A Place Where Life Imitates Games

Stage 35 has garnered something of a reputation as a hangout at Universal Studios. Actors kick back there and play video games during breaks from movie shoots. Even Steven Spielberg stops by sometimes.

The catch is, it’s not an arcade, but the corporate offices for designers of Sega Gameworks, a chain of entertainment centers founded in 1996 by Universal, Spielberg’s DreamWorks SKG and Sega Enterprises.

Besides the handful of full-sized video games scattered around the stage entrance, Gameworks has brought in mock-ups of the arcades’ corrugated metal walls and huge video displays. A projection screen covers one wall, so designers can test the company’s new proprietary games on the big screen. Company posters hang banner-style from the ceiling.

“We wanted to be surrounded by what we are creating,” said Stuart Bailey, the designer who engineered the offices. “It’s easier to come to work here and free-think than in a sea of cubicles.”

Creating offices within the large sound stage was as easy as wheeling in display boards for office walls and erecting scaffolding to create makeshift hallways, which they covered with Oriental rugs. When designers need room to put up models, they just roll up the carpet and move the equipment to other locations on the stage.

“We could reconfigure this whole place in a day,” Bailey said.

The group’s executive offices are equally loose, composed of two walls, velvet curtains and finds from nearby prop houses, like the big oak bar that serves as one wall of Senior Vice President Jon Snoddy’s office. He has no desk, no door and very little privacy. He works from a lumpy couch with a laptop attached to the arm. A coffee table, littered with papers, serves as his desk.

“A year or two ago I realized my job was talking to people,” Snoddy said. “The only reason I wanted a desk was because my dad had a desk and I felt like I should have one.”

The offices’ offbeat combination of industrial materials and kitsch has even spawned a spin-off, an arcade in Tucson that mimics the look of its corporate offices. Appropriately enough, Gameworks calls it Stage 35.