This week’s Dev Diary is directly from the top. Rikard Åslund, project lead on Stellaris, has been working at Paradox Development Studio since 2011 as a programmer — Rikard has moved from devoted work on Europa Universalis IV to full-time Stellaris goodness. This is an opportunity to understand the creative and productive forces behind one of the most anticipated strategy games of 2016.
The role of Rikard is twofold: setting a timetable for the host of programmers, artists, and designers to adhere to and, importantly, keeping within the budgetary restraints. Yet, Rikard is also the Tech Lead because of his prominent programme experience; the most working on Stellaris. I feel physically tired of you, Rikard.
Don’t worry, he’s not alone ” my team is so highly skilled, but it’s also hurtful since I love programming so much. Because of that, I still try to write a couple of lines of code every day, to keep my mind sane between all the different budget and time follow-up meetings”. [Source]
Rikard is devoted to three things: the game, his team, and the players. Two of which he gets to work with on a daily basis. At the moment, the team working on Stellaris believes that they are working on the best game that PDS has ever developed. The Sci-Fi theme is near and dear to the heart of the Stellaris team and it shows.
The team, with Rikard at the helm, is coming into serious crunch time as Stellaris is nearing towards to launch — and they feel it. Rikard has stated “With Stellaris I know in my heart that we have a really good product in our hands, I think the game would be really well received even if we released it tomorrow (no we won’t), but we are in no way done with this game. We have plans for working on this game for a really long time and I’m really looking forward to seeing how this game gets shaped by our players. I usually say that we probably don’t know exactly what Stellaris is until a year after release, I’m really looking forward to being along for that ride with you guys”.
So, what do you think about the project lead working on Stellaris? Let us know in the comments below.
