20 years after co-founding Avalanche Studios and laying the foundations for the Just Cause series, Christofer Sundberg is ready to break new ground. As Richie Shoemaker quickly found out, he just isn’t ready to shell out for a Marco Maxibrew
W
hat kind of monster refuses to buy his employees a coffee machine? Not just any employees either,
but Scandinavians. If you’ve ever worked at or visited a studio within a short hop of the Arctic Circle, you will know that those holed up inside – with their lopapeysa sweaters and cosy slippers – don’t just love a hit of coffee, they take a particular interest in the machines that deliver it. You won’t find any catering- sized tins of Nescafé in any of their kitchen cupboards (nor much in the way of decent tea either, but that’s besides the point). Unless, we assume, you’re at the Stockholm office of Liquid Swords, where founder Christofer Sundberg has decided to hold back on the one piece of office equipment that might ingratiate him with his colleagues. “I won’t get a coffee machine for this
company until the day we all think that we have earned it,” he says. “I don’t want us to be comfortable. I want us to be hungry and use smart ways to develop games rather than just trusting a big bunch of cash. It’s short-term
thinking, thinking that more money will save everything.” To be fair to Sundberg, he’s not against his
employees having coffee or denying them the facilities to make it. That would plainly make him a tyrant. It’s just that in spite of Liquid Swords being a well-funded start-up (NetEase announced taking a stake in the company back in November), with the studio still to announce its first title, to paraphrase the once-great Morrissey they “just haven’t earned a state-of-the-art, all- singing, all-dancing coffee machine yet, baby.”
Christofer Sundberg, founder Liquid Swords
“Company DNA is something you discover after a few years. I have my vision, but in terms of the company culture and DNA, it’s something that the team here and the individuals working on the team will form.”
Febraury 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 13
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