INSIDE THE STUDIO: Life In Marin

Margaritas and Rock Band.  That sums up the high point of life at 2K’s new Marin studio.  We know how to have a good time!  But of course, most of the time we’re not rocking out – we’re working hard at making great games.  Between our programmers, artists, designers, and producers, everyone here is committed to advancing the art and science of gaming; most conversations are about how to make games better and how to make better games. With our crew made up of old hands from the original BioShock, and new blood from around the game industry, you can imagine that everyone has an opinion on the matter.

The PS3 Team at 2K Marin is mostly made up of programmers working on the particular changes needed to take advantage of the power of the PS3.  But we also have a few artists and designers working on features for the PS3 version such as updated PS3 UI, and the new Survivor difficulty level. 

Of course, with all the work there is to do, 2K Marin needs a lot of help. And that’s where the other studios we work with come in.  The amazingly talented engineers, artists, designers, and audio designers of 2K Boston and 2K Australia - teams that worked on the original BioShock - are simultaneously hard at work making progress on the game. There’s nothing better than coming into work in the morning and finding fresh new additions and bug fixes waiting.  Of course, we need to make copious use of phone conferences, email, and IM to keep in touch with those teams, but there’s nothing better than knowing we’re supported by awesome developers around the globe.

And, as we recently announced, those fantastic programmers include a veteran PS3 programming team from Digital Extremes, the studio behind Dark Sector for the PS3.  Their console-specific experience has been a huge boon for us during the development of this title, and we couldn’t have done it without the collaboration from all of these studios around the world.  Now if only we could find a way to share margaritas over long distances…

- Johnnemann Nordhagen, Programmer, 2K Marin