Why Bungie is becoming a ‘digital-first workplace’ — and still plans to keep its growing office footprint

Bungie’s selection past thirty day period to come to be a digital-first office arrived as a delicate surprise, supplied that the video clip video game developer is growing its headquarters room in Bellevue, Wash., and a short while ago leased two floors in downtown Seattle.

In accordance to CEO Pete Parsons, the move to turn out to be a electronic-very first workplace won’t effects business office enlargement ideas for Bungie, recognised for its massively-multiplayer to start with-individual shooter Destiny 2.

“Making fantastic game titles is all about empowering talented people today,” Parsons claimed in an electronic mail to GeekWire. “We’ve heard loud and distinct that our teams seriously reward from the overall flexibility to select in which and how they do the job. We’re nevertheless heading to present amazing, employee-optional workspaces for our Bellevue and Seattle groups who can benefit from bodily areas, features, and specialized technology.”

“Our studios will be a place our teams want to shell out time in,” Parsons ongoing. “Not have to.”

When lots of tech organizations moved to hybrid or thoroughly remote work with out a great deal of a hitch when the pandemic commenced, the shift was tricky for some gaming studios as it delayed manufacturing. But when providers helped get superior applications and tools to workers’ residences, productivity came again, Bloomberg described.

Other gaming organizations this sort of as Ubisoft are also moving to a hybrid do the job structure.

Bungie’s present-day Bellevue HQ is about 200,000 square ft, even though its leased house in the downtown Seattle 2+U tower normally takes up one more 60,000.

Bungie has now accepted six U.S. states apart from Washington for remote function, which includes California, Oregon, Illinois, and Texas.

The company had beforehand labored all-remote above the course of the very last two years, and was capable to ship the very last Future 2 expansion, The Witch Queen, at the conclusion of February as a absolutely remote studio. Bungie has about 1,100 staff, 93% of whom are in the Seattle location.

“We’re inserting a bet that this is the proper connection with our staff likely forward,” reported Bungie Main Persons Officer Holly Barbacovi.

It was not appropriate for Bungie, Barbacovi claimed, to mandate a return to the office, which has resulted in what she calls a “test-and-find out tactic.” Bungie has created fantastic instrumentation to see how its workforce are doing work, such as a survey process that permits it to hear to its workforce, new hires, and recruiters.

“I do not feel everyone has all the responses now,” Barbacovi mentioned, “but the actuality is that our marriage with work has irrevocably adjusted as a outcome of this pandemic. We have to experiment with what this new equilibrium will be.”

Bungie has employed its initially established of personnel for its initial international office environment, in Amsterdam, and is at this time in the process of determining how it strategies to use that business office.

“We really feel like we’ll be ready to carry on to do super substantial-excellent online games with an ever more distant workforce,” claimed Barbacovi.