What has been the most difficult task to accomplish during the development of Hearts of Iron 2?

- Ohh, good question. I think that dealing with the scenario of Argentina and Brazil was the most difficult one. It was difficult because I did not orginally build this scenario and the one building it had thought in a certain way and also not thought of certain conditions. This rendered the scenario more or less impossible to play during the beta stage and it was very difficult to get it right, much depending on the fact that the scenario only included South America. The idea is to produce units during these four years but this gets quite difficult when you don't have the entire world to trade with. This means that one would have to make Argentina get, during the first year, enough resources each month and to balance these things are really tough, but we pulled it off.

Have you experienced any problems in regards to online cheating amongst players?

- No it's very tough to cheat in this game. I personally don't know of anything, but then on the other hand there are players who learn to take advantage of the system, but that I like.

There has been FPS games which have been used for educational purposes, like Delta Force. Could you consider having Hearts of Iron 2 used in these sorts of educations and if yes, which ones?

- Yes absolutely, that could be done. Many of our games have been used for this. I have for example been talking with a professor in Kentucky who has been using Hearts of Iron 1 and European Universalis in his education in the University. Mostly he was interested in looking at what happens when the relation between two countries break. It is kind of funny, but it's also possible to see how the second World War developed. You can see how things would have turned out if Poland would have acted differently. I think that considering the way the AI is constructed and if you're playing Poland and would make an effort in avoiding a conflict with Germany, which might be very difficult but it can be done, it is quite likely that you would instead be attacked by the Soviet Union. It is these things that I find interesting, which are closely linked to those people that have been working on the AI and how they have used the different parameters available for the AI. The parameters are scriptable, which enables you to create your own files. You could for example make a German AI-file which says that if things turn out for the worse in the Soviet Union troops should be withdrawn and stay withdrawn and instead send submarines. As you can see, creating these files makes it possible to change the AI completely.

With your background as a professional military officer, could you imagine Hearts of Iron 2 to be used in the education of the university of military or something similiar?

- Yes surely it could be used for that, but the problem is that the military has a different view on war games than what we have. To the military a war game should contain real solutions, if there are three ways to attack a country there are only one correct way and the other would be bad. Personally I think this is wrong, it's a hertiage from the 19th century. They have however started to realize on a lower level that Counter-Strike clones and other such games are possible to use. As you probably know, it's a slow organization which is something we show in all of our games.

You will incorporate cooperative into Hearts of Iron 2, how will this work?

- Well, if you (Simon) and I play as USA against you (John) who plays as Japan. Then you and I will enter the game. You can move whatever units you like and I can do the same thing, but should you move one unit away from one province I can just as quick move it back. Should you start to construct an aircraft carrier then I could also cancel it. If you move something down I can move it up. This means that we have to communicate, divide whatever needs to be done. You could for example control the western part and I take the eastern part, and since there is little to do on the east I could also manage the production. Then you'll simply have to tell me what you need and I'll try and keep track of your progress and forsee your needs.

According to your own statement you've been playing the game a lot in the office, but who is the best? Do you have a real general?

- Ohhh yeah! His name is Jonas and he's one of the programmers, he is the best according to me.

What about yourself?

- Ehm, I'd rather not play these games multiplayer. Well, sure occationally I do, but I'm actually not that good with these kinds of games.

The console market is growing bigger and bigger, do you think that strategy games will get a bigger market share in the future?

- That's a tough question. I don't really see why a person buying a console would not want to play strategy games, but only FPS. Furthermore I think that it could be interesting for a potential buyer that the game will guarantee less bugs.

Is this something you've been discussing?

- Perhaps we have, me myself have however not been involved in such a discussion.

Do you acknowledge what's being written about your games, both in reviews and previews? Has this influenced the development or is it only through feedback from players around the world?

- Usually what's being said in a review is stuff we already know about.

In other words you don't spend any time reading reviews and think about what you could have done differently?

- No, it's not really that strange. Thing is that you who writes these reviews or previews do this in a limited amount of days. Compare this to a guy studying law and finds this incredibly boring and instead spends his days playing. We have many people continually giving feedback so it really isn't that strange that things written in reviews and previews aren't new to us. Of course, evey now and then there will be something which we have not thought about, this however is not an every day thing. It is however very important to the consumer because it put preassure on us which is good.