ARS: It's not often you get to put questions to the man responsible for a broken game your friends just bought so they could play with you, but that's exactly what I did when I spoke with Fredrik Wester, the CEO of Paradox Interactive. Readers commented that our first story sounded personal, and it kind of was. I don't often get a chance to get all my buddies together to play a game, and it was galling when Magicka simply refused to work for any of us.
"We ran the game through two rounds of external QA, one of them dedicated to co-op multiplayer, including hot seat, LAN, and over the Internet. We got a lot of good feedback from the QA team on all forms of co-op," Wester told Ars. "I want to make it perfectly clear: it's obvious not enough was done to fix the online multiplayer part, as it turns out."
As Arrowhead Game Studios turns 15, join us in celebrating its past and learn how its first game Magicka influenced Helldivers 2.
I played Magicka, but I never realized it was the same dev as Helldivers. Makes plenty of sense considering how much friendly fire is in Magicka lol
"The founders of Arrowhead Game Studios (the team behind one of the world's biggest international game successes with the game "Magicka") is now investing in the Swedish Gaming company Mind Detonator whose business concept is to capture talent at a very early stage and build the next generation of gaming developers far from the big cities." - Arrowhead Game Studios
Arrowhead Studios, the developers of Helldivers and the Magicka series are working on a new third-person online co-op game.
