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:
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.