![]() ![]() "For years, I worked on whatever desk was available, or got the standard 'start up desk' from the big box store. I have things of tactile importance around me which feel good to touch, including my desk, or things of mechanical beauty, such as a couple old and unique typewriters." "My office is designed to be a reflection of my personality combined with whatever it is that I am creating. Selected Games: Wizardry, Ghost Recon, Train I usually talk with the people I’m working with for an hour or so a day via Skype to sync up and go over stuff, but for the most part I just need a place to put my dumb toys and be a weirdo." Brenda Romero "If I’m writing I need silence, but the rest of the time I fully require music at very loud volumes to really burn through things. I’d say at this point 50% of my workload is just thinking on paper and the rest is at the desk drawing." But if I’m animating or doing level design its pretty ideal for me to have this setup. "When I’m just doing design I can work just about anywhere with a pen paper and laptop. In a lot of ways my office is just a recreation of our previous living room, but with a door I can close." It’s also important to have an area I can share with them, this kind of work can be pretty isolating so I make sure I always have an empty desk next to me so Danielle can sew and a play setup on the ground for our baby. "These days my home office is ideal because I need a part of my house I can get away to so my non-work life doesn’t distract me, a place I can blare music and talk endlessly with people I’m working with without forcing my wife and new baby to deal with it. Selected Games: Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac ![]() If there's any music, I need it vocal-free." When I need to use words or language, I become a dandelion that shoots off into outer space at the slightest gust of wind. However, if I'm doing any kind of writing or programming, then it's a hard-stop on noise. A nuclear bomb can go off next door and it (probably) wouldn't faze me. Any and all kinds of music, people chatting it up, a Netflix movie in my periphery - all of that works for me. "If I'm drawing or modeling or doing level design, noise is like a warm blanket. As long as I have a surface to place my laptop and mouse, that's all I need to fall into the deep-work zone." One of the nice things about making games - or at least, the kind of games that I like making - is that it requires so little overhead and equipment. "I do a fair amount of traveling, so I'm not precious about my setup. Stick me in a metal tube any day of the week." ![]() But if you want to know the secret to focused productivity, here it is: trains. There's a certain energy in a shared office environment - a creative one for sure, but also one of being a support network, of lifting that weight by knowing you're not alone in whatever you're going through. "Nowadays I split up my time between my home office and Glitch City, an office space a bunch of local independent developers and I share. Selected Games: Gravity Bone, 30 Flights of Loving, Quadrilateral Cowboy In this nomad-friendly context, do game-makers still prize the finely calibrated environment of their personal workplace? Is noise or silence preferable? How about solitude or camaraderie?Ī clutch of game developers around the world agreed to show us around their workstations and thereby create a scene for the worlds in which game worlds are made in 2016. Is this a fair representation? And even if it once was, is it still a relevant one? Laptops and tablets have untethered creators from their desks, turning any park bench or café into a potential workplace. The vision of the prototypical game developer’s desk is well known and enduring: a shantytown of headphones and empty take-out boxes, a flanking battalion of plastic toy figurines, a greasy award for the lucky ones. ![]()
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