2K’s Cloud Chamber Studios’ head believes that working from home will be the new normal even after the coronavirus pandemic is over.
Yes, the coronavirus is still around. Yes, that means most anyone who can work from home IS working from home. And no, that probably won’t change even after the pandemic is over. Why would it? Who wants to go back to wearing a suit and tie every day when you could just work from your couch wearing pajamas?
Cloud Chamber Studios head Kelley Gilmore might not have specifically mentioned the whole pajamas situation in her interview with USGamer’s Branching Narratives podcast, but she did make it clear that she thinks working from home is just the new normal now.
“I think we have shown that we are able to work this way,” said Gilmore when asked about how she maintains productivity at her studio. “There are some benefits to everybody being in the same space, for certain functions at certain moments in time. But I don’t envision us going back to everybody being in the studio five days a week again–ever. Because we’ve been able to show that people can be productive at home.”
Cloud Chamber is currently working on a brand new BioShock game that has yet to be revealed. We also don’t have a release timeframe, either, so don’t bother asking. But we do know that Cloud Chamber has been able to weather the COVID-19 storm relatively well, along with many other game studios that have changed to a work-from-home environment.
That said, Kelley did hedge her bets when it came to the games industry as a whole. “We’re all interested to see how this impacts productivity in terms of hitting current deliverables,” Gilmore responded. “And I think that’s across the industry.”
The latest news on that BioShock game is a mysterious new website that popped up last May. There’s nothing on the site save for a shining star and the message “staytuned.”
Hear the rest of the Branching Narratives podcast over on USGamer.
Source: USGamer, GamesIndustry.biz
