Since last year, Horizon: Zero Dawn developer Guerrilla Games has doubled its female staff.
The Managing Director and Co-Founder of the Dutch studio, Hermen Hulst, announced the news on Twitter to help celebrate International Womens’ Day.
This comes after the success of the critically acclaimed female-led Horizon: Zero Dawn, which was recently announced to have sold over 10 million copies. For a brand new IP from a studio that used to deal in the gritty first-person shooter franchise of Killzone, that’s impressive.
Hulst tweeted, looking back at Horizon‘s original release, “We kind of knew we had something special on our hands, but we never expected that we’d be receiving daily messages of appreciation from our players to this day.”
One of the female developers from the studio, Concept Artist Choro Choi, drew the International Womens’ Day PS4 theme, composed of characters from Gravity Rush, God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us, and other first party games. It is available to download for free from the EU PSN. 2018’s EU Women’s Day theme can be downloaded on the NA PSN now.
According to the Entertainment Software Association in 2018, 45 percent of gamers in the United States are women, and adult women represent a wider spread of gamers (33 percent) than boys who are under 18 (17 percent).
A sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn has not been announced yet, but Hulst recently hinted that perhaps there’s more of a story to tell. He said, “The environments and the world that we’ve put together easily raise more questions, so it feels pretty rich to us, but that’s all I can say for now.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn originally came out on February 28th, 2017, to stellar critical and commercial response. It was then given six nominations at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year.
Cian Maher has discussed in the past for PlayStation LifeStyle what to expect in Horizon Zero Dawn 2 and why Aloy is a strong video game protagonist. Brianna Reeves also recently talked about what made Horizon Zero Dawn such a great game and what we want out of the sequel.
[Source: Hermen Hulst on Twitter]
