Well this is it, the first developer diary for Victoria 2. You’ll be seeing a lot more of these over the coming weeks; we aim for one a week but we know now that this won’t always happen. Either there will be things like holidays (I know what you are thinking: ‘but this is communist Sweden and we do get those kinds of things here’) or major games shows will interrupt this weekly schedule. However, most weeks until gold you’ll see a diary from me.
Well first up, those of you with a keen eye for detail will have seen that this is not Johan posting, so who the hell am I? I am Chris King and I am the designer for Victoria 2. I joined Paradox three and half years ago and my first project was Victoria Revolutions. Victoria has always had a special place in my heart because of that. In a fit of honesty I must say that although I am credited designer, it does not logically follow that everything you see in the game is my idea. Game design is very much a collaborative work and the whole team pitches in at various points. Still the joy of the credit for game design means you end up being the poor guy who has to write everything down. So that’s why it has fallen to me to write the developer diaries.
So the first question you must all be wondering, why Victoria 2? It is probably no secret that Victoria was not Paradox’s most commercially successful title. Which did make it less likely to become a sequel that some of our more popular titles. However, here we are doing a sequel.
There are two main reasons for this, first up was Victoria Revolutions. Now it itself it wasn’t a blockbuster, those of you who follow game sales charts will notice it wasn’t quite able to shift games like World of Warcraft or the Sims of the top of the charts, but as an expansion it had its following. So one idea bounced around was a second expansion to Victoria and ideas were generated. All this came to nought because as a company we decided to not work with the old engine again, but the ideas remained.
Meanwhile the new engine is cranking out games and the code base for the new engine is steadily expanding. With this foundation projects that we did not consider possible a few years ago suddenly became doable. So when it came to decide which game to do after Hearts of Iron 3, there were these ideas sitting around for an expansion to Victoria. These ideas looked pretty cool but more was going to be needed. However, here was the kernel of what we believe is a great game. The rest is history.
Traditionally dev diaries usually include screenshots, but this one sadly doesn’t. For those of you who can’t be bothered to read long developer ego stroking posts and just want to look at the pictures here are some sprites. These are just a small selection of the final in game sprites; we will unveil more as we go through development.
Well first up, those of you with a keen eye for detail will have seen that this is not Johan posting, so who the hell am I? I am Chris King and I am the designer for Victoria 2. I joined Paradox three and half years ago and my first project was Victoria Revolutions. Victoria has always had a special place in my heart because of that. In a fit of honesty I must say that although I am credited designer, it does not logically follow that everything you see in the game is my idea. Game design is very much a collaborative work and the whole team pitches in at various points. Still the joy of the credit for game design means you end up being the poor guy who has to write everything down. So that’s why it has fallen to me to write the developer diaries.
So the first question you must all be wondering, why Victoria 2? It is probably no secret that Victoria was not Paradox’s most commercially successful title. Which did make it less likely to become a sequel that some of our more popular titles. However, here we are doing a sequel.
There are two main reasons for this, first up was Victoria Revolutions. Now it itself it wasn’t a blockbuster, those of you who follow game sales charts will notice it wasn’t quite able to shift games like World of Warcraft or the Sims of the top of the charts, but as an expansion it had its following. So one idea bounced around was a second expansion to Victoria and ideas were generated. All this came to nought because as a company we decided to not work with the old engine again, but the ideas remained.
Meanwhile the new engine is cranking out games and the code base for the new engine is steadily expanding. With this foundation projects that we did not consider possible a few years ago suddenly became doable. So when it came to decide which game to do after Hearts of Iron 3, there were these ideas sitting around for an expansion to Victoria. These ideas looked pretty cool but more was going to be needed. However, here was the kernel of what we believe is a great game. The rest is history.
Traditionally dev diaries usually include screenshots, but this one sadly doesn’t. For those of you who can’t be bothered to read long developer ego stroking posts and just want to look at the pictures here are some sprites. These are just a small selection of the final in game sprites; we will unveil more as we go through development.
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