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Capitalist Pig Dogs (NATO Nations)

33 (24.1%)

Communist Infiltrator Scum (Warsaw Pact Nations)

43 (31.4%)

Totally Irrelevant Losers (Non-Aligned Nations)

61 (44.5%)

Total Members Voted: 137

[Culise]

They're the development studio.

Not precisely, or at least, not with these games.  East vs. West was the last of the games that was to be created using a licensed version of their older EU engine, provided by Paradox to development teams created by fans who had a good game proposal that they were willing to work on, back when they were making their earliest forays into game publishing as Paradox Interactive (before the division between Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development).  Precisely three of these games made it to release - Darkest Hour (HoI2+), For the Glory (EU2+), and Arsenal of Democracy (also HoI2+).  Every other project foundered, Magna Mundi being the biggest such fiasco.  That said, the experience has apparently so soured Paradox that they've stopped licensing out their old engine altogether, to modders or otherwise, so we'll likely not see any more such cancellations.  Unfortunately, that also means we'll likely not see any more such projects along these lines unless PDS decides to do it in-house.

[MoLAoS]

Letting modders make games is a dumb idea and always has been. Even large devs working for major publishers have their games cancelled due to failing milestones and other roadblocks, so why anyone thinks that modders could be statistically successful at releasing games is beyond me.

[Xeron]

Why couldn't modders make games ?You have Darkest Hour,For the Glory and Arsenal of Democracy.Modders can make games and they can make them fucking better than Paradox.

[MoLAoS]

Why couldn't modders make games ?You have Darkest Hour,For the Glory and Arsenal of Democracy.Modders can make games and they can make them fucking better than Paradox.

Um, no? They couldn't make games at all if it weren't for Paradox. Those are essentially glorified mods. They lack significant differentiation from their base game, even discounting the fact that their creators are unable to create their own game engine at all. That is, I refer to their high level mechanics when I say they lack significant differentiation. Adding a crap ton of historical events, like For The Glory did is not game design. The other two you listed have similar issues.

At best you might call them fan made expansion packs or DLC or something. When games tried to stray further from the baseline Paradox game, as in the case of Magna Mundi, their development crashed and burned. This game looks like a similar example.

[Culise]

Letting modders make games is a dumb idea and always has been. Even large devs working for major publishers have their games cancelled due to failing milestones and other roadblocks, so why anyone thinks that modders could be statistically successful at releasing games is beyond me.

Eh, game designers have to start from somewhere, and modders at least know a bit about design, especially in the larger mods where they've essentially strapped the framework for another game over the top of the vanilla version.  I think the problem is that Paradox just underestimated the sheer amount of hate they would get for the projects that failed.  They've had significant successes in hiring individual employees from their modder community base (the most recent example I can think of is Wiz, from CK2 modding), so I suspect they just thought that setting up an entire development team would just be an extension on that.  In principle, it's not a terrible notion.  In practice, they ended up with "kids in a candy store," with feature creep combining with unanticipated delays to highlight the key difference between modding, where it's a very ad-hoc, time-independent system, and professional game development, where release dates are actually important. 

But I do agree that it is quite telling that the only three games that actually succeeded were basically "base game plus" versions.  Unambitious, with clear goals and only a moderate amount of effort needed that was within the scope of the available resources.  I would essentially characterize them as expansion packs rather than full games in themselves, for all that they're stand-alone. 

[MoLAoS]

Letting modders make games is a dumb idea and always has been. Even large devs working for major publishers have their games cancelled due to failing milestones and other roadblocks, so why anyone thinks that modders could be statistically successful at releasing games is beyond me.

Eh, game designers have to start from somewhere, and modders at least know a bit about design, especially in the larger mods where they've essentially strapped the framework for another game over the top of the vanilla version.  I think the problem is that Paradox just underestimated the sheer amount of hate they would get for the projects that failed.  They've had significant successes in hiring individual employees from their modder community base (the most recent example I can think of is Wiz, from CK2 modding), so I suspect they just thought that setting up an entire development team would just be an extension on that.  In principle, it's not a terrible notion.  In practice, they ended up with "kids in a candy store," with feature creep combining with unanticipated delays to highlight the key difference between modding, where it's a very ad-hoc, time-independent system, and professional game development, where release dates are actually important. 

But I do agree that it is quite telling that the only three games that actually succeeded were basically "base game plus" versions.  Unambitious, with clear goals and only a moderate amount of effort needed that was within the scope of the available resources.  I would essentially characterize them as expansion packs rather than full games in themselves, for all that they're stand-alone.

Yes, that's the main issue. Mods have a low bar for bugs, time spent per feature, and so forth. Especially since they are free you can justify a lot lower quality.

[Rakonas]

But that doesn't change the fact that Darkest Hour was a massive success. It's pretty commonly regarded as better than HoI3 even with expansions by many gamers. AoD was good but it was stupid to lease two different competing games out, and I think FTG was good but it's a tiny niche that most people aren't interested in.
There's no reason to conclude that leasing the engine to have modders make games is a bad idea considering what's been accomplished.

[darkflagrance]

Based on my lurking on the paradox forums, their fans appear to be virulent hateful and abusive for things they dislike, whether optional or not. Fear of the backlash appears to be a good potential reason for canceling.

[Gradiant]

Based on my lurking on the paradox forums, their fans appear to be virulent hateful and abusive for things they dislike, whether optional or not. Fear of the backlash appears to be a good potential reason for canceling.

[Guardian G.I.]

I'm gonna reanimate this dead thread with some breaking news:
An unknown person, presumably a disgruntled beta tester, has leaked a beta version of East vs. West dating back to February 2014 on 4chan.
The build features:

• Practically no completed events;
• Broken diplomacy system - apparently AI can't respond to diplomatic proposals, peace deals are not working properly;
• Broken multiplayer mode - MP events aren't sent to other players, etc;
• A 100% success rate for spies (debug?);
• A shitload of bugs, such as "CTD when building a ship" and "CTD during national elections".

A team of dedicated modders from /gsg/ has taken on a titanic task of fixing the game's bugs and making it playable, in spite of not having the game's source code.

Some screenshots made by me:

Spoiler: Loading screen (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The main menu (click to show/hide)

The "complete edition" mod is a mini mod by /gsg/ adding some historical events.

Spoiler: Choosing a nation. The Afghanistan War is the last starting date available - the Gulf War wasn't finished apparently (click to show/hide)

The portrait of long-serving leaders changes when you choose different starting dates, which is rather neat.

Spoiler: Countries leading military blocks are elected (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The politics screen (click to show/hide)

North Korean policies are best policies!

Spoiler: Spying missions screen (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The economy screen (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: There are no pictures for various large cities, like those present in Hearts of Iron games (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The intelligence screen (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The research screen (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Victory conditions (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The little 3d models for units haven't been finished too (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Some screens made by people from Reddit (click to show/hide)

[Bdthemag]

I've been following this since it was leaked, since I frequent /gsg/. It's obviously very rough and unplayable, but the base mechanics and ideas are theoretically sound. From the looks of it, it definitely could of been completed by the end of the year. The two main bugs seem to be troops not getting supplies (Since production of said supplies don't seem to work) and diplomacy not working, along with the AI not really interacting with each other. The most people can mod without access to the source code is half-fixes to these problems, I've already seen a fix in the works that makes alliances sort of work via events, but I wouldn't expect anything major.

At the most, this shows that EvW had some very, very sound ideas. It would of been a satisfying mix between Victoria 2 and the HoI series, and seeing this unfinished build just makes me more pissed off Paradox decided to cancel this, since they were apparently surprised that a modding team wasn't able to make a game as quickly and efficiently as they wanted to, even though they've experienced these issues in the past.

[LordSlowpoke]

ptw

tell me when i should look for fixes wink nudge

[Guardian G.I.]

ptw

tell me when i should look for fixes wink nudge

There are already some preliminary fixes available - find the /gsg/ thread on 4chan's Video Game Generals board to download them.
There won't be any major bugfixing until modders get to the source code, though.

[Bdthemag]

ptw

tell me when i should look for fixes wink nudge

There are already some preliminary fixes available - find the /gsg/ thread on 4chan's Video Game Generals board to download them.
There won't be any major bugfixing until modders get to the source code, though.

The fixes aren't numerous, and I'm still unsure of the "Complete Mod" that merges the mods present in the test build actually does anything.

[LordSlowpoke]

tbh the game would be playable if only it could load its own autosaves