Interviews// Johan Andersson, Dev Head, Europa Universalis: Rome

SPOnG: Does your progress in single-player impact the multi-player game?

Johan Andersson: You come in from scratch. But you can always save a game and continue the online games, because it's a long game. So, on previous Europa Universalis games people have regular campaigns which they organise through our community. They continue playing at certain times of the week, write long reports on what they've played – real old school RPG things. It's a fun community.


SPOnG: Have you ever thought about another platform for the game?

Johan Andersson: Well, we've thought 'let's get it on Mac and Linux and all those things'. We've thought about the console. When you play certain games it's all about the controls and I haven't thought of a good way to propose that for the console yet. It's very very hard.

I don't know if you've played... there's a company called Koei with a game called Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I play that a lot on the PS2, but it's really awkward moving all the men constantly...

It could be fun, but... would console guys even play it for long?


SPOnG: I guess there's that different mentality... While we're talking format, it's been said that the PC suffers as a format because it doesn't really have anyone to champion it like the consoles do. What do you think to that?

Johan Andersson: I don't know. Microsoft tried it with their Games for Windows, but it seems like they're going after it like another Xbox.

It could be better, but then look at the PS3 and its numbers...(grins)

It might help. But then again, big hardware guys can cause platforms to fail spectacularly, even with support. I mean, I worked on the (SEGA) Mega Drive (if you remember that) and I've seen the Mars (you might know it as the SEGA Mega Drive 32X – Ed), the Mega CD. We did a shitload of work that got canned because the hardware didn't sell through.

And then you're always in the hands of the manufacturer. But on the PC.. that's one of the strengths of the PC, that there is no control.


SPOnG: Have you ever considered trying to make the series more accessible to the mass market?

Johan Andersson: We thought about that. We tried to make it a little more streamlined, but the thing is, we have a nice core audience and we sell pretty well. We do, what is it? 20,000 in Germany, etc. It's low in the UK, but in most other places we sell well. And we know what they like.

But there's a step into (making a more casual game), and if we put all our stuff into that, we risk losing our core audience and becoming just another RTS. There are so many RTSes that come out that ours catered to a mass market would sell like shit.


SPOnG: (Laughs).

Johan Andersson: Sure, it would have been nice to gamble. Sure, it would be nice to sell millions of units, but why bite the hand that feeds?

We have a market, we earn money. It's growing slowly.


SPOnG: Thanks for your time!