Gamasutra - Paradox CEO Interview

Gamasutra posted a short interview with Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester who gives a few tips on how to sell your game in a complicated market.

If we accept that genre-borrowing, inspiration and imitation are a clear part of the modern game landscape, how do you get your customers on your side and work methodologically to stand out in the market?

Cloning has been a factor within the game industry since nearly the beginning, with early titles like Space Invaders and Asteroids widely copied. Today, games like DotA, Super Mario Bros launch not only imitators but entire genres.

Piggybacking has become the norm in mobile stores, where people not only leap aboard popular genres but cannily name their games so that they benefit from the progenitors' popularity in search.

"If you borrow something, it's a shortcut to a proven gameplay, a proven market, maybe even a proven business model," says Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester. "But there are also different ways of entering a market if you want to borrow a concept for someone."