Hello all! KimchiViking here. New Project Lead for HOI4. As podcat mentioned in his Dev Diary last Friday; we're going to do these DD's on Wednesdays from now on. Starting with a presentation of the team, as it is right now. Currently the team is comprised by members from Sweden, Denmark, Russia and Belarus. Which means that if you walk into our section of the Paradox offices, here in Stockholm, you are likely to hear a garbled mix of English, Scandinavian and Russian. And yes, our walls are full of war propaganda posters. People keep toy tanks on their desks. Just how you always imagined it, right? ;) More people are joining us soon. However, without further ado. This is the HOI4 team as it looks right now. In alphabetical order…

• Your name: Carl
• Your forum name: SteelVolt
• How long you've been on the team: Since August 2014
• Role on the team: AI design/AI programmer
• A brief explanation on what your role means: Together with the responsible game designer I design how the AI should behave and is the responsible for the technical design for the AI. I am also the primary programmer to implement these designs.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: One of my favourite HoI4 AI moment was probably a while back in development when nuke missions were basically set up like regular strategic bombing missions. The AI had not yet been made to construct or use nukes. One day another person in the studio came to me and told me the AI had nuked them. After asking a few questions it became clear that the player had built nuclear powerplants in locations which had then been taken over by the AI who was not really aware of the extra...umpf, it was packing in to its strategic bombing runs against the player.

• Your name: Dan
• Your forum name: Podcat
• How long you've been on the team: Since the project started development (so after summer 2013 or so if I recall), but I also worked on HOI3 and its expansions.
• Role on the team: Game Director
• Brief explanation on what that role means: I'm in charge of the overall design vision and direction of Hearts of Iron. Designing expansions, writing dev diaries (except today, ha!) and having opinions on everything :)
• Something you want to share with the forumites: I keep hassling the company to squeeze buying a real tank into the PR budget. Sometimes I even think I've convinced Fredrik :D

• Your name: Filippa
• Your forum name: Distantaziq
• How long you've been on the team: May 2015
• Role on the team: Embedded QA
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Assessing risks with changes, assessing the risks of new issues uncovered in the game, testing mechanics to make sure the game functions under certain conditions
• Something you want to share with the forumites: One of my personal favorite moments - when we got the letter from a fan who suffered from depression and found some relief in playing our PDX games. And also the photoshopped image of Da9l for the Hungary Games. That was hilarious. (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/world-war-wednesday-today-13th-14-30cest.920353/)

• Your name: Ilya
• Your forum name: ARMORIOS
• How long you've been on the team: More than 1.5 years
• Role on the team: Gameplay Programmer
• Brief explanation on what that role means: I do coding of almost everything in the game.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: I have to share it openly: I love the Hearts of Iron-series! :) It was one of my favourite PDX titles since HOI2 vanilla. It was great honor for me to put my hands on the development of new iteration of this amazing World War II game. Also my Russian background means that everything connected to this historical period is close to my heart. I see it as my duty to deliver the best gameplay experience in this WW2 setting. Salute!

• Your name: Jakob
• Your forum name: Havebeard
• How long you've been on the team: Since May '15
• Role on the team: Content Designer and Technical Scripter
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Adding triggers and effects to the scripting language. Research, writing and implementation of focus trees, events and all the other tiny bits and pieces that make up the game.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: Until fairly late in the beta Jakob was a max skill general with all traits. Unfortunately someone picked up on it when Denmark kept doing better than expected in the test games.

• Name: Jonas
• Forum name: Mrop
• How long you've been on the team: A few months
• Role on the team: UX designer
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Hello! I'm the UX Designer for Hearts of Iron 4. This means I decide where to put buttons. More broadly, I decide what buttons should exist, if they should even be buttons, or if we should even have buttons in the first place! I have only been with HoI for a few months, so most of my time has been spent on the first DLC. I also work on Europa Universalis 4, Tiberius, and Caligula.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: My proudest achievement for HoI so far was when I added a test DLC that replaced Hitler with an anime girl.

• Name: Mats
• Forum name: Sideburnout
• How long you've been on the team: Sep 2013
• Role on the team: Artist
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Making 2d art and implementing them into the game, ranging from the tiniest icon to the cover! Also the fonts, I hate fonts.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: Errordawg is one of my greatest creations so far ;), I think he made it into the game thanks to Darkrenown who was kinda fed up with all our cat aficionados and I couldn’t agree more. Whenever Podcat mentions getting dogs into the game I put everything else aside and abide. We do use errordog and major console dog emojis btw.

• Your name: Rufus
• Your forum name: Omghax
• How long you've been on the team: On and off since february. Permanently since August.
• Role on the team: QA tester
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Trying to ensure we ship the best possible product by identifying issues early and ensuring they've been addressed before release. Also bug forum liason.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: Scientists seem to be attracted to PDX like flies to honey. As I left behind a masters in molecular biology to come work here and our team also includes a nuclear physicist and Physical Geographer. Makes one wonder if we're branching out in unexpected directions.

• Your name: Sergey
• Your forum name: quarz
• How long you've been on the team: Less than a month
• Role on the team: Programmer
• A brief explanation on what your role means: Implementation of gameplay features, bug fixes, optimization

• Your name: Sofia
• Your forum name: KimchiViking
• How long you've been on the team: Came aboard after the HOI4-release, in June, this year.
• Role on the team: Project Lead
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Out of the mountain of work we have in the backlog; I make sure that the team knows what to work on and by when. So that we can squeeze the most possible value into the game, given the limited time and manpower we have at our disposal.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: I’m the sort of person who always likes to test the limits of what a game can do. The possibilities in HOI4 boggles the mind! Playing Germany, right now, I envision it as if I'm enabling Rutger Hauer, by creating my own personal version of the movie “Fatherland”.

• Name: Tomasz
• Forum name: TomaszKowalczyk :)
• How long been in the team: Since 2012
• Role on the team: Senior programmer, Tech lead
• Brief explanation on what that role means: Coding in new features, according to given fancy design, and bug-fixing of all kinds. Also fixing game-performance and stability issues. Responsible for the overall code quality written by the team.
• Something you want to share with the forumites: Our team is arming up with Nerf Guns. Should I be worried? o(^_^)o