Why Two Point Studios returned to the office
It doesn't feel that long since we last spoke to the team at Two Point Studios.
In fact, it was two years ago, on the eve of the release of its second game: Two Point Campus. The simulation title had just suffered a slight delay, and one of the reasons the studio cited for the date shift was because the game had been made almost entirely during lockdown.
At the time, founders Mark Webley and Gary Carr said that it wasn't until the end of development that they noticed a few issues. The sort of issues, they suggested, that would have been picked up if the team had been operating in the same space. This is a studio that's used to looking over each other's shoulders, spotting issues with how their colleagues are playing the game, or taking a brief moment to highlight a tiny bug. For the vast majority of Two Point Campus' development, that simply didn't happen.
Two years on, and Two Point Studios appears similar to the one we spoke to back then. The same leaders, the same team size (around 40 people) and they're still making management sim titles set in the fictional Two Point County. The company's next game, due in February next year, is called Two Point Museum.
Yet whereas Campus was made almost entirely remotely, Museum has been made almost entirely in-office.
"It was a much easier development process this time," explains executive producer Jo Koehler.
"Last time we spoke, we talked about Covid and the effect that had on the production of Two Point Campus. We went into full production about the week of the lockdowns. We thought it would be a month at home then we'd back, but that wasn't to be. With Museum, we are back in the office four days a week for most people. And having that back and forth, face-to-face has been really fantastic."
Design director Ben Huskins adds: "Those little ad-hoc chats... when we are at home, someone would message you on Slack and you might not spot that for an hour, and they only wanted a two minute chat. That sort of thing is so much easier in
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