Paradox is Not Done with Life Sims Despite Dropping Life By You

Paradox’s highly anticipated life simulation game, Life by You, was canceled earlier this year, as the ambitious competitor to The Sims was said not to meet the developer’s expectations. However, this doesn’t mean Paradox would give up the genre; instead, we could expect new life simulation games from the developer later. 

"Life By You, we could do it again, but in a different way. We should try it. It should just start smaller," Paradox’s deputy CEO Mattias Lilja told PC Gamer in a recent interview. Henrik Fåhraeus, Chief Creative Officer, agrees, adding that it "makes perfect sense" for Paradox to make a life sim. "It could fit perfectly in the pillars. It could be a Paradox take on the life sim."

Then, why was Life By You given up in the end? It was a sudden announcement, not only for the fans who looked forward to the game but also for some developers on the team. Willem Delventhal, one of its creators, said that the team was doing "extremely well" and the game "exceeded that number [internal metric] by a significant portion."

A month before the cancelation announcement, Paradox said that the game would be delayed indefinitely. During that period, Lilja said the team had been considering a series of questions, like "trying to [figure out] how do we do this? What are the options?" Unfortunately, they failed to figure out the answers; so it seems cancelation was the only choice. "It doesn't mean that we'll never get back to it or do something similar, but we don't have options that allow us to do that now," says Lilja.

Fåhraeus pointed out more specific challenges, saying that they "saw a lot of issues with this feature, the graphics, that this thing is glitchy, that doesn't quite work." On top of that, "the game as a whole didn't really stack up to the competition."