Meet the Crusader Kings II Development Team

Crusader Kings II has been developed by one of the largest teams we've ever had here at Paradox Development Studio. Seven people worked on it for almost seventeen months, with a few other people chipping in on and off as the project progressed. We've asked them all to describe their role here on the team, and here you can read it!




Producer - Johan - Johan Andersson

I'm in charge of the project, but these days I am no longer working in the projects as a programmer much anymore. I've mostly done PR stuff and making sure the team is alive and well, and giving them feedback on the game. I did help out with designing the events though, and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

Core Team
Was at the project almost every day..

Project Leader & Lead Designer - Doomdark - Henrik Fåhraeus

I am the project lead and lead designer of Crusader Kings II, though I've actually spent most of my time programming the lion's share of the game's gameplay and AI logic, as well as many GUI windows. While I've been involved with many of our games in similar capacities (including Crusader Kings), this is the first time I've led the development of a stand-alone game. It's been an extremely rewarding experience and I'm grateful to have worked with such a talented and dedicated team!

Programmer - Tegus - Fredrik Zetterman

Hello everyone, I'm Tegus, one of the three main programmers on Crusader Kings II. Together with Aerie, I worked a lot on improving the graphical look of the map, with him taking care of the artsy fluff and me taking care of all the hardcore programming. The graphical look of the map has come a long way in terms of flexibility, and I'm very pleased that we could use the same tech in Sengoku but still give that map a totally different feel. I also did a lot of other things for Crusader Kings II, mostly involving the war/peace/casus belli systems and the AI connected to it.

Programmer - JohanLerstrom - Johan Lerström

I did alot of UI: The family tree, alot of the ingame interface and the frontend, that sort of thing. I tried to make sure things looked nice and felt smooth with things like the interfaces sliding into place and the neat transitions as you go from the main menu all the way into the game. I did do some gameplay code as well though, things like the tech system and buildings.

Lead Artist - Aerie - Fredrik Persson

As a Lead Artist on Crusader Kings 2 I worked on everything from units models and interface to trailers and map textures. But the thing I'm most proud of is the significant advancements we made to the map during the project. Ever since I started at Paradox 3 years ago i dream that we would one day have smooth boarders, smooth rivers and bring back topology. And we did all that! As well as beautiful water, trees, post-effect controls and sprawling cities. All this we did, and performance has never been better. And none of it would have been possible without the hard work of our amazing coders.

2d Artist - yonaz - Jonas Jakobsson

I have worked with everything 2D related in CK2. I have done most of the interfaces, icons and stuff seen in the game. My main responsibility of late has been to focus on making graphics for the interface and I feel happy how it turned out. Also the layout and to some extent design of the interface becomes part of my job.

Scripter - Captain Gars - Niklas Strid

As a scripter and researcher some of my tasks have been helping out with the historical setup and balancing as well as writing a lot of events and decisions. My main focus there has been the councillor jobs and the plots. I have also been involved in the development of the scripting language, which has become more complex and powerful.

Scripter - Solsara - Sara Wendel-Örtqvist

My role during the Crusader Kings II project was scripting, historical research, supervising the betas and incorporating the historical characters, settlements and coat of arms they helped us with. I did the map setup, scripted most of the history database - everything from provinces to titles to characters. Besides the historical stuff, I also scripted events and wrote event descriptions, options and tooltips.

Additional People
Some of them was on the project for a long time, some only for a few weeks, in order of time spent on the project below.


Designer - King - Chris King

I worked on the design, fleshing out details and working out ideas together with Henrik. I also did a fair bit of event scripting on some of the most interesting event chains. I also did a a large bulk of the work of making sure that we had a connected and detailed character database.

Associate Producer - Kallocain - Linda Kiby

I wrote and scripted the tutorial, handled localization, and was associate producer towards the end. That means I handle a lot of stuff that is not direct game development, like delivering assets to the PR department and buying the bubbly we will celebrate with on the release day. I also bought all computers and installed the OS on all computers that have been involed in the development as I'm also the IT manager.

Programmer - Birken - Olof Björk

I added the language selection in the settings menu and when starting the game for the first time. I also made it possible to have load tips when loading the game, and added support for impassable mountain, as well as working on making the game run on OS X.

Programmer - Zoft - Rikard Åslund

I did a lot of work related to make the clausewitzII engine and CK2 run on Mac. This includes areas like creating a new sound/music system and converting DirectX stuff to OpengGL.

Programmer - podcat - Dan Lind

I did multi-threaded base support for the project and the portrait/dna system.

Programmer - Besuchov - Thomas Johansson

I was not originally assigned to the project but but was brought in towards the end to help out with multiplayer, which was handy since I coded the original system back in 2004.


QA Manager - Artfox - Artur Foxander
QA - Forzaa - Carsten 't Mannetje

These guys reported bugs and made sure they had been fixed, but since Artur is off sick today, we can't get a personal report.


There were a few other people involved in the project.

- Andreas Waldetoft did the music and sound effects.
- Josh Covington wrote the manual.
- Martin Olsen did the portraits.
- Niklas Frostgård did the event pictures, and some of the loading screens.
- Aleksandr Molcanov did a few of the other loading screens.
- About 8 different people have been interns here and worked with the QA on the project.

And of course the entire Economy, PR & Sales staff..