EIDOS Montréal Studio Tour

Taking up the entire 6th floor of a downtown Montréal office building, the new EIDOS studio is certainly ready to take on the massive number of employees scheduled to occupy the space in the coming months. Fully utilizing only 60% of the space with just under 100 people, by the end of 2009 the company expects to knock down a wall to expand to the rest of the floor and grow to as many as 360 people. The elevator opens up straight into the reception area, staffed by a secretary and adorned with chairs, huge flat-screen TVs showing the Deus Ex 3 teaser, and even a rear-projection screen inset into a glass partition displaying Hitman videos. There we met with Stéphane D’Astous, the studio’s General Manager and our tour guide for the afternoon.

Looking down the center walkway between the reception desk and a small sitting area to the left was an open hallway leading back past the conference rooms towards the management staff section. Two doors, one on the left and one to the right, lead back into the Q/A and development sections, respectively. We started off by trekking through the left door, which first lead down a short hallway past the server room containing the massive racks of server farms powering the studios build system and asset management. The hallway opened up into the Q/A section, a large section of open office with clusters of long desks separated by low partitions, usually two employees sharing the same desk.

Past Q/A towards the rear of the office was the management section. Here the office closed off a bit more, with higher partitions but still not enough to fully enclose an area. Stéphane explained this was simply to allow as much light as possible into the office space, saying he didn’t want the office to feel “like a cave” to employees. Stéphane’s office is the only fully-enclosed office in the building, but its walls are made entirely of glass. The management here is organized to be very lean in order to cut down on overhead and invest more money into Q/A and development. Besides Stéphane, there are only 4 managers and no assistants and he hopes to keep the headcount below 10%.

Halfway through management we hung a sharp right through the door into the server monitoring room and from there we stepped through the soundproof door into the server room itself. Obviously it was very loud inside as dozens of racks of fans blew air off hot electronic components. They activated a large vertical bank of huge fans about 6 inches in diameter – you can see them in the photo as the columns with a control pad sticking out – so we could get an idea of how much air could be pushed around when needed. There are actually two rows of servers with room for additional cabinets as the studio expands. About 50 miles of cable runs out of these servers and through the entire office space. Networked builds, rendering and asset storage are just some of the uses for these machines. In addition to mirroring their own data, an offsite location managed in part by EIDOS does hold vital data in case of an office fire or similar disaster.

We were now passing the head of the central corridor leading back to the elevators and past the conference rooms, moving to the right side of the office where the development team was located. Here the space was arranged much like the Q/A section, however a lot more windows lined the wall, and Stéphane mentioned how he had saved the best views for the development team, giving them a way to rest their eyes from looking at monitors by focusing on distant objects. Only one developer sat per desk but there was much more room in this section of the office, enough to contain the current 80 members of the development staff. Plenty of empty desks sat along the edges of the populated areas, waiting for the rest of the team to be assembled.

We were joined at this point by David Anfossi, the studio’s Producer in charge of the Deus Ex 3 team. David talked for a few minutes about the team’s current project, the amount of research they had done in order to make sure they would please as many people as possible, as well as recognizing that they’re not going to satisfy everyone out there. My major gripe with the original Deus Ex (never played the sequel) was the horrible AI and I found out later that David felt the same way, and had hired an AI programmer with 15 years of experience to lead up that department. So they’re on the right track as far as I’m concerned. That level of experience matches a lot of the talent they are attracting, including developers from out of the country. By matching up so many experienced people they’re looking to really ease the development strain and avoid stressful deadlines and nasty crunches. They’re also looking to focus their talent solely on next-gen. Sure, Stéphane thinks the DS is cool, but that’s not something they are ever going to develop for.

With David in tow, Stéphane showed us the remainder of the office space. Bringing us to an empty desk he mentioned how he and David were both industrial designers and had planned out most of the office while he showed off the desk’s features and the seat cushion atop a roll-out file cabinet that could serve as an impromptu chair. Heading back towards the front of the office led us into the break room/cafeteria.

The studio’s break room featured various sitting styles, from low couches to tables and chairs to counter-top sitting. Refrigerators, a whole rack of microwaves, counter space, toasters – it was just short of a full-fledged kitchen. A table-top hockey game in the corner paid tribute to Canada’s love of the sport, and two flat-screen TVs angled to cover the entire room could display local channels. Every night after hours they would have something different, from movies to drink specials, as a way to keep changing pace and keep people on their toes. Just outside the break room was a room with showers and lockers for people who like to travel by bicycle to the office.

Walking through another door, we ended up back in the reception area. From here Stéphane took us up the central corridor and into the main meeting room on the right. To the left on the opposite side of the hallway were two additional meeting rooms, one set up for voice and video conferencing with up to four external locations, another for smaller more focused meetings between teams and departments. The main meeting room, a spacious area with a wide, long table and chairs for about 24 people, sported a flat-panel display hung along one wall in between two huge white boards, and a massive projection screen lowered from the ceiling. A server rack with a PS3, Xbox 360, HTPC and other multimedia devices rested in the corner. As half of the room was walled with glass, blinds could be drawn down to darken the room for projection.

After checking out the Deus Ex 3 teaser video on the Big Screen, Stéphane took some time to talk about the five reasons why EIDOS decided to open up a studio in Montréal. The first reason was the critical mass of roughly 5,000+ developers in the city to pick from, many of them very experienced. Secondly was the hope that area schools were finally starting to mature their game development curriculum and the influx of new talent would continue to increase. Thirdly, several major middleware companies reside in Montréal, which helps extend the development community. Fourthly, Stéphane maintains that the costs of living and operating in Montréal are simply cheaper than doing so in say, Vancouver or San Francisco. Finally, and more intangibly, Stéphane feels the development community in the city is very aligned and centered along common goals and culture, and that people coming from outside the country are more comfortable working and living in the area because of it.

Coming away from the tour there are several things that can be taken away and applied to smaller office spaces as well. The use of natural light, for example, isn’t too hard to do for many office spaces. Keeping everything open makes it impossible for team members to sort of lock themselves in an office and not talk to anyone else unless they have to. The idea of evening or even mid-day distractions is nothing new; pretty much every studio has a plan for shaking things up and keeping people from falling into a rut and showing up for work expecting the same old, same old. Culture is also a strong determining factor in the success of studios. Having a team that can work together seamlessly is a beautiful thing, made all the more better by a suitable office environment. EIDOS Montréal seemed to have all of these qualities – I’m eagerly anticipating their first product not only because it’s a game I’d love to play, but to see how their careful planning of both office and team turns out in the end.

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