In this article I'm trying to do something that has not been done before in EU and that is to take a look at the actual office of Arkadia Studios, to see where they spend most of their time and where the game is created. The idea for this article came when I asked David about their office while I was doing my last article about Planet Arkadia and he told me they were moving to a new one around 7/8 July. He offered to send me some pictures when they had moved in. So a few days after that date I gave David a little reminder and the next day there were a few pictures in my mailbox. I got the change to ask him some question about the new office as well, which he very quickly answered and those gave me some info to base this article on. Arkadia Studios is based in Singapore and because Arkadia is targeting the Asian market that seems to be a good spot to be in. From what I understand Singapore is an attractive country to be in as a tech company and the salaries are probably a bit lower than in Australia, where David originally comes from which keeps the overall cost for building a planet a bit lower. The first question I asked David was of course why they had left their old office and he basically told me they needed room to grow. The old office was around 500sqft and the new one is 1900sqft and can seat up to 30 people, so it gives them a bit of room to expand the company. Also this new office building (which was recently refurbished and look brand new again) houses all sorts of game and media companies, which is good for networking and gives the staff access to seminars for professional development. I also got some answers about some of the basic stuff that gives us a little insight on how they work. For example all the people that work there have a fixed desk, so there is no fighting every day to get the best desk in the house (as I'm sure David has given to himself), this gives people the opportunity to personalize their work space as you can see in the picture below. David tells me that the office is all open and that even he, as the CEO, does not have a separate room and even though it is 1900sqft the office is still small enough to be able to talk to both Cyrus and Chris without getting out of his chair. John on left does organic modeling - mobs, plants, environment etc. Eric on right does most everything else - buildings, weapons, vehicles, clothes & armour. He is also the concept artist. When I asked "wired or WiFi?" I was told they are all wired and have a fiber optic connection to the outside world, which of course is pretty important when they have to upload all this great new content to Sweden for MindArk to look at and (hopefully without too much trouble) get on the live servers. Other than an occasional box of tissues and legal documents the office is basically paperless and indeed I could not find either a printer or a piece of paper in any of the pictures. Cyrus pretending to be hard at work for the picture, and the box of tissues, which seems to be the only paper in the office. As you probably know, David has a baby boy named James and he loves coming to the office. He plays with the staff and tickles them and runs around the office with his big Nerf machine gun. I'm sure this distracts some of the staff from their work once in a while. As you probably don't know James has got a new baby brother on it's way in December, and I'm sure, when he grows up and is able to walk around the office they will have a tickle competition between the both of them. No idea if this is the one James has, but it is very cool With a lot of high tech companies (like Google and Facebook) you see that they have all sorts of fun stuff in the office to give their staff some relaxation from their work, but at Arkadia Studios they do not have any of those. They are just hard at work all the time to give us as an even better planet. So, no pool table, dart boards, air hockey tables and even no soft ice cream machine. The only equipment not related to building the planet at the office is Davids coffee machine and I'm sure he needs some good coffee to keep going during those long days of creating a planet. My final question was if there was any treasure to be found at the office, because they are a treasure hunting planet and David answered that there might be some Real Life treasure waiting for an event that's begins soon, so that's some interesting news indeed and I for one wonder what the event and the treasure will be, but I guess we have to wait a bit more. The location Arkadia Studios is at is part of a huge project funded by the Singapore government to attract high tech companies to the country, called One-North. In total it is a 200 hectare, 15 billion dollar project which is split up in different areas to house different types of industries. Fusionopolis, Mediapolis, Vista Xchange, Wessex Estate, Rochester Park, Nepal Hill, Pixel and one-north Park Below is an aerial view with the building Arkadia Studios is in, marked in red. You can see the building next to them, which looked about the same as theirs, is being pulled down (which is finished by now) and 2 of the landmark buildings of the One-North project right across the street. The entire project will be developed over a period of about 20 years and Biopolis and Fusionopolis are the first to be developed. When all the construction is done it will have some spectacular buildings. In this big area of new development there is lots of stuff the Arkadia people can do after their work or during lunch break. Amongst the things I have found are numerous restaurants with food from all over the globe, coffee bars, a gym and a pool. So if they manage to get out of the office for a while, there is lots to do to take their minds of building a planet. Below is a movie I found showing the building Arkadia Studios is in from the top of the Fusionopolis building > All views expressed in the article are the authors' own views, and they do not reflect the opinion or views of EntropiaPlanets.com as a whole.
Yes, so this is where Arkadia Studios cook it all up now ;) Singapore looks like a good place to work and live and must have less rain than what I've gone through lately :)
Looked at the tax rates in Singapore and they seem to be very positive as well compared to what we are used to in Europe. Business tax is 17% Income tax starts at 0% and goes up to 20% compared to Holland with it's 20 - 50% tax rates, that's pretty nice :) VAT is 7% compared to the 21% we will have very soon here in Holland. Looked up the average net income of a computer programmer in Singapore compared to some countries and indeed it is a lot lower then in Australia or western Europe.
Hmmm.... It does actually look a little bleak... somehow I imagined something a little happier looking. The new buildings look like something from PA though :D pretty cool!
