With Alan Wake's American Nightmare due to be released just three weeks later, I decided to hit the publish button and talk about my new website on the Remedy Forums, kickstarting a crazy journey.
It had taken about seven months of writing and coding to get to that point, working almost everyday to get things ready. The site hasn't changed too much over the years; it became a Remedy fansite, instead of an Alan Wake site, following the announcement of Quantum Break at the XBOX One Reveal Event, but the seven months was dedicated to creating a website that I could run for years without too much additional tweaking. It still focuses on news and the community, just as it did when it launched back in 2012.
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| A) Taken during Ilkka Villi's and Matthew Porretta's visit to Remedy. B) The move from the third to fourth building. C) The warming party for the fourth studio. |
While the site hasn't changed much, Remedy certainly has.
Around the time I joined the community, they released Alan Wake's American Nightmare, began developing Quantum Break and was hiring for a brand new team after splitting the company in two; Next Big Thing and Mobile. The mobile team launched Agents of Storm in 2014 with publisher Flaregames, before disbanding around 2015. Following the launch of Quantum Break in April 2016, the developers split again with one team focusing on Crossfire HD and the other on Control. As of 2018, a smaller team, Vanguard, has started up in the studio dedicated to developing ongoing online experiences with the mindset of an indie developer with the budget of a AAA studio. Throughout the past seven years, Remedy has also celebrated it's twentieth anniversary and became a publicly owned studio with Nasdaq. They've certainly not been boring.
The studio has grown from approximately 60 employees since American Nightmare to 185 developers. Back in 2012, there was a closeness where everyone knew everyone at the studio, which was reflected in a lot of the studio's communications from pre-launch chatrooms with the community to the kind of language used during interviews. (If you look back at the Alan Wake interviews, the developers would make a lot of reference to a team effort, but any leading questions and they would switch to personal opinions. I wrote my A-Level thesis on it a few years ago.) With the company's growth, it makes that closeness more challenging, but is combatted that with smaller development teams.
Around the time I joined the community, they released Alan Wake's American Nightmare, began developing Quantum Break and was hiring for a brand new team after splitting the company in two; Next Big Thing and Mobile. The mobile team launched Agents of Storm in 2014 with publisher Flaregames, before disbanding around 2015. Following the launch of Quantum Break in April 2016, the developers split again with one team focusing on Crossfire HD and the other on Control. As of 2018, a smaller team, Vanguard, has started up in the studio dedicated to developing ongoing online experiences with the mindset of an indie developer with the budget of a AAA studio. Throughout the past seven years, Remedy has also celebrated it's twentieth anniversary and became a publicly owned studio with Nasdaq. They've certainly not been boring.
The studio has grown from approximately 60 employees since American Nightmare to 185 developers. Back in 2012, there was a closeness where everyone knew everyone at the studio, which was reflected in a lot of the studio's communications from pre-launch chatrooms with the community to the kind of language used during interviews. (If you look back at the Alan Wake interviews, the developers would make a lot of reference to a team effort, but any leading questions and they would switch to personal opinions. I wrote my A-Level thesis on it a few years ago.) With the company's growth, it makes that closeness more challenging, but is combatted that with smaller development teams.
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| A) One of the first screenshots from Alan Wake's American Nightmare. B) Photo from the set of the Quantum Break Teaser for Gamescom. C) Winning entry of our Quantum Break XBOX One code competition. |
Like Remedy, the community has always had a very Bright Falls-vibe to it where a lot of the regular members become good friends, while also welcoming to new members. That latter part made a big impact when I first joined, especially as it felt such a contrast to previous communities I had been in. I do look back at those first few years especially with a kind of nostalgia. I made so many wonderful friends who I'm still in contact with. I met my partner through the community. And Remedy's marketing plan always seem to announce something cool when I was feeling at my worst like heat-seeking missiles.
Despite all the changes over the years, I still feel the same excitement about writing, about the community and about upcoming games as I did seven years ago.
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| A) Early promotional shot for Quantum Break. B) Character profile for Li from Agents of Storm. C) Concept artwork of Jesse Faden. |
It's pretty weird thinking that seven years have passed, in some ways it feels like a long time, but I still feel like I've just joined. Thank you to everyone who has supported the site and have been so lovely throughout the years.
