” If you have a PC game that you have created, even if you’re EA or an indie company, we’ll welcome you all on board, because we welcome all games on GamersGate. I think Steam’s more selective with what kinds of games they add to their service. They want certain types of games, and want to make sure the game is of a certain standard. We’ve been surprised at some games, the sales they’ve had, even when the reviews might sometimes have been harsh. It still sold a lot because it had a target audience. I think that’s the biggest difference.

At the gamesindustry.biz conference [on digital distribution] you were talking about… well, it was me who ended up asking you about selling games in retail, in stores, and whether or not Paradox Interactive titles in shops received the same amount of updates and additional content as those sold digitally.

Normally they do, actually, because we’re trying to use the same system. You’ll actually receive patches faster through the digital distribution system than you will with your retail copy, but the timing is pretty much the same, so it’s a matter of one or two days’ difference, so it’s not a big deal.

Do you think digital distribution is a more viable method for selling games during the economic downturn? Do you think people are more attached to digital distribution when it saves them money in terms of packaging, for example?

Actually, for us as a company, we’ve had a lot of problems getting paid on time by retailers during the economic downturn. I think it has a lot to do with… say the Midway issue, where Best Buy lost several million dollars on that, because they needed to write the games down and Midway weren’t there to cover it. I think what they want to do is increase the number of days in which they pay their invoices. Digital distribution on the other hand, we always get paid 30 days after month end, and sometimes the portals pay even sooner than that. For us, the choice is definitely digital distribution because we know we get paid on time by the digital distribution providers, and that’s been the main drive behind it.

Mezmer Games launched in February, and that’s quite focused on bringing indie games to the digital games market. Do you think it’s important for developers that have these amazing ideas and concepts to be treated with as many open arms as large-scale developers?

Absolutely. Some developers don’t even need a publisher to handle their marketing because they’re born marketing professionals. So if you take Jonathan Blow, who created Braid, for example, he doesn’t need a publisher to explain this game, or to present it to the market. But there are also a lot of really great indie developers who never get a chance to even hit the surface, they’re just buried under all the ones who are really good with media and good at selling. That’s who Mezmer Games is for, the ones who need a marketing voice. Developers are both talented in PR and in creating games.

You recently published Mount and Blade through GamersGate. It was mod-content for a long time, developed by a small team of people over a fair few years. Do you think you’ve made it easier for newer developers to approach you with their ideas?

Absolutely. First of all Mount and Blade has done tremendously for us on GamersGate, on Steam, Direct2Drive and all other portals. I think it paved the way for a lot of other people who said “wow, this actually works, you can actually make some good money out of this.”

Paradox Interactive’s always been very open to players creating mod content and sharing it with other users. Do you think this builds a stronger community around your titles?

I think it does. We’re also looking at inviting some of the people in the community to actually make games based on our engine, because we’ve seen some examples, like Valve inviting some of their modders, and the result is Left 4 Dead, so hey, that’s a pretty good mod, isn’t it? [Laughs] It sounds a bit stupid, but we trailed Valve on digital distribution and now we’re doing the same with mod content, but on the other hand, when you’re going to copy from someone, you’re going to copy from the best, right? Valve has been commercially very successful with these strategies, so we’re looking at inviting people to use the source code directly, and not only being modders, but being almost part of our team.

Well, the mod community’s always been tied very closely to the hardcore PC audience, but recently there’ve been more hardcore titles on consoles as well. There used to be a really big gap, between PC gamers who were very hardcore, and console owners who were almost seen as “casuals.” But now you’ve got games like Gears of War, and the iPhone games are considered casual. Do you think the gap is shifting between PC and consoles in terms of content?

Absolutely. As you said, you can see that a lot of hardcore titles are starting to appear on consoles. The main threat is that it’s so expensive to develop games for consoles, and to print games – that’s what’s keeping companies like Paradox away from developing for consoles so far, because we can’t really afford to print for the Xbox, for example – but the gap is definitely being bridged.

That being said, do you think big-budget titles are injecting too much capital into the development of an unproven idea? DICE released Mirror’s Edge as an unproven idea and injected a lot of money into it, but it didn’t sell too well. How would you describe Paradox’s approach to investing in new titles?

First of all, I don’t consider Mirror’s Edge to be that revolutionary, to be honest. I mean, it’s a very neat platform game, but all the parts of Mirror’s Edge are already proven. It’s not a new Sims or something. With Paradox, we’ve been conservative, releasing a lot of sequels that people want to see. But I think a lot of people are focusing on games that are going to be revolutionary for a generation. Our main focus is always been to create that games people want to play. [Laughs] One of the comments that I got for Hearts of Iron 3 was “why have you only added things that people are asking for in the game? Why didn’t you take a more revolutionary approach?” I said “well, that’s because those people are going to buy this game,” and it’s as simple as that. We can’t really afford to be revolutionary; we need to know that games are selling. But as we grow, I think we’re going to be more willing to take bigger risks, because maybe the reward is bigger. But I think with companies like Blizzard, they’ve never done anything truly revolutionary that is something no one has ever done before. But on the other hand, they’ve always released great games in their genre, and they’ve always been the best in class, and I think that’s what counts.

Well, Paradox Interactive have recently released and is set to release a wide variety of titles, from Restaurant Empire 2 to Majesty 2. But you’re best known for producing very high-quality strategy titles. How would you describe Majesty 2 to someone who’s never seen it before?

Majesty is pretty much an RTS without the normal RTS elements. It’s an RTS where you can’t actually control your troops; you give them financial incentives to do things, like “kill this dragon and you’ll get a thousand gold,” for example. I think that’s the twist; it’s humorous because the heroes are very strong-willed and you can’t control them. That’s actually the feature that makes Majesty so unique, we still have followers from the first game. I hadn’t thought about the elevator pitch for Majesty yet [Laughs], I need to work on that I guess.

Your team of staff is actually quite small in comparison to most developers. Do you think it works better?

I think the games industry works like this: you look at how much money you have, and you say “well, what’re we going to spend this money on?” Then you start employing people; “we need a sound director, and some people who’ll mix the sound.” What we do is ask “what does this game actually need to work? What can we do with a team internally that we already have, and how can we work in a smart way with third party consultants? The reason we can keep the team so lean and mean is because we work a lot with third parties, because we want to keep a low headcount for many different reasons. One of them is that everyone here has a clear responsibility for the game being delivered and for the quality of the game, which is a complete difference to a team of eighty to a hundred people. No one is anonymous in this team. We have a lot of third-party people doing graphics, and music, all the other stuff that isn’t programming and basic graphics. For us it’s worked very well, we’ve got a very dedicated and talented team, so I’m happy.

You recently launched the new website design for GamersGate. Were there any specific reasons behind the redesign?

It’s a little bit of everything. First of all, we wanted people to be able to find games easier, so the categorisation is the first thing. But the biggest change is to the back-end system; the Blue Coin system, a loyalty point program for GamersGate. If you buy a game you get a certain amount of Blue Coins, and you can use these coins to buy new games. They’ll also be used in all the games that carry our micro-transaction solution.

What would your message be to upcoming indie developers considering digital distribution as a means of getting their work out there?

Go for it, guys. It’s the way of the future, and if you need help with marketing and sales, you should definitely give me a call. If you don’t, go for it anyway and try to sell your games. Once you start earning money, it’s awesome.