The Sims almost had a big competitor on its hands. Life By You was a game that had quite a bit of interest. It was a title being developed by Paradox, and it looked to enhance the life simulation genre in a big way compared to The Sims. Unfortunately, the game is not coming to the marketplace. After development was unexpectedly delayed from its early access release, the studio found the game was killed off just weeks later.
Paradox had been working on this game for a few years, and there was hope to see it launch first through early access. This often gives developers a chance to dig into the game and make some notable changes or upgrades before it officially launches into the marketplace. However, that didn’t happen, as there were just too many problems for developers to focus on.
That’s according to an interview on Eurogamer. The publication spoke with CCO Henrik Fahraeus and Deputy CEO Mattias Lilja about the canceled project. Of course, the team didn’t take this lightly when it came to its cancellation. Fahraeus noted that sometimes you go into a flawed project thinking that eventually you can fix or steer it in another direction. That was initially thought by developers, who were given an extension to the Life By You project before realizing that this title would only get worse if they kept going.
We trusted the devs quite a lot. We thought maybe another extension will get us where we’re going and then finally realised… everything will be worse if we keep going, so we have to stop. – Mattias Lilja
A lot of the flaws were super clear and we saw the flaws individually… and then we got closer and closer to early access, trying to focus on fixing each individual problem, and then realising it’s too late, we’ve not been seeing the forest here. There’s no single thing here that can actually compete viably in terms of gameplay. – Henrik Fahraeus
From the sound of things, Paradox might have bitten off more than they could chew. As a result, the studio opted to scrap the entire project before investing more time and resources into salvaging it.
This wasn’t the only piece of news we got today from Paradox. In another interview, we learned a little more about why the company swapped studios for its upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines 2 game.
