'Magicka was 2011, so in 2013, 2014 you saw all of these wonky games, where the ideas were not necessarily bad, but we as an organisation maybe hadn't matured to the point where we could execute well. 'You sign a game, and it takes 12 to 24 months before it comes out,' Jorjani said. 'We want to make great games for our fans, and we can't do that if we don't charge something for development' This in turn led to the company taking a chance with Arrowhead's Magicka in 2011, which 'became such a huge success' that a future in which Paradox published a multitude of independent games each year seemed entirely plausible. TaleWorlds Entertainment's Mount & Blade had performed well in 2008, despite it falling outside the Paradox comfort zone of grand strategy. Speaking in a closed room session with the press at PDXCon recently, VP of business development Shams Jorjani explained it as a failure built on unexpected success. Rather than being regarded as an example of its high productivity, though, the Paradox management team looks back on that period as something of a nadir - the result of drinking one too many glasses of its Kool-Aid. There was a 12-month period not so long ago when Paradox Interactive launched a dozen different games.

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