Please forgive the self-aggrandizing title -- it just seemed kind of appropriate. 
What I want to do here is lay down a marker for the kind of game that I -- and I imagine many others who play Victoria -- would like to see when the game is announced. I say "when" not because I have any new information about it, but more as a kind of wish fulfillment. If we all close our eyes and wish for Victoria 3 really, really hard, it will come. Besides, Paradox has now gone an uncomfortably long time without announcing a new game in the pipeline, so one has to think that the moment is not far off. There's only so much buzz that you can generate by announcing the 25th dlc for Crusader Kings!
In any case, what kind of game do we want to have? To begin, let me note that each of the main Paradox titles (setting aside Stellaris for a moment) has its own brand identity. EU has become the most "sandboxey" of Paradox's titles (as Johan has frequently said in the past, EU allows a player to "paint the world in his/her colors"). CK is the closest Paradox comes to a role-playing game. Meanwhile HOI is a little harder to classify. On the one hand, it was published to insert Paradox into a niche (WWII strategic gaming) that is well populated with other titles, which mans that it also has a large and ready-made audience. On the other hand, the balance that HOI creates between sandbox and historical reenactment is distinctive.
So where does that leave Victoria? When Vicky first appeared, there was nothing remotely like it anywhere in the gaming world. It was a stunningly original concept - so original, in fact, that to this day I have no idea at all how Johan came up with it. I believe the opacity and sophistication that was so characteristic of the original have given Vicky the brand identity of being the "brainiest" of Paradox's games. One could almost say that it was less a "game" than a study of 19th-century political, social and economic history. It wasn't always fun to play, for sure, but it was always deeply interesting to those who were willing to work with it. The same was true for Vicky2, even though its many crucial interface improvements and streamlining of play made it a good deal less opaque than the original.
So this "manifesto" is a call for Paradox to go with what brought Victoria to where it is now. Don't try to make it into a game with mass appeal. I fear greatly that they have been seduced by the surprising success of CKII into believing that any game can be brought to the masses. I can almost hear someone in the front office saying it now: "Hell, if even the Middle Ages can be made interesting to the masses, surely we can do the same for the 19th century!"
I have no quarrel with the fact that Paradox has to make money on its publications. But the "lesson" to be potentially drawn from CKII is very misleading, because in bringing CKII to the masses they didn't change the underlying logic and the brand of the original game. They just executed the original idea far, far better (and without the millstone of being abandoned by the partners who originally brought the idea to them) than the first time around. In the case of Vicky 3, there is a great danger of overturning nearly everything that has made its predecessors special.
If this analysis is correct, then there is a hard choice to be made here, between broadening the audience and losing the core that has sustained the game. Financially the choice may not be at all difficult to make. But to take this step would represent the most dramatic turn yet taken by Paradox away from its roots.
What I want to do here is lay down a marker for the kind of game that I -- and I imagine many others who play Victoria -- would like to see when the game is announced. I say "when" not because I have any new information about it, but more as a kind of wish fulfillment. If we all close our eyes and wish for Victoria 3 really, really hard, it will come. Besides, Paradox has now gone an uncomfortably long time without announcing a new game in the pipeline, so one has to think that the moment is not far off. There's only so much buzz that you can generate by announcing the 25th dlc for Crusader Kings!
In any case, what kind of game do we want to have? To begin, let me note that each of the main Paradox titles (setting aside Stellaris for a moment) has its own brand identity. EU has become the most "sandboxey" of Paradox's titles (as Johan has frequently said in the past, EU allows a player to "paint the world in his/her colors"). CK is the closest Paradox comes to a role-playing game. Meanwhile HOI is a little harder to classify. On the one hand, it was published to insert Paradox into a niche (WWII strategic gaming) that is well populated with other titles, which mans that it also has a large and ready-made audience. On the other hand, the balance that HOI creates between sandbox and historical reenactment is distinctive.
So where does that leave Victoria? When Vicky first appeared, there was nothing remotely like it anywhere in the gaming world. It was a stunningly original concept - so original, in fact, that to this day I have no idea at all how Johan came up with it. I believe the opacity and sophistication that was so characteristic of the original have given Vicky the brand identity of being the "brainiest" of Paradox's games. One could almost say that it was less a "game" than a study of 19th-century political, social and economic history. It wasn't always fun to play, for sure, but it was always deeply interesting to those who were willing to work with it. The same was true for Vicky2, even though its many crucial interface improvements and streamlining of play made it a good deal less opaque than the original.
So this "manifesto" is a call for Paradox to go with what brought Victoria to where it is now. Don't try to make it into a game with mass appeal. I fear greatly that they have been seduced by the surprising success of CKII into believing that any game can be brought to the masses. I can almost hear someone in the front office saying it now: "Hell, if even the Middle Ages can be made interesting to the masses, surely we can do the same for the 19th century!"
I have no quarrel with the fact that Paradox has to make money on its publications. But the "lesson" to be potentially drawn from CKII is very misleading, because in bringing CKII to the masses they didn't change the underlying logic and the brand of the original game. They just executed the original idea far, far better (and without the millstone of being abandoned by the partners who originally brought the idea to them) than the first time around. In the case of Vicky 3, there is a great danger of overturning nearly everything that has made its predecessors special.
If this analysis is correct, then there is a hard choice to be made here, between broadening the audience and losing the core that has sustained the game. Financially the choice may not be at all difficult to make. But to take this step would represent the most dramatic turn yet taken by Paradox away from its roots.
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