Paradox CEO 'Prefers Goat Simulator' Over 'Call of Duty', Predicts Scaling Down Of Budgets

Speaking at a media roundtable gathering last week, the CEO and COO of Paradox Interactive made some interesting points about the future of the videogame industry and its obsession with big budgets. The CEO Fredrik Wester and COO Susana Meza expressed that indie games such as "Goat Simulator" make more sense over "Call of Duty" for smaller publishers.

The duo discussed the growing concern of videogame budgets going out of hand and what sort of games would serve the industry better with journalists at the event according to VG247. Wester and Meza believe that the industry has reached a saturation point with budgets allocated to each game spiralling out of control. Their overall outlook for the future predicts a scaling back of budgets and associated production values witnessed in AAA games.

"As an industry we’ve just tried to top each other every single time we release something, it’s going to be bigger, better, bigger productions, bigger marketing budgets, whatever, whatever," said Susana Meza, COO of Paradox Interactive, while speaking with the media. "Then all of a sudden it’s released and we still can’t meet consumers’ expectations because some things don’t work maybe as planned, the plans were too ambitious."

The company CEO Fredrik Wester believes that smaller publishers, such as Paradox Interactive, are better off banking on more creative indie games. His logic is that when a developer has a game as innovative as "Goat Simulator" in its repertoire, it possesses the edge to generate consumer interest. This, in turn, makes reaching out to gamers through marketing much easier.

Ridiculing the current breed of big-budget FPS titles such as Call of Duty, he states that gamers are tired of the explosive setpieces and dubstep music according to PC Gamer. He believes that this routine has been done to death and doesn't pique consumer interest anymore. According to Mezer, the AAA videogame space is locked in a battle where publishers are increasingly pouring millions over millions to beat each other. She believes that this isn't a viable long term solution. In the future, she sees the industry scaling back on AAA spending in the future.

The Swedish videogame publisher may not be as big as the Activisions and EAs of the gaming world, but it has carved a niche for itself with its brand of grand strategy games such as the "Crusader Kings" series in addition to "Cities: Skylines," "Airfix Dogfighter," "Europa Universalis series."

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Crusader Kings II Launch Trailer(credit: YouTube/Paradox Interactive)