A passion for video games and programming drove Mikel Sertutxa, Jonathan Cáceres, and Jokin Bilbao to study the Bachelor’s Degree in Real-Time Interactive Simulation (RTIS) at DigiPen Europe-Bilbao. This same passion is what, years later, led the three graduates to the Czech Republic to work as programmers for Bohemia Interactive, one of the most influential European companies in military simulation games development.
The technical level and preparation we bring from DigiPen is always recognized. From day one, they tell us that we arrive very well prepared.
Jokin Bilbao, was the first one to arrive at Bohemia Interactive, where he has worked for the past four years. He graduated during the pandemic, making his job search a little different from the usual process. However, the czech company had captured his attention from the start due to the technical complexity of their gaming simulations.
In 2020, Jokin was hired as an audio progammer for Arma Reforger at the company’s headquarters in Mnisek, a town near Prague. “My performance in the second-year project at DigiPen, DIBO (2020), is what convinced Bohemia Interactive to choose me, as I had worked with audio engines and sound systems,” Jokin explains.
Arma Reforger is the fourth installment in the Arma series. It offers a fresh military simulation experience set during the Cold War era, made possible by the company’s introduction of their own game engine, Enfusion.
It didn’t take long for his talent to stand out, and within a few months, he was assigned a position in the Gameplay team, where he has now become responsible for key systems like the damage, explosion, and destruction systems.
Just like Jokin, Mikel Sertutxa also found in DigiPen the basis he needed to stand out at this studio, although his path was different. After graduating from RTIS in 2021, he moved to Brno to work as a programmer on Bohemia Interactive’s Vigor video game.
Set in a post-apocalyptic Norway in the 1990s, Vigor is a multiplayer game that combines intense combat and tactical survival in a dangerous environment.
The experience I gained in the fourth-year project with Unreal Engine was crucial for standing out when I entered Bohemia Interactive.
- Mikel Sertutxa
After two years at Bohemia, where he worked on various tasks using the same engine he had used at university, Mikel returned to Euskadi. He has spent some time working for Crytek, a German video game company.
However, Bohemia Interactive contacted him again, this time with an offer that allowed him to work from home on the Arma Reforger game. After spending a month at the company’s Czech headquarters to catch up, he now works remotely from his hometown (Galdakao.) “I returned to the company because it’s where I want to further my professional experience and here, the opportunities are vast,” comments the young graduate.
Jonathan Cáceres joined Bohemia Interactive in May of this year, but his professional career began even before he graduated:
In his last year at DigiPen, he combined classes with his first job at a software consultancy, where he developed solutions for Eroski, programming in Python, SQL, and C++. He then moved on to work at CAPS, a company in the Iberdrola Tower that specializes in toll systems, where his focus shifted to hardware. Despite this, Jonathan “felt the need for a change and wanted to try video games.”
He has now been living in Brno for five months, working as a programmer for the Gameplay team of Vigor, where he develops various functions in the game’s life system. “Finding a place in the video game industry wasn’t easy at first, but the effort was worth it when Bohemia Interactive contacted me,” says Jonathan.
Despite their different career paths, Mikel, Jonathan, and Jokin all agree that their experience at DigiPen gave them a solid technical basis, which they now apply daily at their workplace.
Although Arma Reforger is currently being developed on Bohemia Interactive’s proprietary engine, not Unreal Engine, the transition wasn’t difficult because DigiPen taught them how to build their custom engines in C/C++.
Developing our own engines in C++ during university, like in the Toy Tank project, gave us a deep understanding of how most engines work
- Mikel Sertutxa
Jonathan shares his colleague’s opinion, because he developed a first-person shooter in his third-year project, where he worked on the systems that structured the game. This taught him to understand the functioning and structure of code from its basis, and it now makes it easier for him to comprehend the systems in his current work
DigiPen taught us to solve problems on our own and not need to be hand-held
- Jonathan Cáceres
The RTIS curriculum isn’t just about developing programming skills. It also teaches knowledge from other disciplines like design or team communication. Thanks to this training, all three feel comfortable collaborating with other departments and taking on responsibilities that go beyond programming.
DigiPen prepares you well for real-world situations, like at Bohemia, where you work closely with designers, and your opinion matters. Even in moments where I’ve had to coordinate teams or functions, I didn’t feel lost because DigiPen had already given us similar experiences
- Jonathan Cáceres
The graduates agree that DigiPen not only provided them with the necessary technical tools but also taught them how to face real-world challenges. Whether creating audio systems for Arma Reforger or programming for Vigor, the alumni have shown that DigiPen’s solid and practical education is key to thriving in the video game and simulation industry.
Bohemia Interactive has been the scenario where they have put into practice everything they learned at DigiPen, and where they want to continue growing as professionals, contributing to the development of some of the most influential games on the market.