“Game development is where art and technology meet,” said Hideo Kojima, the creator of the iconic Metal Gear series. His words perfectly capture the essence of today’s gaming industry, where virtual worlds have finally moved beyond the stereotype of “it’s all about visuals” and evolved into complex systems in which framerate, scalability, and AI integration matter just as much—if not more—than the aesthetics.
“Optimization in game development truly is more important than beauty,” agrees our interviewee Yuliia Yermolaieva, a 3D environment artist with over a decade of experience and a member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Her portfolio is rich with well-known projects: she has worked at Enixan, Elyland, and WhaleeApp LTD; served as the lead artist for the commercially successful Hunter: Master of Arrows; and was a principal artist on Gladiators: Survival in Rome, a finalist of the Indie Games Award 2022.
In 2024, as part of the core development team at Peloton (New York, USA), she created an open-world game integrated into the Peloton Cycling Experience. She currently works in the sports-gaming sector while refining her communication and teaching skills as a mentor for 3D artists.
She is also the author of a methodological guide for 3D Environment and Technical Artists titled “A Method for Evaluating the Quality and Efficiency of Procedural Game Environment Modeling Without Using Visual Tools.” The guide was approved by Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (KNUCA) and is available in Kyiv’s academic libraries. In addition, she has published multiple scientific articles.
Given Yuliia Yermolaieva’s high level of expertise, the TechBullion editorial team has identified her as an ideal expert to discuss how game development is changing, what happens behind the scenes of modern production, and why the profession of Environment Artist has become one of the most crucial in the industry.
Yuliia, why did you choose game development? Your academic background is in construction engineering.
I did study at the Academy of Construction and Architecture, majoring in industrial and civil engineering, and yes — I earned a master’s degree in reinforced concrete structures. After graduating, I spent a year doing 3D interior visualization. At that time, I truly believed I would always work in architecture or real estate development.
But once I tried myself in game development, I realized I was far more fascinated not by showing people spaces through renders but by giving them the ability to move through those spaces and interact with them.
Your games have millions of installs and high ratings, and yet you also do academic research, publish in international journals, and mentor students. Why?
In addition to writing scientific papers and mentoring, I also run a Medium blog where I share practical tips (laughs). I’m a visionary by nature, so it’s important for me to always connect theory and practice. It helps me stay ahead of the curve.
I’m currently preparing a series of workshops for beginners in 3D and for those who want to transition into environment/technical art and Unity development. I want to not only explain but show them that the technical side isn’t “scary magic,” but a set of understandable tools that unlock the full potential of our profession.
So your primary audience is beginners rather than the expert community?
Yes, I’m particularly interested in emerging 3D specialists who choose environment or technical art and want to work with large worlds and optimization. But I believe professionals — for example, Unity developers who care about integration quality, or teams/founders interested in AI + gamedev and planning to implement LLMs and generative models into production — will also find useful insights in my work.
I’m open to collaboration in different formats.
Which of your projects do you consider the strongest?
There are several, and each influenced my approach in a unique way.
In Archer: Master of Arrows, for example, I worked entirely from scratch — from concept to release. I created key locations, starting zones, and arenas from a blank slate. The fact that the game became a commercial hit with 4 million downloads is definitely something to be proud of.
In Gladiators: Survival in Rome, I served as Principal Environment Artist and was responsible for biomes, stylistics, composition, and optimization. I was relocated from Ukraine to Cyprus for that project. The game won an award at Google Indie Games 2022 and also reached millions of downloads, especially across Asian markets.
In Daisho: Survival of a Samurai, I was part of the environment art team. My role was to maintain a unified visual style, work on biomes, and develop the color dramaturgy — balancing artistic tasks with optimizing a huge volume of content.
Your portfolio includes Peloton — Immersive Cycling Experience. What makes this project unique?
It’s a fascinating hybrid of fitness and gaming. Peloton is known for its exclusive training devices and platforms, and our project adds a game layer on top of that: during cycling sessions, users travel through various biomes, participate in challenges, competitions, and training scenarios.
But this is not a standalone game, correct?
Correct, it is strictly an enhancement to the workout experience. It launches only during cycling sessions and allows users to ride through diverse environments or join competitions and tutorials. This makes workouts significantly more engaging — time flies when the gameplay layer keeps the experience dynamic rather than exhausting.
What is your experience working in a large American team?
At Peloton I work as an Environment Artist + Technical Artist, and collaborating with American colleagues taught me to set clear goals, structure tasks better, and communicate more effectively. I developed biomes, zones, and locations; set up scenes for various training scenarios; and created LOD systems for many environment objects.
The biggest challenge was Peloton’s wide range of devices with very different performance levels. Each tier required its own optimization strategy. My role was to find the balance between visual quality and performance across both older and newer models.
Before Peloton you worked in Ukrainian and Cypriot studios. Are there differences in approach, and where do you feel more comfortable?
Ukrainian studios offer great flexibility. Teams are often small, processes are less formal, and that gives you the chance to try multiple roles at once: modeling, level building, participating in game design, experimenting. It’s an excellent fast-track learning environment.
In Cyprus at Colossi Games, we still had the startup spirit but with more structure. Gladiators: Survival in Rome was an ambitious survival project with limited resources; we constantly balanced desired quality with the constraints of mobile hardware.
Peloton has a stronger focus on processes, documentation, and task formalization. This helped me learn not only to do but to describe, plan, and scale solutions.
But I don’t compare which approach is better. I believe a professional benefits the most from experiencing all models — from flexible indie teams to structured corporate ecosystems.
How would you define your personal value to the industry?
Today, environment quality is still often judged visually: the picture looks good, the level reads well, the atmosphere works. That’s important — but for large worlds and complex projects, it’s nowhere near enough.
I help teams look at game worlds simultaneously through artistic and engineering lenses. The result is not just a beautiful scene but a stable, optimized, scalable system ready for real users and real devices.
My approach is a method for evaluating procedural environment quality and efficiency without relying on visual tools. Instead of judging the final screenshot, we analyze parameters: density and distribution of objects, geometry complexity metrics, memory/GPU load, LOD behavior at different distances, performance stability in typical player scenarios. In essence, it’s a digital health check for procedurally generated worlds. Artists can see where they over-detailed; technical artists and programmers get a shared language for discussing scenes; producers can finally understand whether procedural solutions are efficient at project scale rather than only in a test demo.
What do you think game development will look like in five years?
First, AI integration will stop being a novelty and become the norm. LLMs and generative models will be standard parts of the pipeline, but the winners will be those who know how to use them consciously — not just generate pretty images.
Second, performance and cross-device experience will take center stage. The world isn’t moving solely toward high-end GPUs. A huge number of players remain on resource-constrained devices. The ability to build worlds that work equally well across different hardware profiles will be critical.
And third, hybrid experts will become the most valuable: artists who understand metrics and code, and engineers who respect visual storytelling and aren’t detached from production. I personally aim to grow exactly in this direction.
