| Hi everyone. Today we're talking about remote-work successes, but first... This week's top gaming news: The hit new video game Spider-Man 2 is set in a bustling re-creation of New York City, complete with digital versions of busy workers commuting to their offices. But many of the people who made the game were able to live out a different experience — working from their homes full-time. As industries across the world demand that their employees return to a life of morning donuts and water-cooler conversations, some video-game companies are following suit. Large game makers such as Activision Blizzard Inc. and Roblox Corp. have mandated that most staff come to the office at least three days a week. In a note to staff earlier this month, Roblox CEO David Baszucki wrote that "being together strengthens our culture" and that he believed more innovation and mentorship would come from office work. Detractors of remote work in the video-game industry have opined that virtual workspaces don't facilitate creativity quite as well as face-to-face collaboration. But other companies have found success taking the opposite approach. Some of 2023's best and biggest video games have been developed largely by people in their pajamas. Spider-Man 2, which received rave reviews and broke sales records for Sony's PlayStation Studios, was made by a team that was allowed to do their jobs from home. Insomniac Games, the Sony-owned company behind Spider-Man 2, announced during the pandemic that its employees could work from home permanently. Some moved away from Burbank, California, where the company's main office is located; others stayed in the Los Angeles area and now come into the office as little or as much as they please. A Sony spokesperson told me that each of the company's game studios can decide independently how to approach remote work. Top game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. has a similar policy for its teams, which is why another of this year's hit games, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, was also developed from wherever its employees wanted. Despite some bugs and performance issues, Jedi: Survivor has received rave reviews and topped the charts in April. The troubled game Cyberpunk 2077 found redemption this year with a fantastic 2.0 update and a killer expansion, Phantom Liberty, which sold 3 million copies and earned an 89 on the review aggregation website Opencritic. CD Projekt Red, the Polish company behind the game, says employees can choose to either be "office-first" or "remote-first." Office-first employees are expected to go in at least 10 days a month (and get their own desks) while remote-first employees can show up as they please, using whatever workstations happen to be available. "While we generally believe onsite collaboration to be most efficient, if your type of work allows it, and your direct supervisor agrees, you can opt in to work remotely," said a CD Projekt Red spokesperson. There are others. Japanese video-game titan Square Enix, responsible for a string of hits this year, including Final Fantasy XVI and Octopath Traveler II (one of my personal favorites), announced in 2020 that it would shift to a permanent work-from-home model. And Bungie, the veteran developer behind persistent hit Destiny 2, has shifted to "digital-first" and is hiring remotely in most states. Working perma-remotely might not be for everybody, but advocates say it's a boon to their mental health, their ability to take care of children and even their productivity thanks to the lack of a commute. It can also be particularly beneficial in the volatile video-game industry, which has seen thousands of layoffs this year. As I detailed in my 2021 book Press Reset, this layoff cycle drives people out of the industry because it forces them to uproot and relocate their families. Volition Games, for example, which shut down in August, was based in Champaign, Illinois, where there are few other video-game companies. Those impacted by the closure have three options: 1) leave the video-game industry, 2) move to another city or 3) find a job that allows them to continue working on games without selling their homes and pulling their kids out of school. The benefits of remote work are hard to deny. Some executives have argued that work-from-home leads to subpar results and less productive teams. But this year's slate of remote-made hits speaks for itself. I've been devouring Alan Wake 2, the new action-horror game from the brilliant Finnish developer Remedy Games, and loving it so far. Critics have raved about the new game, a sequel to 2010's Alan Wake, which is out Friday and will be a beautifully spooky way to spend Halloween. A new Microsoft shakeup sees the Zenimax division now reporting directly to Xbox Game Studios. Game platforms will be the beneficiaries of AI, Morgan Stanley says. | 
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