Strategy Informer: Hi! Please tell us with whom are we speaking with? What is your role in development of Victoria: Revolutions?
Chris King: Hi I am Chris King, Q & A Manger for Paradox Interactive. My main role was coordinating testing for Revolutions, but I was involved in a little bit of everything including the design and I even turned my hand to a little coding.
Strategy Informer: Fans of the original Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun will be pleased to know that the expansion is being released. What have you prepared for them? What is the story behind Victoria: Revolutions?
Chris King: Victoria itself has been released for 3 years now and in the time we’ve received a massive amount of feedback from our fans. Our goal with Revolutions is to bring Victoria to the next level by improving on the areas of the game that our fans felt were weakest. We’ve put a lot of thought into improving the game and we hope the fans enjoy it. I guess the idea of Revolutions came from the phenomenal success of the 1.04 patch. The Game had been out for a while, but time pressures meant that those little improvements we always want to make kept getting pushed back. When we finally released we saw just how many loyal fans the game had and felt we could do more with the game. The reason we went for an expansion rather than a patch was because we really wanted to do more that a little tinkering with the game, we wanted to give the fans the best game we could.
Strategy Informer: It is stated that the expansion will bring expanded tech tree. How many new technologies will there be in Revolutions?
Chris King: There are a total of 25 new techs in Revolutions, 5 in each of the tech areas. Each has it’s own effect to help make the post war years more interesting.
Strategy Informer: What has been done in terms of „revamping election and politics system“? What was your goal in implementing such changes?
Chris King: In the original Victoria an Election was something that happened and then the game just kept on going. Our goal in Revolutions was to make an election meaningful. Now with the new system the party you have in power will change the way you play the game. It means that your system of government is important, rather than going straight for democracy as a player remaining authoritarian is a real option as you can pick the party that suits your style of play the best. Also political options like banning parties is something that a player would want to consider using (certainly I have).
Another nice change we have made is how your population sees reforms. Now it is industrial workers who really want political and social reforms rather than the farmers and labourers. Delaying industrialisation can allow you to delay political reform, it is nice change that we think models the period more accurately.
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Strategy Informer: Also what can we expect from the new economic system?
Chris King: The new economic system is a mix of joy and frustration. Now that your Capitalists have a mind of their own and will build things for you, it can be a real joy to watch your rail network expand and new factories appear. However sometimes there is a factory you really want your Capitalists decide they do not want to build it then you are sitting bashing your head up against a wall. However such is the free market.
Strategy Informer: It will only be available via download at Gamergate.com? Will you have country restrictions for the download?
Chris King: Gamer’s gate is not country restricted; one of our goals with the portal is to make sure our games are available anywhere at any time. Releasing it as a download only has allowed us to release an expansion that was requested by the fans but probably would not have had the mass appeal that we require from our games that go onto retail shelves.
Strategy Informer: What other new releases can we expect to fetch via Gamersgate.com?
Chris King: Our next big release for Gamer’s Gate is Silent Heroes, the stand-alone expansion to Soldiers: Heroes of World War II" by Codemasters. That will release in the beginning of September.
Strategy Informer: That wraps our questions up. Anything to add?
Chris King: Victoria – Revolutions was released on Aug 17 and has in a few weeks already exceeded any expectations that we had for the title. In fact, the only major complaint we got from fans was that they thought it was way too cheap for its value at $9.99!
