Roland Ijzermans
Senior Visual Designer and Concept Artist @ Guerilla Games
The Netherlands
The worlds in which Roland Ijzermans moves navigate a complex topography. As the senior visual designer and concept artist at Amsterdam-based game development studio Guerrilla Games, he maps parallel universes, charts visually arresting cinematic backdrops, at once surreal and pulsing with real-time affect, drawing a fine line between immersive space and its outer limits.
Closer to home, a down-to-earth Roland pilots a diverse team of dedicated conceptual artists and designers teaming up to conquer new frontiers in the gaming cosmos.
Armed with a Masters degree in Industrial Design from Technische Universiteit Delft, Roland honed his artistic metal and combined it with the creative license of computer sketching. The results saw him successfully apply his expertise to various design applications including consumer products, naval and architectural and projects.
But a persistent hankering to “follow a boyhood dream” took him in 2003, to a small operation then known as Lost Boys Games, about to relaunch an all assault on the gaming fraternity as Guerilla.
His first ever-game design project would be as part of the trio “in the attic” who conceived an art design benchmark for gaming, perceived as something of a fledgling member of the design sector.
Roland’s life-like renderings and stunningly authentic environments on the groundbreaking Killzone (2004) title informed a new design paradigm in the virtual world. Multi-dimensional battlefields, atmospheric environs, animations, and emotive gameplay revolutionised the FPS genre, sent first-person shooter diehards into an immersive frenzy and elevated the role-playing to a new level. That the action took place in a colonised outer space, and the landscapes were largely extra-terrestrial ironically added to the realism of the scenarios.
Roland’s teamwork on the original Killzone helped Guerilla to several awards including a BAFTA nomination for visual style and the distinction of the Game’s inclusion in the international “Foreign Affairs of Dutch Design” exhibition.
Now of one of Europe’s leading game developers, Guerilla’s unique brand of collaborative warfare is still headquartered in the peaceable realm of Amsterdam.
Neither the parallels with the sensurround cinema experience nor the Game’s phenomenal success were lost on media monolith Sony Computer Entertainment who, in 2004 announced a deal with Guerilla to develop games exclusively for the PlayStation consoles. One year later, Sony acquired the company outright.
The franchise landscape is now heading into sequel and multi-platform territory for Sony.
Due for release later this year, the highly anticipated Killzone 2 is in the last stage of development and rumoured to be the biggest multimedia project in Dutch history.
Early mail suggests another runaway success. Advance trailers shown at industry conventions such as E3 and online have yielded superlatives from commentators including the BBC hailing Killzone 2 as “one of the most cinematic and immersive games ever produced on a console.”
According to Michal Valient, Guerilla’s Senior Programmer, technical advances include the development of a Deferred Rendering lighting/shader engine integrating MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing) to ensure a next generation of complex, rich environments and a more heightened, dynamic experience overall.
When the client is a global interactive gaming community “in the Zone” both online and earthbound, and the major stakeholder is Sony, behind-the-scenes collaboration becomes more than artform, it is literally the name of the Game.
Design Victoria spoke with Roland Ijzermans about design thinking outside the box.
How did you get into the ‘game’ of design?
I was just basically chasing a boyhood dream. I had finished a Masters in Industrial Design, and someone entered me into a games competition. My portfolio was sent in to Lost Boys and they were interested.
It was quite a small set-up then in Amsterdam. They had done a few Game Boy Advance titles and had got the go-ahead from Sony to create something with a 3D engine. It was a small team of three on the first Killzone title, which was an interesting situation. And an interesting group of people: a graphic designer, another industrial designer and myself. We were all very different but I think that was a part of the success.
In what sense ‘different’?
Well, different backgrounds, different approaches… I went to university had an industrial, thought-through design approach. The graphic artist had a very direct, ‘this is what it is’ perspective and the other designer had a more intuitive sense. I think the combination of these three different people was ultimately a good set-up.
Was it a difficult situation to engage that elusive working collaboration?
There was tension but I think that added to whatever came out of it. It was interesting… rather than having exactly the same people disagreeing with each other all the time. That’s an easy way out.
Several of the commentators at AGIdeas mentioned that perhaps sometimes the most interesting design comes out of chaotic, creative contexts rather than in a channelled, specialised or product-directed environment. Do you agree with that kind of creative risk-taking?
Yes, very much so, especially for gaming, which is a very young industry. People try to apply a methodology for the software industry or some of the design sector, which certainly influence the working environments but there is not a set way to go. There is a lot of influence from the movie industry too, and sometimes people apply that working hierarchy onto the games industry directly. But the gaming sector, the product is somewhat more complex. There’s software involved, there’s interactivity, whereas a movie is just a statement, you have the vision of a director.
Having said that, multi-media cross-referencing, particularly so as Guerilla is a part of Sony, is a major part of your working life. Rather than develop an idea from scratch, a designer is often presented with the content, a feature film perhaps, and directed to make a game from it. Obviously when you are involved with a large multi-media organisation there are those directives. Is that a challenge?
Yes it is. For someone trying to get into the field, it’s good to be aware that there are those restrictions. But as they say, there is nothing as hard as complete freedom. To be boxed in and try to fight against the edges of the box - to having something to rail against is always an interesting way to go. There’s always hierarchy, there’s always a client whether it is within or outside the company. Back in the days when the companies were still very small and you could create your own games, you were your own client. But now, it is a much bigger thing. You have to be aware of the greater environment.
Did you have any idea when you first started working in this industry that it would be as massive as it has become and most particularly, Killzone’s success?
I had no idea at all. We started in an attic in Amsterdam. It was my first experience on a game so I had no point of reference. You always compare the thing that you are working on to the glimpses you get from other games in development in the industry. It’s quite exciting. It’s a very closed industry. So designers are always working on something that is not quite completed yet - it’s not yet revealed, it takes a long time to bring it to fruition and by the time it comes on to the market, you’re most likely working on something else. So, we didn’t really have an idea of where it stood at the time but we kind of had the feeling that we were doing the right thing.
I was amazed at the amount of talent that got on board. These people were very passionate about their work and I think that showed in the end. We had our first showing in 2004 and we were all very amazed by the reception throughout Holland. This small attic set-up, just a couple of guys trying to have some fun. And then we went over to the States and we were blown away by the amount of attention.
Did that sort of success and exposure change the working relationships and team dynamics?
Not really but it did give us a collective sense of confidence. We had been very subdued, very insecure as a company: ‘Would the game meet the standards, live up to expectations?’ It gave a sense of personal motivation where there had been some insecurity about what we were doing. So in that sense, it did change us.
Do you still work with the same team members?
Out of the original three who worked on the first Killzone, one has moved on into the industrial design field and one is still there. But because we have become part of Sony and the team grew, we have a wonderful opportunity to enlist a lot of really good talent from diverse fields.
We are now a team of 10 concept designers and instead of just selecting locally we go much further afield. We try to get more designers on board from different areas of expertise around the globe. We had an architect from Spain, a production designer from New Zealand who worked on King Kong… Rather than just having a concept team who draws pretty and inspiring pictures, we actually have a design team who knows what design is all about. In the end, it is in the detail.
Especially with an architect, for example. When they sit down and sketch their buildings, they have a sense of proportion and understanding of reality that comes from their experience and particular skill. So even though some of things we sketch are literally out of this world, they have their understanding of discipline and set of restrictions: so it is a pure artist sketching out a building and developing a very interesting shape. It has a reality. A sense of having been built. We are actively trying to add this reality to the environments.
When you first got on board with Killzone, you were noted for rendering real environments. Your backdrops were based on real life imagery rather than computer generated. How does that affect the gameplay?
We tried to use as much real life reference as possible. To get the players to experience the environment in a way other than virtual - trying to push the bar as far as it goes. We deliberately chose to create a sci-fi environment with about an 80 - 90% ratio of realism to 10% fiction. I think this gives a very confronting contrast to see something fictional set in an environment you are completely familiar with. It makes it much more awkward, much more interesting.
Is that more ‘psychological’ approach about pushing the boundaries in a ‘real’ sense rather than maintaining just a total fantasy/escapism?
There are movies that have the same approach like Children of Men for example: it’s apocalyptic, shot in a parallel time but it could easily be your home town. There is a lot of familiarity and in that sense you get so much ‘for free’: it is an easy stepping stone. This could be your city, your place. But then we also do movies with specific contexts, which I think creates an interesting ‘what if’ situation. We can make everything sci-fi, overboard. We try to do a lot of first person narrative with some social structure. Then we consistently step back, and revisit it, because you need that sense of familiarity.
How important is the narrative in designing a gaming environment and what is an appropriate balance of storyline and game play?
There are not many games out there with really interesting story lines and I must say that it is a really hard task to incorporate a strong narrative into a game. In the end, it’s a game. You have a set of rules, you try to achieve something. It’s terrific if you can be entwined in the story and pulled along with it but it is still a Holy Grail in the gaming industry.
Considering you can appropriate other creative disciplines such as architecture for rendering or use a film production designer for a backdrop, why not engage a dedicated scriptwriter in the same way?
I think that - as in many areas of the design world - there is still a bit of friction now and then between game design and graphic design in visual design where we try to achieve something, they try to achieve something. They want to have as clear as possible a gaming environment and we want to make it as ‘pretty’ as we can. To have a mutual understanding takes experience.
And I think it is the same with scriptwriters. Turning a very good script into a game takes both a strong understanding of good scriptwriting and a definitive grasp of the structure of game design: ‘What are the fundamental elements of the game and how do I layer story-telling on top of these without making them two separate functions?’ Most games turn the story into cut scenes interspersing the game play. You basically earn your bit of storytelling by over-achieving in the game-play.
So, the story is the reward…
Yes, it’s a reward! You get a bit more of the story as you progress through the game. You want to hear the rest of the story. Games like Metal Gear Solid are quite heavy on the storytelling in this way.
I think that this is something that will change in the future with a better understanding of both storytelling and gaming. The entire design process will incorporate all the graphical design, all the game play design and the storytelling into single entity rather than viewing each as a separate discipline.
When designing a sequel such as Killzone 2, does the design team keep a conscious awareness of the massive market, the fanatical following that the game has established and of the potentialities of blogging and ‘modding’ the final product?
To the extent that we have taken on board feedback from some professional game-play testing in focus groups, yes.
But from my background in industrial design I was more inclined to lean more heavily on the user feedback – product design is very much for the user and not for you. It’s your end user who must be considered.
Whereas gaming is entertainment and it’s somewhat of a statement. And I think if you take everybody’s wishes on board, you end up with something that is diluted. It’s not a statement any more. Within the entertainment industry, this is much more so in movies.
It is more a statement of artistic expression. I think games are somewhere in the middle: it has a user interface, there is interaction but there is also the story-telling element, the artistic expression.
Technology portends the arrival of a monolithic, net-based multimedia unit. Is this something that will challenge the game designer in the immediate future given the long lead-time for game development?
There is the whole online community aspect. But the actual notion of a complete network for us as a company is not a guiding principle.
It can be inspiring for people getting into it now, for students exploring potential start-ups and projects sold on the internet. It is an interesting development because it is inclusive. Teams are growing, budgets are getting bigger, that can kind of kill individuality, but with network interactions and features, there is enough room for all sorts of people, for kids to come along to try something new and fresh.
Is it harder to create a sequel for something you didn’t imagine to be such an enormous success or was it more challenging to do the first time round?
It was more challenging the first time. It’s still very interesting to do the second one because there are different challenges. As we discussed, the insecurity of the first one now makes way for trying to professionalise the second. The expanding of the team – from 30 people on the original to more than 110 on production now requires you to be more professional in ways that necessitate you sharing your ideas and thoughts; filtering out the ideas you thought had originality for the first instalment, and take that as a starting point rather than copying the same treatment.
Is it still as exciting for you in the sense you followed the boyhood dream and are now employed as a professional game designer?
Yes, it’s interesting too to reflect that I’m participating in an event like [AGIdeas]. When I first started out, certain people would say ‘oh you’re in gaming, go talk to someone else’ whereas now the industry is growing enormously. It was featured in the Dutch Design Expo recently, which for me personally, put me back where I came from. I tried to leave and design caught up with me again!
Do you think the design world still treats the game industry as the little cousin ‘in the attic’?
It does a bit. But it doesn’t matter. I’m having so much fun.
What’s the future for the industry?
A lot more professionalism, and I hope that a lot more experienced designers will see the opportunities in the industry. And with more and more experience, a lot of the problems we talked about, like proper narrative structure will be minimised, more collaboration between disciplines will yield more experiments, which I am looking forward to.
Lani Steinberg for Design Victoria
16 October 2008