Universal controllers

In the years after it was founded in 1999, the Swedish video game company Paradox Interactive quietly built a reputation for developing some of the best, and most hardcore, strategy games on the market. “Deep, endless, complex, unyielding games,” is how Shams Jorjani, the company’s chief business development officer, describes Paradox’s offerings. Most of its biggest hits, such as the middle ages-themed Crusader Kings, or Sengoku, in which you play as a 16th-century Japanese noble, were loosely based on history.

But, in 2016, Paradox decided to try something different. Its new game, Stellaris, was a work of sprawling science fiction, set 200 years in the future. In this virtual universe, players could explore richly detailed galaxies, command their own fusion-powered starship fleets and fight with extraterrestrials to expand their empires. Gamers could choose to play as the human race, or one of many alien species. (My personal favourite dresses in a lavish golden cape and has a head like an otter’s, with soft reddish-brown fur, dark eyes and a black snout.)

The game was an instant hit. Paradox decided to take Stellaris to China. This would mean navigating the country’s notoriously tricky censorship rules but, given that China was, at the time, home to an estimated 560 million gamers, the commercial appeal was irresistible.

Paradox had been burned in China before. In 2004, the ministry of culture had banned another one of its releases, Hearts of Iron. It wasn’t hard to see why. Hearts of Iron was set during the second world war and touched on numerous sensitive issues – not least by portraying Tibet as a sovereign country. The Chinese ministry of culture accused the game of “distorting history and damaging China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”. (China argues that Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries.)

The company was not concerned about a repeat of 2004. Unlike Hearts of Iron, Stellaris was a game set in the distant future. Still, to help navigate the Chinese market, the developer partnered with the Chinese megacorp Tencent, the biggest game publisher in the world. As part of the deal, Tencent bought 5% of its shares. Paradox was so confident of success that in December 2016, it took the unusual step of announcing it would launch in China before a licence had been granted.

“From our perspective, it should have been problem-free because it doesn’t deal with any nations, Chinese or otherwise,” said Jorjani. It did not pan out that way. “Working through the ministry of culture, the censorship is not a super-clear process,” said Jorjani. “It’s a bit of a black box.” Five years after its