For our ongoing seriesFundamentals,were looking at different companies worldwide and the basic principles they were built on.
This time: video game developer Guerrilla Games.
Next year, it plans to move uptown.
Right now, its 250 employees make do.
It can afford to.
But by the release of Killzone 3 in 2011, they were creatively tired of the universe.
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Van Beek would laterdescribe it to GamesIndustryas going from making rollercoaster rides to building a whole theme park.
It meant having to go back to basics.
For two years, Guerrilla played around with ideas.
But other challenges remained, especially because open world design was so new to Guerrilla.
How much content would players need to avoid getting bored in such a vast world?
And equally importantly, how much content could the designers even make?
Can you pull off making a theme park with technology thats geared towards building rollercoasters?
The idea wasnt as crazy as it seemed, according to technical director Michiel van der Leeuw.
But Guerrillas process is slightly different.
Willful and cocky
Ambition has always been a part of Guerrillas core.
They adopted the name Guerrilla three years later: it fit their rebellious attitude.
We were willful and cocky, Van der Leeuw remembers.
There was no games industry to speak of in the Netherlands at the time.
Yet we wanted to become a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.
Van der Leeuw was there.
Hed worked on the game Jazz Jackrabbit 2 with Dutch gaming pioneer Arjan Brussee.
And yet in some sense, Decima started with the rabbit.
Van der Leeuw shrugs.
I should check the current engine code sometime and see if theres anything left over from Jazz.
It wouldnt surprise me.
Code gets replaced very slowly over time, and they often find a new purpose for old systems.
Some traces of that time still remain.
Aloy, Horizons protagonist, can leave the large plains of the open world behind to explore underground caves.
Once she enters the cave, old systems kick in.
Briefly, Horizon Zero Dawn turns into a Killzone-esque corridor shooter.
Have they ever seriously considered using a third party engine?
Not really, Van der Leeuw says.
We like to make things, our company attracts a lot of inventor types.
For us, its important to feel like were in charge of what were going to do next.
Its a reminder that sometimes its just better to make things yourself.
Inventor types like us dont just like to make things, we like to share them.
Sharing makes you stronger.
Sometimes you dont get anything back but thanks thats also nice.
But sometimes you find someone whos on the same track, and it gives you all this creative energy.
Its all just code in the end, anyway: its the mindset of the maker that matters.
He credits that as one of the principal reasons why the company steadfastly refuses to limit its engines scope.
Because there might be no one else whos an expert in the same field.
Sharing with outsiders can help create sounding boards for new ideas.
Though when that outsider is legendary Metal Gear Solid-director Hideo Kojima, its nervewracking, Van der Leeuw admits.
The search for a new engine was rigorous.
We gave them the engine as a show of good Sony citizenship.
Theyd lost all their tech, it would have felt rude not to share, Van der Leeuw says.
But we didnt expect to have this much chemistry with a studio from the other side of the globe.
Kojimas upcoming Death Stranding release date unknown is set to be an open-world action game, much like Horizon.
We have similar priorities.
But in some ways, theyre also very different.
For instance, they think photorealism is far more important than we do.
The studio is always thinking ahead about what the next iteration of the engine will look like.
On the technology side, we make very long-term plans.
The quality of the code base is most important to us.
Willful ambition has been core to Guerrillas philosophy from the very beginning.
Guerrilla will continue to change gameplay systems whenever they get in the way of the players experience.
And that process requires an engine that supports it.
The creative side of our game direction is ever-changing.
We must always be able to facilitate it.
