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Full Disclosure: THQ paid for my flight and hotel accommodations in Montreal. No coverage restrictions were placed upon me, and no promises of coverage of any sort were made to THQ by Bitmob.
THQ recently invited members of the gaming press to Montreal for the grand-opening of THQ Studio Montreal. THQ plans to have the operation fully-staffed within the next few years, and their intention is to turn this into a world-class studio. We were given a tour of the shiny new digs, and while there's not much there yet, I thought it would be cool to show you what a studio looks like in its infancy.
These tubes are the perfect place for treats and candy, but instead they're being used as mailboxes. I was disheartened to learn this, but then I realized that you could mail yourself treats and they'd be delivered right to you at work and nobody would have any idea. It would be awesome! Like, so awesome.
Studio Montreal will eventually employ around 400 people. Right now I believe the number is about 30. This is where the QA monkeys will sit once they exist. The architects purposely made these cubicle walls a little shorter so that the team could easily communicate and/or get in epic NERF gun battles.
It takes a lot of wire to like, wire everything together. Where to put it? How about the ceiling?! I wish I had baskets on my ceiling for all of my cable nonsense.
Have a great idea? Write it on the wall! The walls in some of the conference rooms are actually dry-erase boards. You're probably trying to zoom-in on the wall to see what cool secrets were left out in the open, but the guy giving the tour made sure there was nothing sensitive for me to photograph. Boo!
This is one of the large multipurpose rooms. Here it's set up for hands-on with Homefront, but it can also be used as a meeting place for multiple teams, or sliding doors can be closed to create a more intimate conference room.
Continue on to page two to see actual people working, the cleanest kitchen ever, and a theater room that's better than yours.
This is the cleanest, most sterile-looking kitchen I've seen in my entire life. I don't think that even kitchens on spaceships are this spotless. Needless to say, it's in an area of the building that has yet to be occupied by grimy game-type people.
Oh, look, it's real people doing real work! While Studio Montreal isn't complete, it is operational (like the Death Star, whose color schemes seem to have had quite the influence on the color choices here). These guys were sitting in almost pitch-black conditions working on…something. I forgot to ask what they were working on. Let's assume it was something top-secret and sweet.
What the hell is this bright color…stuff? The studio's designers had to twist the arms of the developers to break up the grays, whites, and blacks with the occasional splash of color. They said that the developers will appreciate this area more when the bleak Montreal winter rolls in.
Fact: It takes a crap-ton of microwaves to make a good video game. Those Hot Pockets won't just cook themselves, you know!
This is the theater room. Even though the blind-folded guy kind of creeps me out, this was probably my favorite room in the studio. The couches along the back wall (not pictured) are sooooo comfortable — perfect for napping!
I have no idea what the room in the foreground is for, but the room in the background is where the backup power and servers are. At least that's what I think is there. I kind of joined this part of the tour in progress, so I only caught the part about backup power. So yes, there's a chance that I missed the part where they said this room is for cloning evil monkeys, but I thing it's a long shot.