Sony’s Guerrilla Games, the team behind the Killzone franchise and last year’s Horizon: Zero Dawn is undergoing massive expansion. They currently have around 250 “permanent” employees on their payroll, but that number will be increasing to 400 as part of their plans to expand.
This, apparently, is being done so that they can put out their games much faster than they have been able to in the past. Horizon: Zero Dawn, for instance, was a project that they worked on for over six years. With their expansion, they’re looking to cut the number down to two to three years, regardless of whether the game being developed is a sequel or a new IP.
“After Horizon Zero Dawn, we are accelerating,” Guerrilla’s CEO Herman Hulst told Dutch outlet Parool. “The best talents are coming to us, and last month we have already hired nine new people, but we also needed more space for our sound and motion tracking studios.” This seems to be in line with recent reports that have come to our attention. For instance, very recently, ex-Eidos Montreal employee Giles Armstrong joined Guerrilla Games as their new Senior Writer.
“We have worked at Horizon for 6.5 years, which is exceptional,” Hulst continued. “We want to release games in the two or three years, both new titles and games based on existing titles.”
Their offices, as a result, will also be changing. The Amsterdam-based studio will be moving offices, and will now be occupying a larger space, a building that was previously used by the Telegraaf newspaper. It spans five stories and 7,300 square meters. “We’re going to turn it into a palace, and our communal space is on the top floor, with the most beautiful view,” Hulst said of their new offices.
This sounds like excellent news. Horizon: Zero Dawn was an absolutely excellent game, and the prospect of the studio working with more resources and more people at their disposal for not just its sequel, but any other game they might work on, sounds like an exciting prospect. The fact that they will probably be able to put out their games at a much quicker rate is, of course, an added bonus. It’s also great to see that Sony have this sort of confidence in their first party studios.
