In the quiet suburb of Espoo, a short drive west from Helsinki in Finland, is an unassuming building that’s home to one of the most confounding studios in games. Remedy Entertainment is known for getting weird. It started with the meta horror of Alan Wake, and has since expanded with Control, a game that turns a bureaucratic government office into a sinister and unsettling battleground. Their worlds merge the surreal and the mundane – which is not a bad description of Remedy itself.
On the day I visited, the studio’s energy was relaxed and subdued – in true Finnish style, there are even multiple onsite saunas – and frankly a little boring, especially for a creative team known for the likes of the mind-bending Ashtray Maze or “Old Gods of Asgard” musical. But that contrast is also one of the keys to Remedy’s recent success.
In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, the video game industry has experienced studio closures, persistent layoffs, corporate meddling, and ill-fated games that were canceled soon after launch. Exceptions like Remedy have been rare. Over the past decade, the studio has been implementing a plan to help it compete with bigger, better-funded developers and publis …