In a December 2023 interview, Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen said the PC launch of Cities: Skylines II was a joint decision with publisher Paradox Interactive: the team believed the game was enjoyable and did not expect a few more months to make a significant difference. She also acknowledged unfinished performance work and delayed modding tools, while describing a sequel built for deeper simulation and long-term expansion.
Kevin Purdy’s interview with Hallikainen for Ars Technica was published December 18, 2023. The edited and condensed conversation focused on the sequel’s difficult development, its launch amid performance criticism, how it differed from the original, and the studio’s plans for modding. Hallikainen’s comments describe the situation and plans at that time; they do not establish the game’s current performance or the later delivery of features.
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Why did Colossal Order release the PC version when it did?
Hallikainen said Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive made the PC release decision together. The team believed the game was enjoyable, and its judgment was that several more months would not significantly improve it. Console versions had been pushed back, and Hallikainen estimated that the project was nearly three years behind the timeline the studio had anticipated.
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How did Hallikainen respond to criticism that players were being used as testers?
Hallikainen argued that feedback from players is particularly useful for a simulation game. Players bring different hardware configurations, play styles and city-building choices, exposing edge cases a development team may miss. She described the variety this way: “There are so many different setups, there are so many different ways to play the game, that there will always be some corner cases, which we have missed some bugs, some problems, someone playing in a very specific way noticing issues, there is something off balance.”
She did not present that variety as a reason to disregard launch quality. Hallikainen said the studio should minimize problems and reach an appropriate level of polish, while continuing to improve the game. “I’m a very much believer of constant improvement, we can never settle down,” she said.
What did she say about performance?
Hallikainen said the studio knew where performance problems were and that improvement work had taken longer than expected. She emphasized that the studio’s priorities included smooth gameplay, simulation speed and the ability to sustain larger cities, rather than a particular frame rate as the main measure of success.
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“For us the FPS is completely like, I don’t want to say completely irrelevant, but… what’s most important is that the gameplay experience is smooth, that the simulation is running at a proper speed,” she said. This describes the design priorities she discussed in December 2023; it is not a benchmark of performance on any specific PC or a statement of the game’s present condition.
How was the sequel intended to improve on the original?
Hallikainen pointed to road-building tools, quality-of-life improvements and a more sophisticated simulation as areas where the sequel built on Cities: Skylines. She also said the team wanted to avoid repeating the original’s lengthy development on technology she regarded as imperfect. “We’re actually building everything new,” she said, describing the sequel’s fresh technical foundation and an aim to support future expansion.
The ambition was a long-lived city builder. “We are trying to make a city-building game that will last for a decade,” Hallikainen said. Game designer Henri Haimakainen summarized the pressure of following a successful predecessor: “We are our own worst competition.” These are the developers’ stated goals and perspective, not independent comparisons of the two games’ technical performance or feature quality.
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What did she say about modding?
In the interview, Hallikainen described the editor and code-modding support as important work still underway. Character modding was technically difficult and, she said, was not expected soon. She also noted that community members were already experimenting with an unfinished map editor.
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Those remarks capture the state and expectations she described in December 2023. They should not be read as confirmation of when any particular tool or modding feature later became available.
What sales figures did Hallikainen recall for the original game?
Hallikainen said the original Cities: Skylines sold 250,000 copies in its first 24 hours, and that the studio’s internal sales target had been 300,000 copies. Both figures are her statements in the interview; Ars Technica’s conversation does not independently audit them.
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