What was the challenge in debuting Killzone 2 on the PS3? Because you must have had to revisit the technology that you used for Killzone, and things had changed, obviously. You have Blu-ray, you have the change in online infrastructure. What were the challenges you guys faced in making Killzone 2 for the PS3? And how did Sony help you meet those challenges?
That’s a great question. We at Guerrilla had a very specific set of challenges. We had actually started development for Killzone 2 to initially be on the Playstation 2. That’s a title that was never released and probably not too many people know about that.
I’d never heard that. That’s a big surprise to me.
Yeah. I just shared that a couple weeks ago for the first time, really. But at that same time, since we were working with Sony so closely, we understood what they were doing, and we had good access to their plans. We jointly, with them, worked on a very visionary trailer for what our franchise would be capable of doing on the new console, the Playstation 3. So we developed that now-infamous E3 2005 Killzone 2 trailer, which was originally intended to be an internal benchmark for what we wanted the team to focus on and to drive towards.
Because it was so well-liked, Sony had chosen–and I was fine with it at the time–to use that at the presentation of the PlayStation 3. If you Google that, and you go back, you find that there was a lot of controversy around that. Was it possible? Was it real? Was it not? We all know now that it was a trailer.
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Right. Pre-rendered, that didn’t necessarily reflect the game engine….
Motion video that was pre-rendered. But still, we knew that was possible. I think, looking back, it’s fair to say that we delivered that experience. All that detail, all that intensity in the combat experience, all the animation quality… looking at the specs early on, we felt that it was possible to realize that. And I think the role of Playstation was–and huge kudos to them as a publisher–they believed we could do it. They helped us see through to the moment in February 2009, when we finally actually released that title. And it was a massive undertaking for a very young team. Still a very rookie team when we started working on that in 2005 to pull that off. Everything had to be created from scratch. A brand new engine had to be created. Different animation technologies. Everything. Literally, everything had to be built up from scratch. And the role of the publisher is, I guess, not only funding it but also believing that you can do it, and not shying away when it takes longer than expected. But believing in that vision and agreeing jointly with the developer, that it’s the right thing to do. Especially when it’s a rookie team as we were back then.
You mentioned the belief part, and that seems like it’s so important, because you guys have taken a fair amount of time in between installments. It’s been about, I think, five years between each? This next one is coming faster after Killzone 2, but still it’s….
Yeah. It’s four years. We actually had to can Killzone 2 for Playstation 2. If you look at that, it was actually about three years and about 10 months, I think. So pushing four years. And with Killzone, we were setting up a studio back then. We were merging teams. There was just a lot of organizational stuff and recruiting stuff, and setting up teams, and deciding what technology, and pitching to publishers, because we were working with many different ones at the time. So that’s understandable when you’re starting out. Killzone 2, the four years had to do with the sheer ambition of the product, and also the young team working against the expectations.
The challenges were both good and bad. At the end of the day, that’s all great because the experiences pushed us. There was no way back. We had to deliver what we had communicated externally. You’re right in saying a show of faith matters. Killzone 3 is going to be done on a two-year-cycle, and that has to do with the fact that we’ve grown enormously as a team, as a studio. We have a fantastic foundation now to build on. But I guess, most importantly, we have a very experienced team now. For the first time we’re commencing a huge game that’s more ambitious than anything we’ve done before, but we’re doing it with a team that is intact. All the key players have been here now for 8, 9, years. And we’ve been able to do some really focused and targeted recruitment for some key roles. So we got a great team in place and we can actually now properly compete with some of the bigger teams out there.