Tripwire Interactive, who most recently garnered acclaim for the ShARkPG Maneater, is instituting a new customizable “Next Gen Work Model” designed to foster creativity, work/life balance, and flexibility for all employees, both existing and new.
After the pandemic forced studios to work from home, many have wondered what coming out on the other side of this worldwide event will look like. In addition, conversations around crunch, work/life balance, and creative cultures in game development studios have reached a critical mass. Tripwire’s Next Gen Work Model is named as such because it is designed to move game development into the future, offering its employees the ability to customize their own plans for both in-office and at-home work. Employees can choose any variation of a hybrid schedule, fully remote, or fully in the office, in order to best fit their own lives and creative needs.
“By allowing flexible hybrid on-site/remote work plans we’re providing the best of both worlds with the collaborative and relational benefits of in-office work and the quality-of-life benefits of remote work,” said Tripwire CEO John Gibson. “With offering these flexible hybrid, full time remote, and full time on-site work options we’re serving the desires and needs of next generation teams.”
The new work model is a permanent addition effective immediately that will apply to all employees at the company, whether they’ve been with the studio for years or join Tripwire in the future. This flexible plan also breaks down the limitations of physical location that prevent many qualified candidates from even seeking to apply at studios, allowing Tripwire to bring in talent from anywhere. Tripwire’s aim is to foster a more productive and creative environment, as well as increase diversity among its staff by offering flexible options that fit into people’s lives.
The “employee-first work model” was created after gathering feedback from Tripwire employees in order to ensure it was fostering an inclusive, flexible environment that enabled people to be at their peak creatively while also maintaining a comfortable balance of work and life. Tripwire will keep its existing headquarters in Roswell, Georgia as its physical office space and central base of operations.
Tripwire’s Next Gen Work Model offers a firm vision of what the post-pandemic game development world could look like as studios begin to transition back to in-office work. Square Enix also instituted a permanent work-from-home option last year. We’ll be eagerly looking to other development studios to see how they adapt and alter their own workplace models to meet the needs of their employees.
