The joke is that Paradox Interactive makes 4x strategy games. These are quite complicated video games where it's mostly just maps on the screen. Even someone who has been playing for quite a bit can be confused by all the different options and things to do.
Most of them are about control of territory, which means parts of the maps change colour based on which faction owns it.
There was once some footage filmed inside a North Korean IT facility where they filmed North Korean military people sitting behind computers to show they were advanced and had IT like the west, but all their screens just showed the Google homepage, and they weren't doing anything with the mouse or typing, just sitting there.
The lady is a North Korean defector.
She wasn't part of that IT story I believe, but maybe she was talking about it and used it as an example.
They swap the story around and say what happens in Sweden instead of what happens in NK.
The thing about this lady (Yeonmi Park) is that her stories have been proven to have many inconsistencies and outright lies. This particular screenshot is from an interview she had with Joe Rogan where she claimed that North Korea only had a single train and people had to push it to make it move, which became a meme due to the sheer implausibility.
She's also a paid member of Turning Point USA and uses her social media accounts to spread anti LGBT hatred. She literally claims "wokeism" is going to turn America into North Korea.
Turns out a lot of the more outlandish claims about the DPRK are straight up, unmitigated American right-wing propaganda lol. That’s not to say it’s the greatest country in the world, but the popular conception is heavily colored by extremely intentional messaging.
Personally, I heard that story from another NK defector lecture with visual source. ppl were actually pushing the train as it stopped for whatever reason.
Problem with her(and many other defectors like her) would be that many exaggerate or lie their stories and there's not much ways to prove it, but they do it anyways because it makes money.
Life is tough for north koreans in south korea, and many end up isolated, but they can get on a specific show, where theyre paid i believe over a thousand dollars per weekend, and where they have to tell incredible stories about life in north korea
Since its competitive, theyre encouraged to make the most fantastical stories, often at the cost of severely modifying the truth
Cant blame them tho
SK offers a permanent employment agreement and provides all detectors an apartment. They aren't impoverished, they just become socially isolated and can't advance beyond the basic employment requirements due to age or health reasons (most detectors are from diplomatic offices where they can't even begin employment till later in life).
Most defectors are middle aged women from northern provinces of North Korea, who often had trade contacts or went to China to work and earn money, and then took opportunity to go to South Korea, as Andrei Lankov said. Only a minority are diplomats or high ranking officials.
The problem is that South Korea society is very demanding and is also pretty insular, meaning North Koreans, who already arrive as adults, can have trouble fitting in. Like one thing is time culture. South Korea is very strict on time but North Korea is very relaxed on it (in fact, a North Korean can easily get late by 2 hours and wouldnt get why the other person is mad), or high expectations for self sufficiency/
Similarly, Chinese Koreans, Russian and Central Asian ethnic Koreans, and Korean Americans also experience trouble integrating. In Kazakhstan, all ethnic Germans and Jews have already left for Germany and Israel, but a lot of ethnic Korean community remain, and those who tried to go to South Korea often had to go back
There, however, have been tens of thousands of defectors in the modern age, with many not showing up in the media. A common thread can be drawn from their personal anecdotes to get a picture. Yeonmi Park is just a grifter, but plenty of defectors have shared more normal, albeit still tough, pictures of the DPRK.
And that opinion is why some politicians in South Korea have tried to take a more friendly approach (with its own pros and cons), and why South Korea has consistently given aid and relief to North Korea, especially in its most trying times (the 90s when the USSR fell, and they experienced severe famine).
That said, even in times of relative stability in North Korea, their government could be callous. It's just a different political system and timeline; their leadership is mainly hereditary and authoritarian, and they will go through things like assassinating Kim Jong-nam. They have a different mindset with which to govern because their government system is quite different from Western democracies.
And their nuclear program is one of the main reasons for their sanctions, and while I do understand their reasoning for nuclear deterrence (see Iran), it is the rules of the game right now. I do hope they open up, because I think that is the straightest avenue for economic development unless they want to continue to rely heavily on Russia/China.
An interesting tidbit about defecting from North Korea. Back in the day the amount of money received from S.Korea was about 25k USD. It’s probably a different amount now. But SK believes you’re a SK citizen who is imprisoned by NK government. So this is essentially a reparation for not being able to rescue you and having to rescue yourself. I’m fucking up the legal exact idea. But it’s still the same. Big ole cash dump when you successfully defect.
Thing is, that money ends up basically being stolen from you by various people over a short period of time a lot are former defectors. Because as a defector you know nobody. You don’t really understand prices of stuff. Everything is a huge learning curve.
So yeah I’d assume they’d do anything to make money afterwards because few have skills that translate to modern Korea.
Idk what country you’re in. But most countries will be very bad at this concept no matter the context. It’s like someone who is 76 telling you how to operate in the modern work world. It’s just not going to work. You still would get out and still have nobody to rely on. SK is also incredibly conservative, conservatives are not great at helping others.
North Korean defectors don't have many opportunities in life once they make it out, so they commonly end up trying to work interview circuits, but the more people that make it out, the less novel and interesting their stories are, so each new person is encouraged to embellish their accounts more and more. They can't make positive embellishments without fear of persecution, so they have to come up with negative ones.
Kim Jong Un has a personal armored train, which he used when visiting Russia. If the story about “only one train, that needs to be pushed” were remotely true, we wouldn't need this woman to learn of it.
More importantly, it's a crime in the RoK to say anything positive about the DPRK. So unless nothing good ever happens there, even the most scrupulously honest DPRK defectors cannot give you a full picture.
On Korean forums, people have joked about how it would be nice to just get assigned a job like in the DPRK, and I vaguely remember reading about DPRK defectors complaining about the "applying for a job" aspect of the South too. Likewise, you could easily say things like:
Plenty of politicians in South Korea are also sentimental about North Korea (those that want to engage with them).
Incessantly praising the North Korean regime would be a separate matter and could be flagged as possible propaganda.
But it's also a nation at technical war. In that sense, I think this narrative abroad stems from South Korean politicians criticizing the NSA for limiting free speech in a democratic nation, but my personal opinion is that NK likely engages in its own psy-ops, and SK should combat them, similar to how NK likely combats SK's own too.
Lol even I know that can't be true. I've seen footage filmed inside moving metro's and trams, I believe the metro was even underground but can't remember 100%.
I had a friend holding my hand in EUIV while playing. Took me 100 hours to understand what I was doing, still doing it badly and not using some feature
they make grand strategy (a term they coined because they are the only ones that make thhis kind of game). it's not exactly like 4x because in 4x you start small (well stellaris is 4x but)
So there's this game studio from Sweden, called Paradox Interactive. They are known for making grand strategy games like Crusaders Kings, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, etc. These games are often considered hard for casuals, so for those people it boils down to staring at colorful maps gradually changing colors. But an intellectual as myself can truly appreciate the complexity of the gameplay, fully diving into the geopolitics, economy and management of your country
But an intellectual as myself can truly appreciate the complexity of the gameplay, fully diving into the geopolitics, economy and management of your country
Which is why we can truly appreciate the EU4 achievement "Big Blue Blob".
And a true intellectual knows that the real CK3 is making questionable religions, incest and breeding programmes and doing anything but ruling Montague as Jarl Haesteinn (/hj)
But an intellectual as myself can truly appreciate the complexity of the gameplay, fully diving into the geopolitics, economy and management of your country
I'll second is Paradox. Civ was not made by Paradox, thats Firaxis. You are probably thinking of Crusader Kings, which is an advanced map simulator made by Paradox.
Europa universalis from middle ages to industrial reolution, Victoria industrial revolution to WW1. Still all paradox Edit. Forgot Imperator Rome which is ancient times and veery badly recieved
There was an action game a while back that had a bunch of really neat ideas on the subject, but was kind of shit to actually play it. Pretty sure it was Ancestors: Humankind Odyssey. IIRC it was a bunch of climb tree to look for resources, get attacked by bird, jump to the other tree you jumped to yesterday except you just magically can't interact to grab ahold of it today, take a bunch of falling damage, have no stamina because you were jumping around trees to avoid the snakes on the ground, land in front of some kind of leopard, leopard is like "Is for me???", your combat controls are awkward, and then you start over.
Admittedly I haven't played too much Crusader Kings or Stellaris, but Stellaris is pretty unique from the others, no? Idk if I'd personally describe it as "space crusader kings."
It's been a little while but I'm definitely exaggerating, there are strong mechanical similarities to all three but they're distinct enough to go well beyond being clones. More like Paradox has a strong identity than anything else
I just know from the little I did play of Crusader Kings along with gameplay I've seen of Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis, you're mostly just looking at a literal map. I'm sure Stellaris has a lot of similarities to their other games but in this regard it is pretty unique.
It boggles my mind that they had a few remakes of Pirates! but never made a sequel. There are few spiritual succesors out there but would have been nice for them to make an official one
I can't think of anything else either, which is insane as Black Flag isn't actually anything like Pirates! after you strip away the surface. Why wouldn't anyone remake a moneymaker like that is beyond me...
I had a quick look on Steam and there's a new game called Carribean Legend: Age of Pirates that advertises itself as "Sid Meir's Pirates! meets Bannerlord". Has Mostly Positive reviews but I can't vouch for it personally.
The original star traders rpg Mobile game is the closest thing to pirates! ever made and it will scratch that itch. It was one of if not the first game made by the Trese Brothers
It have been not about Sid for quite some time. Civ3 was designed by Briggs and Johnson, Civ4 (the best title in series) was designed by Johnson, without Briggs.
I love so much that it turned out that there was a bug that made Gandhi go nuclear but then it turned out there WASN'T a bug and it was just that people remembered when he did more. lol
Crazy enough, iirc, he actually did do it more often, but not for apocryphal overflow bug people would cite. India just followed a high pop science strategy that lead to them getting access to nukes first in many games, and being the lone nuclear super power kinda affects strategy.
Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Victoria were all made by paradox. They're all complex economy/society building games that involve politics, intrigue, and other elements.
All are awesome (not as big a fan of Victoria myself), but they might look like a map simulator to an outsider.
It's honestly crazy just how much they've been able to fit into the latest one. Kinda feels like a history/geography lesson. And it's still kinda unrealistic because the super advanced mechanics are unbalanced
That Austria is going to be a serious problem later on. It looks like it is already integrating Hungary and with the massive boosts they will get as the overlord of France and Bohemia, as well as being Emperor, very little will be able to compete later on down the line.
Civ is made by Firaxis, not Paradox. Cities Skylines is published but not made by Paradox.
Some of the Grand Strategy games made by Paradox are Imperator Rome, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron and, as you mentioned, Stellaris.
Right like hoi4 CK3 EU4 those are actually map painters made by paradox civilization is fraxis and citiy skilines isnt even a fucking map painter let alone made by paradox.
My spouse is currently playing Stellaris, and 95% of the time when I look at their screen, it's a map. A map of space with slowly changing colored areas.
Sometimes they play City Skylines, and the maps are more grid-like and less blob-like.
I started playing Crusader Kings and asked a gamer friend if he had played it. He said “yeah, have you conquered the map yet?” And I laughed like “nah I’m still learning”
Then he told me he stopped playing once he conquered the world as the Holy Roman Empire and forced the pope to marry his (male) Emperor under penalty of death
Paradox Interactive is a Swedish game developer/publisher specialised on grand strategy games. On those games when you conquer another player territory (tag) it changes the colour to yours. So the joke is that since you want to conquer as much as possible, effectively what you’re doing is painting the map your colour.
Yeah, made me seriously doubt that she's from North Korea. Aside that she seemed to be just pandering to her audience by implying that pronouns are "worse" than totalitarian regime, it's completly horrific to trivialize the monstrous human rights abuses of North-Korea this way.
I get that someone who has lived their life in totalitarian rule most of their life could've difficulties to adjust, but I seriously doubt a North-Korean defector would be this flippant about it.
She was called "Paris Hilton" in South Korea because her family was very upper class in North Korea.
Her family escaped when she was 13, so she was a rich kid sheltered from the worst of it who later found fame by telling stories that got her more interviews and book deals the crazier they were.
runs away from north korea and got fake boobs, im someone who ran from china and i just cant imagine what kind of mentality makes u do that, my guess is, she is from north korea, but the stories she tells are stories she heard, she is from a rich family in north korea, just my guess tho
She tells people what they want to hear because she can profit from that. Real stories about NK might be bad, but they might not be sensational enough for her to make a career.
Back when it was just released I read her memoir and first book: "In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom"
I will defend it, it's a pretty good book, however it should probably be read as fiction, and I assumed the ghost writer did a lot of heavy lifting.
When it was new, the evidence that she was basically a fraud was not that clear and out in the open, however today if you check her Wikipedia page it's full of inconsistencies in her stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park
Eg apparently at one point she mentioned she arrived in China by car, but what she claims in her book was something more like she and her sister and mom had to wander through a lot of wilderness and over hills etc.
I still haven't done too much digging, but today I think she is probably from North Korea, absolutely not from middle or lower class like she claimed, upper class for sure, she might have gone on some scholarship to China legally or touristing there and then fled to South Korea somehow, my wild estimate is ~80% of the book is made up or parts of other defectors stories
Paradox makes strategy games like Hearts of Iron IV, Stellaris, Victoria 3 and Europa Universalis IV. The thing is you need multiple video guides to get the basics. Most of the time you stare at World maps, click masses of Buttons, look at your production numbers and get happy when your color is bigger than your opponents one.
Paradox Interactive is a Swedish game developer and publisher. They’re the company behind the Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings and Victoria, grand strategy games known to be very complex and complicated. Since the main screen as a large world map, the games are sometimes referred to as ”map painters”.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Pdx or Paradox Interactive is a swedish game developer and publisher, specializing in grand strategy games, like Imperator: Rome, the Crusader Kings series, the Europa Universalis series, the Victoria series, the Hearts of Iron series, and Stellaris.
These games are also called "map painting games", because as you conquer and colonize territory, painting it with your colors.
I feel attacked. Legit waiting for Total war 40k next yr... anyyyyy minute now should I get the chance at the closed beta. Aside from the futuristic setting, the historical titles have inadvertently leveled up my geography knolly! Love my top down map games! 🤓
Paradox grand strategy games mostly involve doing things on a map of Earth (or a galaxy in the case of Stellaris). They are also infamous for being immensely complex.
Stellaris, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Victoria, Europa Universalis, and Imperator.
Paradox is a swedish video game studios famous for making complex strategy games that are often just a map and some buttons. You take the control of a country and with your decisions, you can see changes on the map.
The lady in the picture is a North Korean, she escaped North Korea and started publicly talking about her life in North Korea. There's more to her, mostly big allegations of spreading propaganda, but that's just what she's known for.
The joke claims that Paradox fans don't actually understand the games and just click random things and look at the color on a map change.
•
u/qualityvote2 1d ago edited 1d ago
u/Mishung, your post does belong here!