Hi! I'm an architecture student working on designing a Video Game Studio.

I was wondering if anyone who's had experience in the industry could give me a few pointers.

Stuff like,

- What are the different types of rooms/space one would find in a studio.

- What are the different designations in a studio? Which designations work in an open plan and which need more privacy?

- What type of work environment is suitable for the type of work? Naturally ventilated/lighted vs. Artificially? Open vs. Closed? Airy and spacious or Compact and cozy? etc.

- How does work progress in a studio? Do certain levels of progress require special spaces?

- Equipment used?

..and anything else one would consider in designing a studio.

I'm planning on designing for a team of over 100-200 but any size is fine for inputs.

Thanks in advance!

- What are the different designations in a studio? Which designations work in an open plan and which need more privacy?
- What type of work environment is suitable for the type of work? Naturally ventilated/lighted vs. Artificially? Open vs. Closed? Airy and spacious or Compact and cozy? etc.

Not directly answering your questions, but a few thoughts to help with some considerations:

Designing a space for a game development studio without already knowing the development team/culture is a rather tricky task, and is kind of like asking someone to design a factory space.

"A factory space" isn't really much to go on, because a factory producing a few dozen high end hand made pocket watches every month is going to have extremely different requirements than a factory producing Main Battle Tanks, and keeping this in mind during your design considerations is a useful thing, especially if the project is a blind speculation without an established team looking for a custom product to meet their specific needs. And it can be useful to keep various workspace traits in mind even if you are designing with a specific customer in mind who thinks they know what they want, as they may find out later that what they thought was going to work for their current team isn't going to keep working five years from now.

An ideal design for something like a software development company will include forethought toward rebuilding the space after the fact. If the space includes several small sound proofed quiet offices designed for 1-2 employees to work out of, then ideally your designs would also take into consideration how quickly those can be taken out and the space restructured with limited work and time requirements. (re-deployable structural panels can be your friend.) Or the opposite, if the space was designed to be mainly open, then does your layout work well to quickly subdivide different sections of the office into smaller spaces?

Does the furniture work well for repositioning within a space? Can a few labourers come in and easily move most of the stuff around without excessive packing being done by anyone? Or will you have to take everything off the shelves and then use tools to actually dismantle stuff before moving it?

I know some offices go so far as to use wheeled desks with quick disconnects and portable power supplies built in. Moving teams? Unplug your desk's power and network cable, pick up one end, wheel yourself to your new team, and find somewhere to squeeze in.

- What are the different designations in a studio? Which designations work in an open plan and which need more privacy?
- What type of work environment is suitable for the type of work? Naturally ventilated/lighted vs. Artificially? Open vs. Closed? Airy and spacious or Compact and cozy? etc.

For starters, you should listen to this morning's story about "how a bigger lunch table can boost productivity" on NPR's Morning Edition. I was just coincidentally listening to it before reading your post. http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/05/20/405226172/how-a-bigger-lunch-table-at-work-can-boost-productivity

And for your "different designations" question, I guess you're asking about the different job roles in games. Read http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson7.htm

Thanks! This will help me a bunch! :)

Designing a space for a game development studio without already knowing the development team/culture is a rather tricky task, and is kind of like asking someone to design a factory space.

Good point! The project is actually a hypothetical one and isn't grounded yet on aims and objectives.

I was thinking of something within the bounds of a small studio which could start of with small projects like(but not limited to) phone games. Say up to 20 people or so.

Design considerations will be made for expansion for when the studio gains success(being optimistic here) to hold from 50 to 100... then 200 people!

Since it was hypothetical, I went ambitious and picked an independent site instead of an existing office building like many studios do.

I have yet to be well-versed on the topic so feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.

There are more than 200 people just on my current project in my company (only counting the people in this building, not outsourced people).

Anyway, here are things this office and my previous company share in common:

#1: Multiple floors in the building.

#2: The sound team is in a closed-off area, hopefully with extra padding in the walls. The reasons are obvious.

#3: Plenty of office rooms for meetings, interviews, etc. No fewer than 8 (previous company, which had about 130 people).

#4: Game consoles hooked up to TV’s for the gamers who like to play games during lunch rather than eat (me).

#5: No fewer than 8 bathroom stalls for men. Bathrooms should have a circuit so that when the doors are closed the internal server can show on the internal site which stalls are open and for how long they have been closed. If a person stays in a stall too long, alert someone and kick him or her out.

#6: A server room.

#7: A front desk.

#8: An administrative-level office room (where the big bosses live).

#9: The programming/art/design areas consume the large open space that composes most of the office/floor.

#10: A nice view. No game studio can exist below the 5th floor of any building. It isn’t Scientologically possible.

#11: A lounge.

#12: Smoking rooms with good ventilation.

#13: I’ve noticed something else at every single game company for which I have worked: There was someone named “L. Spiro” there. Could just be coincidence, but since they are compact and can easily be embedded into a wall or used as a support beam I would just design 1 or 2 of them in there just in case. Plus they are stackable.

#14: A server room.

#15: Vending machines, refrigerators, microwaves, and water jugs.

#16: The desks are not arranged in square cubicles. All people hate that and face since the time of cavemen. At my previous company we faced into the corners. At this company it is similar but honey-comb shaped.

My current studio also has motion-capture studios. In fact I was just in one yesterday, doing some motions for the main character in our game.

There are always artificial and natural light sources. At this company the blinds are adjusted automatically by the building at various times of day. Otherwise they are adjusted by people in the office.

L. Spiro

In my experience, almost everyone sits in large open plan areas at clusters of desks with small partitions (not cubicles!). Each desk has at least a PC and two monitors. Perhaps a dev-kit (basically another PC) and another monitor or a TV. Desk clusters probably have large bundles of network cables that disappear into the roof or adjoining walls.

The exceptions (who have their own offices) are - audio (who have a sound-proofed room / recording booth), HR/finance (who deal with sensitive info), executives/directors (who have status to show off), and IT (who needs lots of storage space for PC parts).

Animators may have a large clear space near their desks for recording motions, or they might have a separate room with motion capture equipment.

Additional there'll be -

* meeting rooms (probably one large "board room" and several small rooms, each with a table, chairs, whiteboard, video-conference equipment, projectors, etc).

* server room (floating floor, dedicated power, external telecommunications equipment, climate control).

* lunch area - tables, chairs, stools, couches, probably a TV + console :)

* kitchen (plus multiple kitchenettes if it's a large office)

* reception area (with receptionist if it's a large office).

* the obvious (bathrooms, fire exits)

Some places group staff members by discipline, others mix disciplines together. The seating plan will very likely change from project to project.

I currently work at an office that is shared between dozens of indie studios (maybe 50 staff total). Most studios are in their own rooms ranging from around 10ft x 10ft to 30ft x 40ft. We have a large shared lunch room, full kitchen (sink/oven/dishwasher/fridge/microwave/espresso/other appliances) and 4 kitchenettes (sink/fridge/microwave/dishwasher), a board room, 2 small meeting rooms, an open-plan area for "lone wolf" indies to share, a shared server room, freight elevator / loading bay, several couch areas, a "lecture hall" room and 4 bathrooms (x2 genders). Some of the offices have natural light (mine), others are artificial only (which IIRC gets them lower rent)... all of them have network ports in the walls which connect to the central server room and air conditioning vents in the ceiling.

It may be boring for an Architecture Student but most games companies that I have worked at have just had one big room with rows of desks. A few of meeting rooms and a kitchen. Maybe a few small breakout areas too. The truth is a games studio is no different than any other office or call centre. Sure there may be different machines in the building (dev kits etc) and different art on the walls but really nothing special from an architecture standpoint.
If you really want to see fancy office space you need to check out the big tech companies such as Google or Facebook or some of the larger Banks and Financial companies which have money to burn and waste no expense on crazy office space.