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Reporter: And there we saw a bit of the game Cities: Skylines which is a city building game published on Tuesday and it sold 250,000 copies on its first day. It was made by a company from Tampere and has indeed been a great hit in sales and reviews. Welcome, Colossal Order's CEO Mariina Hallikainen.
MH: Thank you.
R: Congratulations, first of all a great launch, what do you think made this game such a surprise hit?
MH: Well, the game is exceptionally good, I dare say. I am very proud of our team's work. Cities: Skylines is very loyal to its genre and its fan base and offers, in my opinion, what the fans have been waiting for. We had a very good opening in the market after two unsuccessful city builders so there was a clear demand and our publisher Paradox Interactive made a very good marketing campaign which supported the game's sales. We are of course very much surprised of this huge success..
R (interrupts): Great celebrations in Tampere?
MH: Yes, but there has been a lot of extra work because of this so we need to take a breath here and think what we do next.
R: You have a company of 13 people and you have worked on similar games before. What kind of a market is there for simulation games like this?
MH: We had earlier done these public transportation simulations, we had Cities in Motion and a sequel for it. They came out in 2011 and 2013 and the sales weren't even close to a city simulation. When it comes to sales numbers Sim City, the one that came out in 2013, has sold over 2,000,000 copies and we are talking about only hundreds of thousands of copies when talking of these very niche simulation games so we did take quite a step forward with our third attempt.
R: And clearly your step was a successful one, so how was this game created, how is such a wide world made and what city has been your inspiration?
MH: Well we can discuss that for a very long time. That is to say, game development is very challenging and you can compare it to software development which requires a lot of creativity and you use a lot of graphics as an accessory. Cities: Skylines has a simulation in the background which then is developed by designers and coders and we then created the world on top of that. When it comes to inspiration, the idea is that you are able to construct a modern city the way you envision it, the way the player wants it created. So we aim to give the tools to the players so they can get to realizing their own cities.
R: A dream city, so to say. Are there any elements from Finnish cities or where did the inspiration come from?
MH: Well in Cities in Motion 1 we had Helsinki included of course and now in Cities: Skylines we have this Nordic theme there which was inspired by watching out of the window in November and then adding a bit of color in there so we didn't show Finland in all its greyness but there are elements where you can imagine, for example, building Tampere into that theme.
R: What does this success mean for your company? Things have gone so fast but what can you imagine as CEO?
MH: Well fact is that this is a commercial success for us so we have a lot of options where to go from here. First of all of course we'll develop Cities: Skylines further and we'll be making a lot more for it. Our publisher is also very satisfied and is very eager to continue their partnership with us. Thus the situation is very good for us and we do indeed have a lot of options so for now we'll continue with Cities: Skylines and then investigate what is smartest for us, who do we develop the next game with.
R: This is a computer game, are you interested in the mobile platform?
MH: Not interested. We'll be staying in the PC, Mac and Linux side.
R: Thank you Mariina for this.
Now CO got money to support the game , its a fantastic news -- It was great work
