Guerilla Games’ co-founder and the former technical director of Epic Games says he’s building a new game engine that will offer a ‘European alternative’ to American tech like Unreal and Unity.
Arjan Brussee is an industry veteran who programmed Epic’s Jazz Jackrabbit games in the 90s, before co-founding and leading production at Guerrilla Games in 2003. After co-founding Cliff Bleszinski’s now-closed Boss Key, Brussee returned to Epic for an eight-year stint in roles including global Director of product management for Unreal Engine.
Now back in the Netherlands as a free agent, Brussee claims he’s building a new ‘European’ game engine, ‘The Immense Engine’, which he says will offer a rare alternative to American and Chinese engines on the market.
“No one is currently making an engine that is fully European-hosted, built by Europeans, and complies with European rules and guidelines,” he told Dutch podcast De Technoloog.
“Creating usable 3D worlds is becoming increasingly important, certainly for purposes other than just gaming,” he added, noting that by being European, The Immense Engine could be used for 3D simulations in Defense or logistics.
Notably, the Guerrilla co-founder said he sees an opportunity for a game engine based on new construction principles and with “the full integration of AI”.
According to Brussee, current popular game engines like Unreal were “made for and by people who have to click through a menu with a mouse. If you want to change something, it has to be done for the entire engine.”
“The rise of AI means that we need to approach the development of this kind of crucial software differently,” he said. “As an old hand with a vision of how things should work, I see opportunities there.”
“If you are smart and know how to put a good framework of AI agents to work, you can do the work of ten or fifteen people,” he added.
