Hermen Hulst previously headed Guerrilla Games, maker of the Horizon games.
Hermen Hulst previously headed Guerrilla Games, maker of the Horizon games.
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How Sony’s Guerrilla Games came up with the new world of Horizon: Zero Dawn

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Horizon: Zero Dawn was one of the games that drew huge applause in a preview at Sony’s press briefing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this week. It’s a beautifully animated PlayStation 4 video game with a strong female hero named Aloy, who hunts mechanical creatures in a post-apocalyptic world.

The positive reception to the brand new intellectual property came as a relief to Hermen Hulst, the chief executive of Amsterdam-based Guerrilla Games. After 4.5 years of development in total secrecy, the E3 presentation was the first time that Horizon saw the light of day.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.