Is Paradox at its Height Better than Microprose at Its?

[Abe Sargent]

So who do you think was better at their height, Microprose or Paradox?

Both companies have major games in strategy home made like Civ vs EU and both have major hits as a publisher of other companies games like XCOM vs Cities: Skylines and both have taken a core game and modified it into major successes like Master of Orion 2, Master of Magic and Colonization all playing with Civ vs Crusader Kings, Heart of Iron, and Stellaris on Paradox's side. Both even have major non-strategy titles like Pirates, the flying sims for Microprose vs the RPGs of Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny.


So...who did it better at their peak? Both as an internal game designer and as a publisher of 3rd party games?

[NobodyHere]

Microprose ruled back in the day with X-Com, Civ2, MoO2 and Master of Magic. Sadly I never got into the flying sims (other than X-com: Interceptor).

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Microprose ruled back in the day with X-Com, Civ2, MoO2 and Master of Magic. Sadly I never got into the flying sims (other than X-com: Interceptor).

Yes, but three of those four games they didn't develop in house. Does that matter to you? I consider both the publishing and the in-house development in my questions and answers, but for some, that may matter. (Not for me!)

[Peregrine]

Hmm it's tough to say - I'm a huge Paradox fan but it has to be said that a lot of what they do is simply sequels of the stable of base games. Though that has changed with the introduction of Stellaris. Their publishing side is really getting rolling these days though.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by Abe Sargent

Yes, but three of those four games they didn't develop in house. Does that matter to you? I consider both the publishing and the in-house development in my questions and answers, but for some, that may matter. (Not for me!)

Distinctions without a difference afaic.

[BishopMVP]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Hmm it's tough to say - I'm a huge Paradox fan but it has to be said that a lot of what they do is simply sequels of the stable of base games. Though that has changed with the introduction of Stellaris. Their publishing side is really getting rolling these days though.

The depth & quality of Pillars of Eternity was the deciding factor for me. That's a completely different game than what I thought of as Paradox.

[Abe Sargent]

Whoa, 50/50 split!

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by BishopMVP

The depth & quality of Pillars of Eternity was the deciding factor for me. That's a completely different game than what I thought of as Paradox.

Paradox pretty much just handled marketing and physical good fulfilment on Pillars. It was funded by Obsidian/crowd funding and Paradox didn't have any say in the production or content of the game.

They did have more involvement in Tyranny though, which I thought was better than Pillars.

[JPhillips]

If you include financial success, Paradox runs away with it. I hate their model of DLC releases, but there's no doubt it works financially.

[Edward64]

Microprose for me.

[spleen1015]

Master of Orion was the first game I ever played hundreds of hours of.

There was a PC gaming magazine back in the early 90s, I can't remember what it was called, maybe PC Gaming? Anyway, it ran an article about MoO a few months before it came out. I read that article every day. Looked at the pictures all of the time. The day that game came out was a big deal for me.

Microprose wins.

[BishopMVP]

Big Paradox sale at Gamesplanet.com this weekend. Though iirc you do want to make sure you get the right region encoded game from them.