Alex> That’s a very good point. Worth investigating.

Rav1> Profits maybe, but I imagine there being just general better design cohesiveness. Somebody throws out a request for “a sounding board”, and anybody up for it gathers either at the desk or in the conference room.

Rav2> Cool, so it does exist. . I’m not sure about that exact arrangement, where everyone’s sitting at a table staring at each other working on their own thing. Good collaboration perhaps, but I wonder about the “deep thought” or “in the zone” aspects of coding.

Raigen> Yeah. It’s very possible we would waste just as much time as in the home office. My hope would be that more “wasted” time was used to discuss game concepts, the flaws in an idea, or such.

Having worked on a few games in offices, I know for me there’s sort of excitement to it for the first few months. Maybe it’s only new project/job excitement. I do wonder if it’s the approaching milestones, mandatory overtime (despite unpaid) to meet them, or the many other traditional office pressures that are what take away “the magic”.

I often dream of having a distraction-free office-type environment, but at the same time I have bad memories of every office I’ve actually worked in. This makes me suspicious that it’s just grass-is-greener — possibly in an office I’d waste just as much time playing DoomRL

I could definitely see further improvements coming from the “office”; in SF they have co-working facilities available for freelancers to appear more serious than they are.