The Struggle To Cram Game Of Thrones Inside A Video Game

It's not for want of trying. We've had three notable releases based on the series: a bad RTS, an average action game and an adventure series that was...fine. Nothing has come close to making the same impact on games as George R.R. Martin's saga has on other media, though.

To date, the best Game of Thrones video game experience hasn't been a standalone release at all, but a mod (casually known as AGOT) for Paradox's excellent Crusader Kings II, a PC strategy game that's as much about sex and intrigue as it is conquering armies.

CKII is notorious for its scope and detail, as players are able to fill the boots of any one of thousands of European nobles over a 700-year period. Between that and the tone you can see why the two properties are a good match.

And yet not even CKII has been able to contain the universe of Game of Thrones, whose epic journeys, warring factions and deep lore have been challenging the AGOT team for years now.

To get an idea of the struggles involved in trying to cram Martin's universe into a video game, I spoke with Matthew Clohessy, a man who has been on both side's of the project, first as a member of AGOT's core development team, and now as an employee of Paradox, the creators of Crusader Kings II.

"My role throughout most of AGOT's development has been general scripting and the implementation of various fun stuff that you see whenever you play", Clohessy tells Kotaku.

"In essence any decision you can click, event that pops up or piece of history that makes all the start dates lore accurate are things that there is a decent chance I have touched at some point or another whether it is implementing them, bug fixes or just a minor tweaks."

Clohessy worked on AGOT from 2013 until earlier this year, when he left the team to take part in an internship with Paradox while helping out on Jade Dragon, Crusader Kings II's latest big expansion. He's since moved from the UK to Sweden to take up a fulltime position at Paradox, where his experience with Westeros and CKII is being put to use as a Content Designer for the studio.

While we could have chatted about how amazing AGOT is, I've done that enough on this site, so instead I wanted to learn more about the ways in which Westeros couldn't be contained, even by a game that allows everything from Aztec invasions of Britain to incest to Horse Lords of Rome.

What have been the hardest things the AGOT team have had to try and stuff into Crusader Kings II's framework?

I would have to say one of the harder things in general is forcing certain characters to do things, like ensuring the members of the Kingsguard are always around the King. Same with the Night's Watch, it is playable, however it has many maintenance events to keep it working as the Night's Watch does in the lore, as the aim of CK2 has always been a dynastic game, and the Night's Watch does not care about dynasties when they elect their rulers.

The unique war system in the mod is also tricky, as it lets all the vassal lords become independent so as to choose sides, in a similar way to the War of the Five Kings. Once war ends the lords need to be remade into a vassal of their original lord, and sometimes that can go wrong.

Also the general tendency of characters to die a lot, be it through the player killing them or just randomness in the game, can break certain event chains. But that is also part of the fun, seeing what funny and interesting scenarios happen when a certain character dies and who rules what!

What are some of the compromises AGOT had to make when trying to carry ASOIAF's tone, history and themes into CKII?
There are some balance compromises that had to be made so that certain regions were not extremely strong compared to all the others.

We still do not have it perfect as some regions like Dorne -- who in the book's history managed to survive Aegon the Conquer's invasion with three dragons -- really struggles to do the same in AGOT, as there is no good way to model guerrilla warfare through the game's mechanics, so instead we had to try and buff them in other ways. But they are still easily defeated.

Other regions that are weaker as well include the Iron Isles, as there is no ship-to-ship combat in the game, so they have lots of ships but not many troops to actually ferry around with them.

The Wildlings are also a struggle to model accurately because they are extremely weak within the game's framework, as they are made up of very small lordships. If you do end up conquering them they have lots of revolts to free themselves, but these revolts have to be artificially increased in power so they are not just 300 men standing no chance against the Iron Throne.

How did you approach weaving the backstory of Westeros into the mod's starting points?
When placing the Lords and the titles they hold we always try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes we have to switch things around to fit the mechanics of the game, or just to not make it ridiculously unbalanced to play. For example the Reach should have more troops than they actually do, but they already have a huge amount, so giving them even more diminishes some of the enjoyment from fighting against them.

Of course there are some errors here and there, or guesses we made about certain things that then had to be updated as more information was released, with the official World of Ice and Fire book (released in 2014) being a prime example, as it shed light on many historical areas of the lore that we had previously made guesses on, or gave us information about the far off lands of Essos and what unique cultures and religions they have.