“Creating sound and music for games is like creating the auditive dimension for another reality.”

IGF Awards Finalist

He works for both AAA and indie game studios, such as Guerrilla Games and Speelbaars. His work for Lumini has been nominated at the Independent Games Festival Awards and the Emotional Games Awards.

Biography

As a child with a strong imagination, Gijs loved to wander off to places in his mind and share those experiences and emotions with the people around him. At a young age he learned to express himself through music.

Later on he started songwriting and performing with a band. At this point he wanted to make a career as a performer, but he has always been fascinated by how games trigger his imagination. He followed his guts and changed the direction of his career by starting to study at the University of the Arts Utrecht.

First he started studying Composition for the Media, but after his first collaboration with student game developers he rediscovered his passion for games. So he changed the course of his study to Composition and Sound Design for Adaptive Systems. For his graduation project he was an intern at Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam where he worked on the sound of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Simultaneously he worked on the sound and music of Lumini. During this period he did research on the difference between working in AAA and indie.

Today Gijs works as a freelance sound designer and composer for games. He prefers to work closely with the developers of the games he works on.  So for him it is important to have knowledge about the technical side of a game as well. That is why he also specialized in audio implementation and the use of tools  such as Fmod, Wwise and Unity.

Synesthesia

Gijs has synesthesia. This means he experiences colors and visual textures with sound, taste, scent, numbers and characters. He uses this ability in the process of sound design and composition.