Crystal Empire Games is a development studio created in June 2008 after the announcement of the Europa Engine Licensing Program by Paradox Interactive. The unique strength of this studio is that the members come from all around the world, joining their talents and experience in the long-term Europa Engine-based For the Glory project. Many team members have been active in the Paradox Interactive community for years, contributing mods and tools dedicated to the company’s games.

Our team:

Michael Myers aka MichaelM
Team Leader / Programmer — USA
Follow @mich_myers

Michael and his brother discovered EU2 in early 2003 while digging through the bargain bin of a local game shop looking for strategy games. They were both immediately hooked. Upon finding out that EU2 contained many modifiable script files, they set to work building their own mod, but found themselves repeatedly running up against limitations of the EU2 engine.

During university, Michael amused himself by writing small utilities to help parse or modify EU2’s files. When EU3 was released, he identified a gap in mod tooling and filled it with his “Clausewitz Scenario Editor”, which has since been downloaded over 140,000 times by modders of EU3, EU4, and newer Paradox titles.

But he wasn’t satisfied with the design direction of EU3 as compared to EU2. He returned to EU2 and wrote a program to generate HTML documentation of EU2’s often-complex event chains (the results of which can be browsed on this website and on AGCEEP.org), which is how he became acquainted with YodaMaster – one of the leaders of the popular AGCEEP mod. About that time, Paradox announced the Europa Engine Licensing Program and Michael immediately applied to join.

The rest is history.

During development of FTG 1.2, Michael became the de facto team leader and has led development for more than 14 years, through dozens of beta patches and to the final release of FTG 1.3. He currently works developing software tools for civil engineers, but he still can’t stop himself from constantly improving For the Glory whenever he has the time.

Kyle Haynes aka Garbon
Technical Advisor/ Scenario Design — USA

Kyle purchased EU2 when it first came out and fell in love. Interested in the game’s ability to portray history (and alternate history), he got involved in one of the early mod projects, the Events Exchange Project (EEP) and has been involved in modding ever since.

By trade he’s a market researcher and went to university to study psychology. His secret (or not so secret) passion has always been for history; spending a brief period at Oxford studying the life and times of Elizabeth I of England.

Joakim Spuller aka Birger
Interface Artist — Sweden

Joakim is an art director; making logos, graphical profiles, websites, print, etc by day and modding EU/Paradox graphics by night. He loves history which is exemplified by his hobby as a heraldic artist. He has been a part of Paradox universe since the days of Svea Rike, but the game that really made him a fan was, of course, Europa Universalis.

Over the years he’s been involved in several graphic mods, small and big ones, both for the EU series and other Paradox games. Being part of the FTG team allows him to give back something to the game and community that has provided him so much joy over the years. He is quite proud to be labeled a “Paradoxian”.

Jean-Marc Mussard aka Hildoceras
Beta Program Supervisor/ French Translator — France

Jean-Marc was a researcher in micropaleontology and more recently a network administrator. He greatly assisted the team to help in the last steps of the project before release; organizing the beta-testing in the infrastructure offered by Paradox. He also translated the game in French and quality controlled many of the tiny details.

His hobbies include Paradox Games since EU1 with days and weeks and months spent on EU2 and Doomsday. Willing to give back some of what Paradox Games offered him, he helped in several beta-tests, EU3 and add-ons and EU:Rome+Vae Victis. He has tinkered a bit with EU2, Railroad Tycoon 2 and the Operational Art of War, with modifications forthcoming.

Other major contributors

YodaMaster – Programmer/original team leader
BeBro – Graphics
Thrashing Mad – Graphics
Dietmar1982 – Additional programming
GeneralSnoopy – Additional programming
Wreck – Additional programming
mandead – Scenario design/scripting, French translation (1.3)
polak – French translation (1.3)

Many thanks to the AGCEEP High Council and the entire FtG/EU2 community!