Paradox think there's no point competing with XCOM after their Lamplighters flop - it's "winner takes all" in the "tactical gaming space"

rockpapershotgun.com:

Last October, Paradox Interactive announced that they and development studio Harebrained Schemes were breaking up, following underwhelming sales of Harebrained's 1930s-set XCOMlike, The Lamplighters League. The publishers had already made layoffs at Harebrained in the run-up to release, implying that preorder numbers were low; ultimately, Paradox wrote it off as a $22 million flop. At the time of the "parting of ways", Paradox chief operational officer Charlotta Nilsson washed her hands of XCOMlikes entirely, commenting that "a new project or sequel in the same genre was not in line with our portfolio plans".

We ourselves were mixed on The Lamplighters League. "A strong turn-based foundation and colourful setting held back by grind, blind chance, and a need for efficiency over tactical variety," was Sin's verdict. But other outlets were more enthused, and the Steam user review consensus remains positive, even now that Paradox have yanked support. When I spoke to deputy chief executive officer Mattias Lilja at Paradox's Media Day earlier this month, I had to ask about the game's fortunes, and Paradox's decision to steer away from XCOMlikes in future.

"I can start with how we see the reality of that game, or the reality of that genre," Lilja told me. "When we started [that project], we read it as a fairly lively genre, where there were many games, tactical games that could coexist. We often think in terms of, who's the number one in the genre, what does it mean to be number two or number three, and if you're number three, is that still a viable option for the long term? If it is, maybe you want to go there - you're not going to be number one, but maybe number three or four or five, whatever.

"When we released The Lamplighters League, it quickly became very obvious to us that this was not the game that people wanted, and we were not going to be able to save it," he went on. "It was reviewed OK - I liked it too. But it was not an audience of any size that would