Earlier this month Remedy's Community Manager, Peter Papadopoulos, visited the Remedy's offices and posted his visit with photos at the Remedy Forums:
Hey guys I promised I would post up the pictures of my recent trip to the Remedy offices. I also promised I would post up a video tour of the offices.
I can, unfortunately, only deliver on one of those promises. I know! I'm a terrible, terrible person.
We had some issues with the video tour and my spare time is extremely limited at the moment as I'm working on some really cool things that you all will hopefully see soon. So it really is just a structuring of priorities and I hope that in the future we can release the video, but we're talking months - at least. I'll actually fill this post with screen caps from the video of some areas I didn't take pictures of, so it's not a complete loss.
In any case I can deliver on the photos and so I hope you all enjoy them. I'll write up a bit about each photo so you can get a bit of background on what you're actually looking at!
First up lets start the tour with some photos from around Finland's capital city, Helsinki. Remedy is based in Espoo, which is the second largest city in Finland (first being Helsinki), which is only 20 minutes or so travel from Helsinki.
Helsinki is such an amazing city but I'm sure you all are more interested in what the Remedy offices are like.
Well lets continue on then and arrive at Remedy HQ...
As soon as you walk into the office you enter their lobby area, which has a collection of Remedy memorabilia scattered around.
Or how about a framed copy of the limited edition Bright Falls LP?
... or a whole trophy case filled with awards Remedy has won over the years - notice the BAFTA?
You'll also notice two champagne bottles at the bottom in picture above. The massive one on the left (in the wooden box) is the champagne bottle that was popped on completion of Alan Wake and the one on the right in the cabinet is the one for Max Payne. The MP one says "WHEN IT'S DONE". The basic idea behind these is that the team will buy a bottle at the start of development and only open it once development has wrapped.
... or several Alan Wake banners and collectables?
... last but not least you might also find our Head of Franchise Development, Oskari (Ozz) Häkkinen there ; )
The Remedy offices are spread over 3 dedicated floors - which is well-needed as I was told a pretty funny story by Ozz about the previous office space that Remedy was in, which had several bankers they shared the office with panic as Remedy staff would wander the office grounds holding AK 47's and wearing commando outfits after a long day of motion capture sessions!
The ground floor houses the lobby, several offices, an audio room and also meeting room, Barry - which is just your standard meeting room, but it also had a very cool painting of Alan Wake, something I only noticed on the second day while I was there - even though I actually spent 80% of my time at Remedy in this room!
One level under the ground floor houses the sauna (which I was told pretty much every house and office in Finland has one), recreational room - complete with kitchen, lounge area to play the latest builds and also any game from their vast games library, pool table, an original robotron arcade machine and also a pretty cool poster of Alan Wake back when the game was first announced ...
... and, of course Remedy's very own motion capture studio (spot Alan's jacket?) ...
The motion capture studio is used for quick prototype animations that can be used to test animations quickly during development. The actual capture area of the floor is marked by the black tape as only 1/3rd of the room can be captured, as such there's not too much room for long captures like running but things like weapon animations and character animations can easily be captured here to test out in the game.
The green screen in the pictures is there as the studio is being used for photography and video sessions at the moment.
The top level, which I unfortunately didn't manage to take any pictures of so I will have to rely on screencaps from the video tour, houses the programming room (which funnily enough several of the RMD programmers are Australian!), the technical artists room, another audio room, the meeting room, Vince - which, again, is just your standard meeting room but what sets this apart is that an entire wall is filled with framed cover art from gaming magazines featuring Remedy's games:
... a pretty impressive collection of PC games, Movies and also Gaming related books ...
... the Environment and Art department ...
... the Animation department ...
... and most importantly, Mikki's office:
... complete with a picture of Mikki's wife ; )
So that's it! Hope you all enjoyed this look into Remedy!
Source: Remedy Forums
