Greetings!

It’s a new year, and we thought it would be interesting to give all of you an update on the status of the team! There’s quite a few of us, and we hope you’ll enjoy this brief insight into who’s working on updates, fixes and exciting new content for your enjoyment!

My name is Carmille and I work as a Producer on CK3; I’ve been with the team for about one and a half years now. CK2 was one of my favorite games and the reason that I joined Paradox to begin with, so naturally I am feeling quite blessed to work on the project

Firstly, an announcement! It has been decided that Alexander Oltner (aka @rageair) will be stepping up as the new Game Director for the project! Alexander is the (now former) Design Lead for CK3, and has spent many years designing features for both CK2 and CK3. He started at the company in 2015 and, if you’ve tuned in to any of the pre-release streams or interviews, you surely know who he is already. Long-term fans might even recognize him as the lead designer behind Holy Fury for CK2, or perhaps you’ve seen him in one of the many past Dev Clashes. We have full confidence that Alex will be able to take up the reins and steer the project towards a bright future! The former Game Director, Henrik Fåhraeus (known on the forums as Doomdark), is ascending the ranks and will instead act as the Creative Director for many titles, CK3 included.

With that said, let's move on to the team itself!
You might think that with the release of the base game, the amount of people working on the project would be reduced. We’re actually doing the exact opposite, and are in the process of expanding the team instead! This will give us a lot more flexibility and freedom and should allow us to work on several different things at the same time.
Naturally, we need to train and onboard our new team members so it is not something we can start with straight away, but our hope is that you will see the effects within a not so distant future.

Now, how many are actually working on CK3 and what are they doing?

The team is made up of many different disciplines, working together to create amazing experiences! We’ll go into more details on each of them below.

Producer​

We have four people working in Production (myself included). Our job is to help the team bring the design to life and into your hands. We do this by setting up (and iterating upon) processes and workflows, identifying deadlines and milestones, making plans to hit those dates while staying in good shape and ensuring that everybody knows what to do. We can often be seen grooming CK3s task and bug database and making sure everything is according to plan, up to date and representative of the current situation as well as spending a lot of time looking at numbers in spreadsheets.

Game Design​

Our Game Designer is working very closely together with the Game Director. Their focus is split between what is currently being developed and nailing down the design for future expansions. They can very frequently be seen playing the game as it is being developed and make tweaks or highlight areas of concern so that the feature feels as great in the game as it looks on paper.

UX Design​

Just like Game Design, our two UX Designers have their focus split between what is happening in the game right now and what is being designed for future expansions. UX Design and Game Design work closely together and make sure that new features are both fun and user friendly. They focus on interactions and user interface, although they can often be seen giving feedback on when something just doesn’t feel intuitive.

Content Design​

Although the two previously mentioned design disciplines can sometimes be seen creating content for features as they are being developed, it's the Content Designers that create the vast majority of it. We have eight Content Designers working on CK3, and unlike the other two Design disciplines, they are almost entirely focused on working with what’s being developed in the game here and now. They pride themselves on creating historically plausible content, and will spend a lot of their time researching something before it is being put into the game. They are skilled scripters and writers and very passionate about ensuring that all features have a soul made out of supportive events, decisions, interactions, etc.

Code​

There are seven Programmers and two Tech Leads working on CK3. The Tech Leads are responsible for the overall technical health and spend a lot of their time setting up (and iterating upon) processes and best practices for the project. They play a major part during all development stages and are constantly aware of the big picture and the challenges that could come with it.

Our Programmers are responsible for building the functionality and foundation of the features themselves. They work very closely together with the other disciplines on their features and can often be seen providing Code Support or in other ways using their skillset to make life easier for the non-coders. They will also keep an eye on performance and the overall stability of the game and jump upon an issue as soon as it appears.

Art Director ​

There is one Art Director working on CK3, and their responsibility is the overall artistic vision. They work closely together with the Game Director and Production, but also with all of the Artists in the team.

2D UI Art​

We have three 2D Artists on the team and they can often be seen collaborating with Code and UX Design to bring the interfaces of new CK3 features to life after Code has provided their framework. They will also create icons and illustrations as well as investigate artistic improvements to the UIs that is not part of the UX design.

2D Concept Art ​

Our two Concept Artists help the game team by visualizing assets before they are to be created by a 3D Artist.

3D Character Art ​

Just as the name indicates, our three Character Artists work on anything related to our characters. This not only includes the characters itself, but also the clothing, headgears and hairstyles. In addition to that they are also responsible for creating the Units that are walking around the map. They can often be seen working closely together with Animation.

3D Environment Art ​

These Artists work mostly on the map itself. We have four of them and they can often be seen creating holdings, ships, siege weapons and other map assets. They are also painting the map as well as making sure that all the units, holdings and other buildings are located where it makes sense, both from a historical perspective and an artistic one.

Animation​

There is one Animator working on the project and their main focus is on bringing our characters and units to life. They can be seen working on brand new poses and adding more variety to existing ones to make sure the characters show a wide range of different emotions and visually support different situations.

VFX ​

CK3 is not a very VFX heavy game, and because of this we do not have a VFX artist working with us full time, but only on demand.

QA​

Our QA is the glue that keeps everything together. We have a core team of seven QA, but expand to a lot more once we are starting to wrap up and getting ready for a release. They can often be seen playing the game and testing the new features as they become ready, but it is important to note that this is not the only thing they do. They have a holistic view of quality and work closely together with all disciplines to make sure that the end product is as great as possible. Sometimes this is achieved through testing alone, but other times they can identify a need to redesign / introduce more content to a feature that feels a bit weak or perhaps a need to tweak a process or workflow within the Project itself.

Audio​

The Audio team works on all PDS games, so we can’t really claim them for ourselves.
When they do work on CK3, they are often around two to three people and can be seen working on sound effects for our new features as well as composing music that fit the theme of the expansion.

Naturally, we don’t all work on the same features or fixes at the same time, that’d be very confusing! We’re divided into smaller groups, each focusing on their own set of features or content. Once a week we have a couple of hours set aside to make sure that everybody on the CK3 team has time to sit down and play the game and see for themselves how everything is being tied together.

The team is currently busy working on two things: one is big and the other is smaller. The smaller of these you'll be hearing more of in the coming weeks...

 

[Videogames]

Ok good to meet everyone, and I hope you all have a fulfilling time working on the game, and produce some great content for it.

I do have to say though, this dev diary was announced, delayed, and teased so much that I (and others) expected that it would be a dlc announcement with specific new things to get excited about and discuss. Was there an actual need to delay this DD from mid-January to mid-February in order to announce the team? Maybe you didn't want to announce the team and then go dark again, but even now it sounds like it'll be weeks plural until we get the dlc announcement. Oh well, back to waiting...

 

[Xain]

Greetings!

It’s a new year, and we thought it would be interesting to give all of you an update on the status of the team! There’s quite a few of us, and we hope you’ll enjoy this brief insight into who’s working on updates, fixes and exciting new content for your enjoyment!

My name is Carmille and I work as a Producer on CK3; I’ve been with the team for about one and a half years now. CK2 was one of my favorite games and the reason that I joined Paradox to begin with, so naturally I am feeling quite blessed to work on the project

Firstly, an announcement! It has been decided that Alexander Oltner (aka @rageair) will be stepping up as the new Game Director for the project! Alexander is the (now former) Design Lead for CK3, and has spent many years designing features for both CK2 and CK3. He started at the company in 2015 and, if you’ve tuned in to any of the pre-release streams or interviews, you surely know who he is already. Long-term fans might even recognize him as the lead designer behind Holy Fury for CK2, or perhaps you’ve seen him in one of the many past Dev Clashes. We have full confidence that Alex will be able to take up the reins and steer the project towards a bright future! The former Game Director, Henrik Fåhraeus (known on the forums as Doomdark), is ascending the ranks and will instead act as the Creative Director for many titles, CK3 included.

With that said, let's move on to the team itself!
You might think that with the release of the base game, the amount of people working on the project would be reduced. We’re actually doing the exact opposite, and are in the process of expanding the team instead! This will give us a lot more flexibility and freedom and should allow us to work on several different things at the same time.
Naturally, we need to train and onboard our new team members so it is not something we can start with straight away, but our hope is that you will see the effects within a not so distant future.

Now, how many are actually working on CK3 and what are they doing?

The team is made up of many different disciplines, working together to create amazing experiences! We’ll go into more details on each of them below.

Producer​

We have four people working in Production (myself included). Our job is to help the team bring the design to life and into your hands. We do this by setting up (and iterating upon) processes and workflows, identifying deadlines and milestones, making plans to hit those dates while staying in good shape and ensuring that everybody knows what to do. We can often be seen grooming CK3s task and bug database and making sure everything is according to plan, up to date and representative of the current situation as well as spending a lot of time looking at numbers in spreadsheets.

Game Design​

Our Game Designer is working very closely together with the Game Director. Their focus is split between what is currently being developed and nailing down the design for future expansions. They can very frequently be seen playing the game as it is being developed and make tweaks or highlight areas of concern so that the feature feels as great in the game as it looks on paper.

UX Design​

Just like Game Design, our two UX Designers have their focus split between what is happening in the game right now and what is being designed for future expansions. UX Design and Game Design work closely together and make sure that new features are both fun and user friendly. They focus on interactions and user interface, although they can often be seen giving feedback on when something just doesn’t feel intuitive.

Content Design​

Although the two previously mentioned design disciplines can sometimes be seen creating content for features as they are being developed, it's the Content Designers that create the vast majority of it. We have eight Content Designers working on CK3, and unlike the other two Design disciplines, they are almost entirely focused on working with what’s being developed in the game here and now. They pride themselves on creating historically plausible content, and will spend a lot of their time researching something before it is being put into the game. They are skilled scripters and writers and very passionate about ensuring that all features have a soul made out of supportive events, decisions, interactions, etc.

Code​

There are seven Programmers and two Tech Leads working on CK3. The Tech Leads are responsible for the overall technical health and spend a lot of their time setting up (and iterating upon) processes and best practices for the project. They play a major part during all development stages and are constantly aware of the big picture and the challenges that could come with it.

Our Programmers are responsible for building the functionality and foundation of the features themselves. They work very closely together with the other disciplines on their features and can often be seen providing Code Support or in other ways using their skillset to make life easier for the non-coders. They will also keep an eye on performance and the overall stability of the game and jump upon an issue as soon as it appears.

Art Director ​

There is one Art Director working on CK3, and their responsibility is the overall artistic vision. They work closely together with the Game Director and Production, but also with all of the Artists in the team.

2D UI Art​

We have three 2D Artists on the team and they can often be seen collaborating with Code and UX Design to bring the interfaces of new CK3 features to life after Code has provided their framework. They will also create icons and illustrations as well as investigate artistic improvements to the UIs that is not part of the UX design.

2D Concept Art ​

Our two Concept Artists help the game team by visualizing assets before they are to be created by a 3D Artist.

3D Character Art ​

Just as the name indicates, our three Character Artists work on anything related to our characters. This not only includes the characters itself, but also the clothing, headgears and hairstyles. In addition to that they are also responsible for creating the Units that are walking around the map. They can often be seen working closely together with Animation.

3D Environment Art ​

These Artists work mostly on the map itself. We have four of them and they can often be seen creating holdings, ships, siege weapons and other map assets. They are also painting the map as well as making sure that all the units, holdings and other buildings are located where it makes sense, both from a historical perspective and an artistic one.

Animation​

There is one Animator working on the project and their main focus is on bringing our characters and units to life. They can be seen working on brand new poses and adding more variety to existing ones to make sure the characters show a wide range of different emotions and visually support different situations.

VFX ​

CK3 is not a very VFX heavy game, and because of this we do not have a VFX artist working with us full time, but only on demand.

QA​

Our QA is the glue that keeps everything together. We have a core team of seven QA, but expand to a lot more once we are starting to wrap up and getting ready for a release. They can often be seen playing the game and testing the new features as they become ready, but it is important to note that this is not the only thing they do. They have a holistic view of quality and work closely together with all disciplines to make sure that the end product is as great as possible. Sometimes this is achieved through testing alone, but other times they can identify a need to redesign / introduce more content to a feature that feels a bit weak or perhaps a need to tweak a process or workflow within the Project itself.

Audio​

The Audio team works on all PDS games, so we can’t really claim them for ourselves.
When they do work on CK3, they are often around two to three people and can be seen working on sound effects for our new features as well as composing music that fit the theme of the expansion.

Naturally, we don’t all work on the same features or fixes at the same time, that’d be very confusing! We’re divided into smaller groups, each focusing on their own set of features or content. Once a week we have a couple of hours set aside to make sure that everybody on the CK3 team has time to sit down and play the game and see for themselves how everything is being tied together.

The team is currently busy working on two things: one is big and the other is smaller. The smaller of these you'll be hearing more of in the coming weeks...

I won't lie, I am a bit disappointed too as I, like most people here, was expecting a more substantial update on the new content. If we had to wait for so long, I thought it must have been for a reason - this is the kind of "filler" post that you could have released literally at any time. It's just a step more relevant that a DD on your cats (mind, I'm not saying that that that the cats DD doesn't HAVE TO happen ).

Unless the long radio silence was due to your internal reorganisation after Doomsdark's and rageair's promotion?

I renew once more the wish that, for the future, you move towards a more transparent communication as IR team does, sharing an overview of your work plans regularly.

That said, good luck to all the team - and keep up the good work. Just don't keep it for yourself .

 

[ScarecrowKrone]

Before I provide my take on this, I would like to briefly introduce myself - I am Scarecrow, a recently hired Content Designer for Crusader Kings III. I have only been at the job for about three weeks, but I feel that I can provide 'a view from the trenches' so to speak. I recognise that this dev diary is probably a disappointment for many of you, and your passion for this game does you credit, however I particularly need to stress this part of the diary:

With that said, let's move on to the team itself!
You might think that with the release of the base game, the amount of people working on the project would be reduced. We’re actually doing the exact opposite, and are in the process of expanding the team instead! This will give us a lot more flexibility and freedom and should allow us to work on several different things at the same time.
Naturally, we need to train and onboard our new team members so it is not something we can start with straight away, but our hope is that you will see the effects within a not so distant future.

The Crusader Kings III team has grown exponentially and continues to hire and acquire more team members as we speak. In point of fact, I would draw your attention to the current advertisements placed on our Careers page, including for another Content Designer on CK3. This hiring spree is absolutely crucial in understanding why this dev diary is lacking in detail about what is coming; not only does it take a while for new employees to find their feet and integrate into the team, but I would also remind everyone that we are still living through a global pandemic, with all the difficulties that entails. I was informed that I had been offered this job at the end of November, and it took until the end of January for my relocation to be completed, because of necessary bureaucratic procedures and the additional strains of pandemic precautions. However, upon starting work three weeks ago, both of the projects Carmille mentioned were already well into their development cycles. I assure you that Paradox have not been idle, and although I cannot talk about what exactly I am working on either, all I will say is that additional employees like myself have been brought on for a reason.

Seems the hype train is running late this year.

This is precisely why we don't want to give much away at this stage. Mismanaging hype and therefore misleading our loyal player-base is not something we are prepared to do, even if it means we have to disappoint you for a bit longer.

 

[Xain]

The guy before him (Rodrigue, was it?) was great, and was always posting and doing those summary videos.

Noooo hottest_rod is not among us anymore? His French accent was the cutest!

 

[Spirit_mert]

Dissapointing considering you advertised and started selling a expansion and 2 flavor packs more than 6 months ago. And still 0 information about them, oh well.. Better than nothing I guess.

 

[Gebstadter]

Before I provide my take on this, I would like to briefly introduce myself - I am George, aka Scarecrow, a recently hired Content Designer for Crusader Kings III. I have only been at the job for about three weeks, but I feel that I can provide 'a view from the trenches' so to speak. I recognise that this dev diary is probably a disappointment for many of you... [snip]

This is precisely why we don't want to give much away at this stage. Mismanaging hype and therefore misleading our loyal player-base is not something we are prepared to do, even if it means we have to disappoint you for a bit longer.

Thank you for your candor -- I really do think that half the outrage here could be blunted by acknowledging people's disappointment like this.

 

[Pied-Noir]

Noooo hottest_rod is not among us anymore? His French accent was the cutest!

Yeah, pastures new. I think he's a more senior role now so isn't specifically doing CK III - or possibly he's on Imperator and I've misremembered this.

 

[Shogun96]

Nice to meet you all. I hope we get many Holy Furies for ck3.

However, I was hoping for something more meaty after months of radio silence.

 

[Xain]

This is precisely why we don't want to give much away at this stage. Mismanaging hype and therefore misleading our loyal player-base is not something we are prepared to do, even if it means we have to disappoint you for a bit longer.

That's where I beg to differ, managing hype is about communicating, not about being secretive...

 

[Viranto]

A small info in which direction the first DLC is moving, a teaser picture, a coat of arms, a sentence from a philosopher, something minimal.
The Playerbase could have speculated a lot with that for a while.

 

[ShadyGuy_SuspiciousGoal]

So I see here that you have someone reading the bugs report but no one to look through feature requests. Maybe add a page like pigeonholelive.com where people can vote for the most popular requests?

 

[guglik0]

Its not that I mind waiting longer, its that I have no idea what exactly I am waiting for...

 

[Sir Faint]

Aaaannnd? That's it? Just telling after some internal changes that there will be something small and big? And the small part comes in weeks? Weeks? Sorry but a little bit disappointed.

Sorry to say that I have to agree with this, I expected some more news about content to come, not to be part of a company memo. Appreciate that you take the time to explain what's going on up there in Sweden, but it wouldn't have hurt to tell us a bit more of what to expect. Shame.

 

[Basileus2]

Nice to hear the team has grown and glad to see an official communication, but disappointed that after 5 months we've not heard a peep about what's coming next, despite indications being that we'd hear first in 'mid-Jan' then 'mid-Feb'. Will it be mid-March now, since you're saying "you'll hear in a few weeks?" If so, I'm starting to wonder if something is actually wrong behind the scenes like what was happening with HoI4's development.

Again, as others have said, for those of us who bought the Royal Edition we were banking on the game being great - which it is, but we also bought in with the expectation of knowing what the rest of our money was going to be spent on in relatively short order, given expectations set by other PDX titles. At least a roadmap or some kind of a hint or teaser on what's coming up is warranted.

If we truly don't hear anything until beginning of March at this point then that's just not cool. Come on, man.

 

[TheSunEmperor]

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm actually happier with how imperator is doing it's Dev diaries lol. But oh well I guess we can be hearded along and wait another few weeks for actual information about new content, it's only been half a year of radio silence...

 

[pdstanbridge]

Gawd. Very anti-climatic. I'm new to the game, and am enjoying it to a point, but it needs flavour, and new ideas. It's all a bit samey after a few hundred hours. We're all dealing with the pandemic. Everyone needs to adapt.

 

[PDX_Pariah]

I think his name was Troy, but I've got no idea what his username is and I don't think I've ever seen him post. I just saw him on a couple of dev streams.

Oh, he is here and working diligently.

This year will see some super interesting things and changes to the way we handle news and Community. This downtime was definitely to help the teams sort out how to launch and handle this new project.

While I am a bit more silent on here for posting, I read through almost every thread daily and we compile weekly Feedback/Suggestions/Bug Reports/Feature Requests from the Forums and other social sources.

 

[Basileus2]

Seems the hype train is running late this year.

The hype train just ran out of coal.

 

[KuwabaraTheMan]

Congrats to Alex on being promoted to Game Director. Based on his past work I have no doubt that he'll do a great jog taking over for Henrik in guiding CK3.

While I was hoping to get more concrete details this week, it's nice to hear from the team again, and I'm looking forward to finding out what's in the works in the next couple of weeks.

 

[Almas]

This is precisely why we don't want to give much away at this stage. Mismanaging hype and therefore misleading our loyal player-base is not something we are prepared to do, even if it means we have to disappoint you for a bit longer.

I think the reaction would have been better if you just gave away the theme of the expansion without any detail or hype. Just something like "next flavour pack will include some content for Byzantine." A sentence like that at the end of this diary would have done wonders for community perception