All Your Favourite Games Were Made In Really Boring Offices

thegamer.com:

Silent Hill 2 is a game with almost mythological status in my mind. To me it's such a monumental work of art that I refuse to believe it was simply made by some regular people in an office block in downtown Tokyo. Obviously this is naive in the extreme, and deep down I know the reality. But it's still jarring pulling the Wizard of Oz's curtain back and seeing a game of such power, intensity, and beguiling beauty being created in a sterile office space that looks like a dreary accounting firm. This landmark horror game was made here? Surely not.

In this making of documentary we catch several glimpses of the Konami offices where Team Silent made horror history, and it's incredibly underwhelming. I don't know, maybe I was expecting something more atmospheric. A dark room lit by candles with Akira Yamaoka's music drifting spookily through the air. Not a bright, fluorescent maze of cubicles painted in shades of sickly hospital green. How the hell did these people get into the headspace to make a game like that here? I suppose it is a nightmare in its own blandly corporate way.

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This discovery sent me down a rabbit hole. I suddenly became obsessed with seeing the beige Japanese offices where my favourite games were made, and each one was more unremarkable than the last. In a July, 1999 TV special about the making of Shenmue, we get a look at where Yu Suzuki's martial arts epic was made. A grey, featureless office haphazardly cluttered with giant CRT screens, monolithic Dreamcast development kits (I'd kill for one of those), and so many controllers. It's a fascinating snapshot of a moment in gaming history.

Resident