Guerilla Games, the developer behind Horizon Forbidden West, the Burning Shores expansion, and Killzone, has revealed that Studio Director Angie Smets is heading into a Head of Development position at PlayStation.
Guerilla’s new Studio Directors will consist of Joel Eschler, Hella Schmidt, and Jan-Bart van Beek, each of whom will also take on other management roles. Naturally, they will be paving the way for new Horizon games, including the online project. Michiel van der Leeuw will handle the technical side of things with Decima, Guerilla’s signature game engine that was also used for Horizon Forbidden West.
Here’s the official announcement from Guerilla Games’ Twitter feed, where they include the full message:
The full message includes a direct quote from Angie Smets, which is filled with nothing but praise for Guerilla. So, the departure seems to be on good terms.
Smets worked at Guerilla for twenty full years, so a career change is fair enough, and the high-level position with PlayStation is certainly hard-earned. But given the monumental success of Horizon Forbidden West, the shakeup is still a shame, and a bit of a surprise.
It should be made clear that Studio Directors have sweeping control over the games you love, and Angie Smets helped lead Horizon Forbidden West into a full-blown phenomenon. It will be difficult to live up to that.
Fortunately, there’s plenty of experience in the new members, who have also fueled Guerilla for years, and should be very comfortable with the Horizon franchise. Ideally, it will remain consistent with the standards of quality set by Smets’ influence.
The expansive DLC Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores only recently launched. You can watch a full trailer for the new content on PlayStation’s YouTube channel:
You can read more about Horizon Forbidden West, Guerilla Games, and other major studio updates by checking out the rest of our news section.
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