MenZa’s Weblog

Last week, I had the pleasure and privilege of staying at IO Interactive, the developers of games such as Freedom Fighters and the Hitman series.
I had scheduled my internship over eight months prior, without really knowing what to expect.
How many employees would they be? How large would their office building be? What will I be doing? Where is it located?

Finally, it was time. My parents, my brother and I packed our most necessary belongings, clamped on our old caravan and headed for Copenhagen.
Here’s an extract of my stay.

Monday, May 22nd

My father and I decided to leave the caravan almost an hour before I had to be at IOI.
When I arrived, I was very shaky and went inside. The reception was large, and the woman who had corresponded with me eight months earlier, Tatiana Højengaard, came to greet me.
I sat down at a sofa near the reception, and met a dude about my age. I asked him if he were here for an internship aswell, and he answered he was.
His name was Kevin.
It quickly became clear we were to be four interns–I thought I was the only one.
We were shown around the company, which was huge (image). Five floors (image), each housing a game development project.
We were then taken to the game room (the room of which you can see the windows, on the first floor).
We were told our project for the week was to make a so-called Pitch, the kind of document you would present to a publisher in order to persuade them to fund your game, along with a Design Document.

We quickly decided our game was going to be a third-person shooter/stealth game, introducing elements from such games as Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid.

Christian, one of the other interns, decided to start doing a bit of concept art. Before we’d gotten any further, the clock stroke four, and we had to leave.

For lunch, we had some kind of noodle-dish, freshly baked bread and salad.

Tuesday, May 23rd

Tuesday was rather quiet, as we just went on from where we’d left off. I came in at eight thirty for breakfast and met up with Kevin and Christoffer. Christian came a bit later, and missed breakfast on this occasion.

I don’t remember what we had for lunch though :\

Wednesday, May 24th

We all came in early on Wednesday, to have breakfast and discuss how much we had to do that day.
We presented our product to a few of the employees at IO Interactive: Jonas with-a-surname-I-can’t-remember, Tore Blystad, Jesper Donnis and Thomas Howalt.
All were quite interested in our product–Thomas included, even though he told us to focus our efforts elsewhere than we’d done so far. He also wanted us to make sure incorporated more steampunk into our game than we’d planned for.

I don’t remember what we had for lunch that day either, but I’m sure it was good (hey, we didn’t get anything bad that week)

Friday, May 26th

Because Thursday was a national holiday, we had the day off. A whole day, wasted by a visit to my uncle on the south of Zeeland
The excitement on Friday morning was high at most of IO Interactive. Their latest game, Hitman: Blood Money was to be released on that day.
We didn’t share the exciement, as we realised our stay had come close to an end. None of us wanted to leave, but alas–we had to.
We wrapped up our product, made some artwork for a cover, and dubbed our project “Decieved”.

When we had a couple of hours left, Tatiana came into the game room carrying four boxes of Blood Money, three poster-tubes, three posters and a stack of christmas cards with the words “Okay, christmas-time, guys!”.
We were each presented with a Hitman: Blood Money poster (image), a signed copy of Hitman: Blood Money (image) and a stack of IOI Christmas Cards from the past few years (image)

Here’s an excerpt of our pitch:

You are Jason Law, citizen of an oppressed steampunk society. You have been told an alien virus is loose. The truth, however, is much different.
This virus has been released by the government to keep the population under their thumb, numbing all resistance and development.
You sign up as a security guard at the state-held company BioChem.
You quickly discover the truth, and decide to take on the government.
On your mission, you meet other rebels. You get organized and perform missions, whose main goal is anti-propaganda and truthful information.

Since my stay, I’ve corresponded with not only my co-interns, but Tatiana, Tore, Jonas and most recently Jesper.

If I’m lucky, I might be able to repeat this next year ;)

Thanks to Michael Heilemann, employee at IOI for the IO Interactive office-pictures :)