Hamster Studios

*It was VERY difficult to leave Guerrilla since I made such good friends in Amsterdam. I’ll miss them so much but I know that we will stay in touch and see each others a lot. It’s a small world. This email was send on April 17th, 2009*

Well, now is the time.

After nearly three years in your wonderful company, it’s time for me to go back to the frozen tundra of Canadia. My girlfriend and I have plans to start building our igloo, popping out little ones and hunt cute baby seals for fun.

Eric, Stuart and Jonathan are currently splitting the work I was doing. So, Eric is drinking heavily while Stuart and Jonathan are browsing the internet. If you have any questions on those topics, you know who to talk to.

Looking back, here a (perhaps too long) list of things I will miss, things I have learned not to do and other general events of my time in Amsterdam and at Guerrilla.

- Don’t go behind a bar and pour everyone a beer, even if Michiel tells you its ok. But if you do, make sure to run when Malcolm and Bryan tells you to get the f*ck out of there.
- Don’t get in the way of a naked-acrobat-guy on Leidseplein.
- Don’t look up when the naked-acrobat-guy is twisting, naked, over your head on Leidseplein. Dangling parts a-hoy!
- Don’t make sarcastic remark on something Hermen said when Hermen is there.
- Don’t sit at Michiel’s desk and pretend to be Michiel. No one can be Michiel, except Michiel.
- Don’t use your bike when you are really drunk. It hurts.
- Don’t try to stand in line with a bunch of Dutch people, just claw your way to the front.
- Don’t let Eric near your (female) cousin. EVER.

- I won’t miss mice pooping all over my desk.
- I won’t miss people sniffing loudly instead of using tissues.
- I won’t miss doing waypoints.
- I won’t miss tourists on bikes who are not looking where they are going or cycling where they should not.
- I won’t miss getting surprised by a screaming english singer in a pub in Liverpool and spilling my beer on the table. Then having the guy sitting next to me offer to hold my hand while Seb and Eric are laughing at me.

- I will miss Eric smile in the morning, Eric singing in the afternoon and Eric drunken eyes in the evening.
- I will miss Angie motherlike protection of the Multiplayer. Kicking ass, taking names while replying to emails on her iPhone and in-between all that, she always makes time to listen to me complaining about Eric.
- I will miss Seb particular brand of humor.
- I will miss Anton crazy loud voice.
- I will miss yelling “shoot the anus!” over my headset while playing Gear of War 2 with Lucas (you’ll always be my favorite Marcus).
- I will miss doing the Bubble Shield dance while playing Halo 3 with Ray (R.I.P.)
- I will miss the day Hermen decided that every Friday was Beer Friday.
- I will miss the 3 Euros pints at the Waterhole.
- I will miss Roderick trying to speak to me in French, but always saying the same 3 words over and over.
- I will miss being shy of saying the words “Bots” and “Assault” with my French accent.
- I will miss feeling bad because the other 12 persons in the meeting are all Dutch, but they are speaking English because of me.
- I will miss freaking out people when singing in the Design Room.
- I will miss JanBart breaking my levels, spilling beer on me or just changing the name of my DLC package for no good reason.
- I will miss my bike.
- I miss my time in the room with Chaime, Oscar and Thomas (oh, and Eric was there also)
- I will miss having Miguel as my neighbour. (Barbo will miss you Miguel!)
- I will miss bitterballen and filet americain.
- I will miss (the few) sunny days in Amsterdam.

But most of all, I’ll miss working with the very dedicated, funny, awesome and fine looking people of Guerrilla Games. You guys are incredibly good at drinking beer, but also at making games.

I’ll be looking forward to play Killzone 3 somewhere in late 2011 (Let’s be honest here, I am leaving, not JB :)). After work (and a few beers here), I’ll stop at the waterhole and buy a t-shirt.

JAGERSHOTS!

Tot ziens,

Simon Larouche
Ex-Senior Game Designer - Killzone 2 Online
Guerrilla Games

*Leaving Guerrilla and going back to Montreal made me think of the day I left Ubisoft to work in Amsterdam. I’ve track down the email I had send the day I left and save it here for… the memories. My last day at Ubisoft Montreal was the 28th of July 2006*

Salut Groupe,
Un petit spam pour vous dire que je quitte Ubisoft(!). Je m’exporte de l’autre côté du grand lac pour aller vivre en Hollande, ou je vais faire des jeux vidéo (pour faire changement).

Permettez moi d’être téteux comme il ce faut pour deux secondes.

/Début Moment téteux

- Merci à Mr. Hattem pour m’avoir donné la chance de travailler chez Ubisoft, et sur FarCry : Instinct (9.2)!
- Merci à Mr. Pavlou et Mr. Savard de m’avoir accueilli parmi eux dès mon arrivé.
- Merci à l’équipe level design SINGLEPLAYER de FarCry : Instinct (9.2) avec qui j’ai eu plein de plaisirs.
- Merci à Mr. Mandryka, Mr. Plante, Mr. Laforge, Mr. Bessette, Mr. Joly, Mr. Leblanc, Mr. Giroux et tout les autres d’avoir partagé mes premiers pas dans le monde du multiplayer et de m’avoir donné la piqûre!
- Un grand merci à Mr. Anneron et Mr. Baude de m’avoir fait confiance sur le multiplayer de StarWars PSP.
- Merci à Mr. Samuel, Mr. Tetreault, Mr. Boucher, Mr. Ezcurdia, Mr. Lamarche, Mr. Pierre MICHAUD2 pour la super équipe de Level Design, les nombreuses heures de plaisir, la bière, et le pognage de tits.

- Au revoir à tous les amis du clan Ex-A2M (et souvent Ex-Scaler) !! Je suis désolé de vous lasser une fois de plus avec Pedneault sur les bras (courage Éric).
- Au revoir à tous les amis du clan Ex-Dyad :), j’ai été ravi de vous retrouver ici.
- Au revoir à tous les amis de Québec (ahahahah Québec).

- En fin, merci à tout le monde que j’ai rencontré en travaillant chez Ubisoft pour avoir fait de mon séjour ici un moment inoubliable. (Sauf Pedneault)

/Fin Moment téteux

Enfin, les « quotes » de divers camarades de travail qui m’on marqué durant mon passage chez Ubisoft :
- « Ici, on déchire des slips! »
- « FarCry : Instinct 9.2! »
- « Would an ATV »
- « Hmmm, la brigade du fun est passé dans ton Gameplay. »
- « Ah ben… Un slideshow multiplayer. »
- « OSTI DE CALISS DE TABARNAK DE CRISS… (Manette qui pogne le bord) ça crash… criss… »
- « Hey mes salopes! Salopes avec un S parce que vous êtes deux. »
- « Come on les gars! C’est le temps de donner votre 150% »
- « Les gars, faut pas oublier de mettre des death volumes dans vos maps. Parce que sinon le joueur y marche sur la lave pis la yé comme, fuck… »
- « J’ai deux points à vous parler aujourd’hui. Point numéro un et Point numéro deux. »
- « SIMON LA FOURCHE! »
- « Y’était 4h du matin, j’étais complètement bourré, alors j’ai décidé de venir faire du taf. »
- « YANNIS EST GRAND! »
- « J’pense qu’Éric y m’aime pu. »
- « PIERRE MICHAUD DEUX! »
- « C’est un gameplay de Frigidaire. »

Alors, si jamais vous passez par Amsterdam, lâchez moi un wack!

Simon

PS : Ne faite pas de reply all, si reply il y a svp
PPS : En fait, ne faite pas de reply à mon adresse Ubisoft parce que je vais être partie :).
PPPS : Sorry Ethan, I am too lazy to write it in English, but it’s a nice occasion to practice your French L33T Skillz.
PPPPS: Same goes for you, Adrian

Since our life is changing so much these days, I felt it was time to revamp the website. I’ve upgraded the layout so we could use all the newest features from Wordpress and created my own little plug-ins for my Gamercard and the games I am currently playing.

I am still unsure what the content on the website will be now that we are going back to Montreal…

The RSS Feed is broken since the auto-generator is adding spaces where no spaces should be… I am still trying to fix that… It’s tricky.

Well, Killzone 2 is out since February the 27th around the world so let’s have a look where we stand today.

- We released 2 patches so far. One to counter the way users could gain too much experience while playing with bots, and the other one to fix a bunch of bugs and crashes.
- We are getting closer to 600 000 players that at least played one game online. The current exact count is 577 648.
- On the first weekend of the release, we had about 40 000 concurrent users online.
- 55 785 Clans have been created to this day.
- So far, we sold 1.04 million copies worldwide (excluding Japan, where the game is not out yet).

Hopefully, the numbers will continue to rise. I am curious to see how the upcoming downloadable Content will impact these numbers. On other news, I am thinking to change the way the blog works… It’s a bit useless at the moment since we mostly use facebook for our (boring ) life update. I am kicking around a few ideas right now, but I am afraid my laziness will get the better of it and then I won’t do anything. It will probably be related to games anyway, or maybe movies, now that I have a nice video camera. Or both? Oh yeah, and I think I have some sort of email disorder… I keep refreshing my inbox every two seconds for some reason, maybe in the hope of a mystical email that will transform my day into some sort of happy Indian musical.

…

A Musical FPS perhaps?

Finally! This neat little box contains nearly three years of my professional life (and quite a few bits and pieces of my personal life as well).

Look at it, all shiny and adorable! You just want to cuddle it. Lick it. Make sweet sexy lo… Ahum, well, you get my point.

Actually, I have a hard time believing that the “Killzone 2” part of my life is done. It was an incredible experience and I don’t regret any moment of it.

Hopefully, I can have a comparable experience on the next project I work on.