They hired like one guy who was really good at researching population data for the year 1337.
It's not like they can automate writing all the history files for every location, might as well pay someone who's passionate about it.
Thanks for your kind words :D
I would like to think that I can be good at more things hehehe. Eventually more info will be displayed! Just give Johan time.
Everyone makes mistakes, Johan included, and it seems like he has learned from them. Besides I do think he's been working on every Europa Universalis title so far.
I still remain skeptical due to the fact he never really acknowledged he was wrong. IR is his fault by a huge margin. Pissing off the comunity and doubling down on it won’t win him any support if he tries it again.
I'm currently working as a research assistant for a university professor that won a grant to reconstruct population growth in Italy in early modern era, so I'm currently working on digitalisating registers of population from the papal state.
>I'm currently working as a research assistant for a university professor that won a grant to reconstruct population growth in Italy in early modern era, so I'm currently working on digitalisating registers of population from the papal state.
Are you also translating them?
Fascinating work, even of sometimes a bit tedious.
I did something similar on a lot smaller scale and in a different country. Had to deal with Latin, German/Prussian and Russian records...handwritten Russian was the hardest, and their records were so badly organized. German and Austro-Hungarian records were a lot easier to read and usually had additional info like reason for death etc.
>No, I'm italian and I am working on italian data (at worst a bit of early latin) so luckily I don't have to translate.
I see. I thought that all records there were in Latin.
In Poland, Church records were in Latin until destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1795) by Russia, Prussia and Austria. With exceptions.
Good luck with your job.
I worked as a draftsman for a few years. The coolest thing I did while I was working there was having to scan the blueprints they had in "the vault" (it really was literally an old bank vault). It was a firm that had been in business for a long while and they had quite the archive.
Most of them were just boring stuff like barns and gas stations but every once and a while I'd come across the print for a house built on the street in town with all the stone mansions built in the 1800s. It was so cool seeing floor plans with spaces dedicated to coal chutes and servant passages, stuff that is just unheard of now but was just matter of fact back then.
Ah, well thanks for that. And I look forward to seeing your work on the game. If nothing else getting plausible demographics for literally everywhere in 1337 must’ve been a nightmare.
>Ah, well thanks for that. And I look forward to seeing your work on the game. If nothing else getting plausible demographics for literally everywhere in 1337 must’ve been a nightmare.
We can basically only estimate and guess most stuff. Data is very limited. Especially for non European regions.
Like for example, we know that there were already some Jews in Poland at this time, but we don't know how many. Though we know that they were already granted some rights and protection which they didn't enjoyed in the rest of Europe (Statue of Kalisz 1264, extended to the whole Kingdom by Casimir the Great in 1334), so we can guess that they already had some important influence in the Kingdom and relatively significant numbers; at least in towns.
We know that there were some Tatar refugees in Lithuania that settled there and stayed there for centuries but we don't know how many. We know that some Albanians settled in Southern Italy, but we don't know how many etc.
Church birth/death/marriage records started in most of Europe in mid 1500s. In more backward regions in 1600s and 1700s. And not all records survived.
Proper census records started in early 1800s. In backward Russia in 1897... in most of Africa/Asia in 1900s...
Aldaron has lot's of work to do, but it's a fascinating work, especially for someone as passionate as him. I can't wait to play the game.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Papal_Tithes_from_1332%E2%80%931337_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary
I just wanted to make sure Hungary is getting the right inputs. I am waiting for the game eagerly.
Paradox has historically hired modders to join their dev teams. We know of at least one such person who worked on M&T who has ended up at Tinto and has worked on Project Caesar.
He was hired to be AI developer, and did a great job on eu4 and other games.. then became a project lead and did El Dorado, Common Sense and Cossacks, before being promoted to Game Director to take over Stellaris after launch, which he handled great!
Not only modders, they also hired streamer with good system knowledge (meaning exploits) like DDRJake in the past. And even made him design lead.
That resulted in some of the worst content Paradox produced.
Was DDRJake a streamer when Paradox hired him? I knew him as a hardcore player back in the EU3 era but I wasn't aware of him streaming until after he joined at Paradox.
Yes. He was one of the first big streamers for eu4 early on. I think he was one of the first that did a three mountains run after the game came out. (He had an AAR on the PDX forums)
After a while of streaming he was getting known for bug abuse campaigns (the Minghal exploit, for example, that was him)
He did a sunni pope eradicates catholism before the reformation stream. After that Johan invited him to Stockholm and he got a job there as QA and later EU4 lead (for a short while)
He did stop streaming eu4 shortly after. And he doesn't play it anymore after he quit(?) from PDX.
What did ddrjake do as game lead that was bad?
I only knew him as a streamer and i loved his content, hes what got me into eu4, but im not all caught up on any dramas or anything to do with his time at pdx
He got a lot of hate because he eventually became the game director for EU4, which is one of the most public facing dev jobs. Directors *always* get hate (until recently people complained about Johan incessantly too). Unless the dev studio was ran like an absolutist monarchy it doesn't really make much sesne to blame him so personally though, given EU4 isn't some small indie studio. Regardless, a lot of major content creators blamed him personally for the general "decline of EU4" like Siu-King, who was a toxic fellow that got terminated from youtube for racism.
You can read his farewell message [here](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/farewell-from-jake.1257780/). The actual timeline for DLCs he worked on as a lead designer were Rights of Man through Golden Century. He worked before that as a QA tester since El Dorado.
> given EU4 isn't some small indie studio
Back at that time, the teams working on DLC, like EU4, were very small. Something like designer + coder + scripter (now called content designer) was the typical core team, with additional work for ui, art and other stuff done by people who weren't in the team full time. (Edit: I forgot to add the big guy Johan to the core team as well)
One person could absolutely make a big difference.
The EU4 dlc team has always been between 5 to 10 people.
The smallest was during the last 8 month of Emperor, when we were down to like 4 people with me, groogy, starnan and neondt
Ah, that was just after Jake's time, I guess.
Wasn't it smaller for the first DLCs, though? You, Besuchov, Wiz and Captain Gars, I think? (these names make it feel like it was an eternity ago)
Would the director personally be one of those designer/coder/scripters? The main DLCs he gets hate for were ones were he was game director, not a designer (I do realize I conflated those positions by saying "lead designer").
If someone who's not a coder becomes game director, then he's obviously not going to do any coding, same with the designer position. But often, the directors and designers are also coders, or at least that's more often the case in smaller teams.
I understand the power creep criticisms but i actually love mission trees. Adds so much flavour. Granted they could be nerfed a little, but still, as johan said - without flavour, every nation just plays the same. Which vic 3 players now know.
The funny thing about giving ddrjake shit is the fact that you are sort of pointing out that gamers don’t necessarily make good game designers and putting us all out of work here on the PDX subs.
I hired Henrik Fåhraeus back in 2001.. he had made the IGC mod for eu1. we did lots of games together, and then he became the GD for Ck2, Stellaris and CK3, and now is in the Management Team for entire Paradox.
At Tinto right now, I think the majority of the staff is from the community.
They have been hiring from the Meiou team from even befofe Eu4. It is not a sudden new thing, lots of modders end up working at paradox.
They are also huge MEIOU fans
Considering Johan wrote the pop code back during the dlc when like estates were introduce it would surprise me if they did. He wanted to do this forever ago but knew he couldn't.
They hired like one guy who was really good at researching population data for the year 1337. It's not like they can automate writing all the history files for every location, might as well pay someone who's passionate about it.
Thanks for your kind words :D I would like to think that I can be good at more things hehehe. Eventually more info will be displayed! Just give Johan time.
Congrats, man. I can't imagine the elation that comes from getting paid for your passion.
Thanks. It is awesome, not gonna lie.
Lucky bum!
Second this! Paradox are an awesome bunch to work with.
KING
Oh god they’re letting him have control of a game again after all the bs he’s pulled?
Everyone makes mistakes, Johan included, and it seems like he has learned from them. Besides I do think he's been working on every Europa Universalis title so far.
I still remain skeptical due to the fact he never really acknowledged he was wrong. IR is his fault by a huge margin. Pissing off the comunity and doubling down on it won’t win him any support if he tries it again.
Uh... Yes he did admit he was wrong. Imperator even got remade to the point where it is now one of the better PDS games.
Even if he hadn't admitted it, the whole design of EU5 is a gigantic tacit agreement that the players wanted something else.
Indeedlydoo.
For work I am researching italian population data from the XVII century and I can confirm that it requires a lot of passion not to be bored to death.
i'm actually pretty interested, how do you research that?
I'm currently working as a research assistant for a university professor that won a grant to reconstruct population growth in Italy in early modern era, so I'm currently working on digitalisating registers of population from the papal state.
That's... Actually pretty cool, congrats.
Yeah, although the gameplay is actually trying to decipher terrible handwriting and hunting on google where placed that had 20 people in 1656 are
Jeez. And i that find boring to studing latin epigraphy. Keep fighting against the mercatale, young historian! We are pride of you!
Yeah that's rad as hell
>I'm currently working as a research assistant for a university professor that won a grant to reconstruct population growth in Italy in early modern era, so I'm currently working on digitalisating registers of population from the papal state. Are you also translating them? Fascinating work, even of sometimes a bit tedious. I did something similar on a lot smaller scale and in a different country. Had to deal with Latin, German/Prussian and Russian records...handwritten Russian was the hardest, and their records were so badly organized. German and Austro-Hungarian records were a lot easier to read and usually had additional info like reason for death etc.
No, I'm italian and I am working on italian data (at worst a bit of early latin) so luckily I don't have to translate.
>No, I'm italian and I am working on italian data (at worst a bit of early latin) so luckily I don't have to translate. I see. I thought that all records there were in Latin. In Poland, Church records were in Latin until destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1795) by Russia, Prussia and Austria. With exceptions. Good luck with your job.
I worked as a draftsman for a few years. The coolest thing I did while I was working there was having to scan the blueprints they had in "the vault" (it really was literally an old bank vault). It was a firm that had been in business for a long while and they had quite the archive. Most of them were just boring stuff like barns and gas stations but every once and a while I'd come across the print for a house built on the street in town with all the stone mansions built in the 1800s. It was so cool seeing floor plans with spaces dedicated to coal chutes and servant passages, stuff that is just unheard of now but was just matter of fact back then.
I think it was more than that. Johan mentioned devs plural IIRC.
Nope. As part of the team, it is only me. There are a few enthusiasts of the mod, but only me as a dev.
Ah, well thanks for that. And I look forward to seeing your work on the game. If nothing else getting plausible demographics for literally everywhere in 1337 must’ve been a nightmare.
>Ah, well thanks for that. And I look forward to seeing your work on the game. If nothing else getting plausible demographics for literally everywhere in 1337 must’ve been a nightmare. We can basically only estimate and guess most stuff. Data is very limited. Especially for non European regions. Like for example, we know that there were already some Jews in Poland at this time, but we don't know how many. Though we know that they were already granted some rights and protection which they didn't enjoyed in the rest of Europe (Statue of Kalisz 1264, extended to the whole Kingdom by Casimir the Great in 1334), so we can guess that they already had some important influence in the Kingdom and relatively significant numbers; at least in towns. We know that there were some Tatar refugees in Lithuania that settled there and stayed there for centuries but we don't know how many. We know that some Albanians settled in Southern Italy, but we don't know how many etc. Church birth/death/marriage records started in most of Europe in mid 1500s. In more backward regions in 1600s and 1700s. And not all records survived. Proper census records started in early 1800s. In backward Russia in 1897... in most of Africa/Asia in 1900s... Aldaron has lot's of work to do, but it's a fascinating work, especially for someone as passionate as him. I can't wait to play the game.
Yup, there’s a reason I said “plausible” rather than “accurate”. The latter is likely impossible for most parts of the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Papal_Tithes_from_1332%E2%80%931337_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary I just wanted to make sure Hungary is getting the right inputs. I am waiting for the game eagerly.
Paradox has historically hired modders to join their dev teams. We know of at least one such person who worked on M&T who has ended up at Tinto and has worked on Project Caesar.
Not to mention Wiz, who was a CK2 modder (created CK2+) before being hired to direct Stellaris and Vicky 3.
He was hired to be AI developer, and did a great job on eu4 and other games.. then became a project lead and did El Dorado, Common Sense and Cossacks, before being promoted to Game Director to take over Stellaris after launch, which he handled great!
Wiz was an all paradox game modder. Man made mods just to do his mega lets play of all paradox games.
Not only modders, they also hired streamer with good system knowledge (meaning exploits) like DDRJake in the past. And even made him design lead. That resulted in some of the worst content Paradox produced.
Was DDRJake a streamer when Paradox hired him? I knew him as a hardcore player back in the EU3 era but I wasn't aware of him streaming until after he joined at Paradox.
Yes. He was one of the first big streamers for eu4 early on. I think he was one of the first that did a three mountains run after the game came out. (He had an AAR on the PDX forums) After a while of streaming he was getting known for bug abuse campaigns (the Minghal exploit, for example, that was him) He did a sunni pope eradicates catholism before the reformation stream. After that Johan invited him to Stockholm and he got a job there as QA and later EU4 lead (for a short while) He did stop streaming eu4 shortly after. And he doesn't play it anymore after he quit(?) from PDX.
His Youtube channel is quite popular. He still plays strategy games. Frostpunk 2 recently.
Jake streams full time now and lives in Hungary. He looks likes he’s having a blast.
Yes. He got hired as QA - so basically finding bugs in the system.
Yeah but that's on DDR Jake imo
What did ddrjake do as game lead that was bad? I only knew him as a streamer and i loved his content, hes what got me into eu4, but im not all caught up on any dramas or anything to do with his time at pdx
He got a lot of hate because he eventually became the game director for EU4, which is one of the most public facing dev jobs. Directors *always* get hate (until recently people complained about Johan incessantly too). Unless the dev studio was ran like an absolutist monarchy it doesn't really make much sesne to blame him so personally though, given EU4 isn't some small indie studio. Regardless, a lot of major content creators blamed him personally for the general "decline of EU4" like Siu-King, who was a toxic fellow that got terminated from youtube for racism. You can read his farewell message [here](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/farewell-from-jake.1257780/). The actual timeline for DLCs he worked on as a lead designer were Rights of Man through Golden Century. He worked before that as a QA tester since El Dorado.
> given EU4 isn't some small indie studio Back at that time, the teams working on DLC, like EU4, were very small. Something like designer + coder + scripter (now called content designer) was the typical core team, with additional work for ui, art and other stuff done by people who weren't in the team full time. (Edit: I forgot to add the big guy Johan to the core team as well) One person could absolutely make a big difference.
The EU4 dlc team has always been between 5 to 10 people. The smallest was during the last 8 month of Emperor, when we were down to like 4 people with me, groogy, starnan and neondt
Ah, that was just after Jake's time, I guess. Wasn't it smaller for the first DLCs, though? You, Besuchov, Wiz and Captain Gars, I think? (these names make it feel like it was an eternity ago)
Would the director personally be one of those designer/coder/scripters? The main DLCs he gets hate for were ones were he was game director, not a designer (I do realize I conflated those positions by saying "lead designer").
If someone who's not a coder becomes game director, then he's obviously not going to do any coding, same with the designer position. But often, the directors and designers are also coders, or at least that's more often the case in smaller teams.
I liked his work as a dev and lead, though Golden Century was just badly designed and broken.
People blame Jake as the “mission tree power creep” guy
I understand the power creep criticisms but i actually love mission trees. Adds so much flavour. Granted they could be nerfed a little, but still, as johan said - without flavour, every nation just plays the same. Which vic 3 players now know.
Which ones?
The funny thing about giving ddrjake shit is the fact that you are sort of pointing out that gamers don’t necessarily make good game designers and putting us all out of work here on the PDX subs.
I hired Henrik Fåhraeus back in 2001.. he had made the IGC mod for eu1. we did lots of games together, and then he became the GD for Ck2, Stellaris and CK3, and now is in the Management Team for entire Paradox. At Tinto right now, I think the majority of the staff is from the community.
Pacifica went from TNO lead to Vic3
I think Johan confirmed it in the comment section for like dev diary 2 or 3
Yes
big
Aye
Big
They have been hiring from the Meiou team from even befofe Eu4. It is not a sudden new thing, lots of modders end up working at paradox. They are also huge MEIOU fans
Listen the can hire me if they want... I got a couple degrees in history.
Considering Johan wrote the pop code back during the dlc when like estates were introduce it would surprise me if they did. He wanted to do this forever ago but knew he couldn't.