I kept it off this blog for the sake of decorum when it happened, but I squeed like a teenage fan girl reading a fifty-chapter Sephiroth/Naruto/Sonic the Hedgehog slashfic when I learned a few weeks ago that Paradox Interactive was actually making a sequel to Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun, one of my all-time favorite strategy games. Paradox head honcho Fredrik Wester was convinced to approve the project by Paradox lead programmer Johan Andersson after the Paradox forum community clamored for it. Wester has said that he does not expect Victoria II to turn a profit, citing the catastrophic, Hindenburgesque launch of the original Victoria, and has said that he will shave his head if proven wrong.
I actually know a guy who lost his hair in a bet. A few years back, he vowed- presumably while drunk or in the grip of some sort of sanity-blasting psionic mental assault- to shave his head if his beloved Chicago Cubs didn’t win the World Series. If you have even a passing knowledge of baseball, you know that’s sort of like saying that this is the year the entire United States Marine Corps will be vanquished on the field of battle by Steve Urkel from Family Matters, so you can imagine how that turned out. He’s always had a soft sort of appearance, so the shaved really didn’t work for him; the first time I saw him post-shearing, it was as if Winnie the Pooh had joined the Aryan Brotherhood.
Sadly, I have to say I share Wester’s pessimism; the fanbase for intimidatingly complex historical grand strategy games with a focus on economics and industrial development named after notoriously prudish British heads of state is a devoted one, but it’s not terribly large. (Which I can only assume to be the reason Paradox has thus far shown no interest in my design document for Cromwell: A Short-Lived Theocratic Commonwealth Under the Sun. Some day...) I certainly hope I’m mistaken, though, and I’m looking forward to it.
