The fun factor

It’s the rare corporation that sets out to design an office that encourages workers to goof off.

But the business of Electronic Arts is, after all, fun and games. Think “Medal of Honor,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “Command & Conquer.”

Animators and engineers at EA’s two-building studio in Playa Vista can escape their darkened cubicles to shoot hoops, spike volleyballs or score soccer goals. Or they can soak up the sun and the coastal breeze at a courtyard that features a toe-dipping pool, a fountain, a boardwalk and deck chairs.

A lavishly appointed gym beckons in one building, while the other sports a Starbucks and a rec room with a pool table, Foosball and arcade games.

With its palm-lined entrance, valet parking and wall-mounted plasma TV screens, EALA, as the 6.5-acre campus is known, looks like a cross between a perk-laden Hollywood studio and a hip beach pad. It’s the kind of place where a 20- or 30-something gamer would feel at home wearing shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops and cruising between cubicles on a scooter (which many do.)

“We had wanted to have a Los Angeles presence,” said Rusty Rueff, EA’s executive vice president of human resources. “It’s the center of the entertainment world.”

Since the first game-testers began trickling in to the 243,000-square-foot studio south of Marina del Rey last August, the population has mushroomed to about 400 employees, most of whom had worked at EA quarters in Irvine, Bel-Air and Las Vegas. Electronic Arts, a nearly $3-billion company based in Redwood City, Calif., plans to launch an aggressive hiring campaign with the aim of building its workforce to about 600 by 2005 and, eventually, to 1,000.

To find artists, modelers and sound engineers, it will be competing with movie and TV studios and visual-effects houses such as Sony Pictures Imageworks, Rhythm & Hues Studios Inc. and Digital Domain.

That’s where the Foosball and volleyball sand pit come in. How better to lure employees and then keep them cheerfully captive?

“We’re providing a workspace that stimulates the creative mind and provides all the benefits and elements necessary to keep our employees happy,” said Ted Schouten, EA’s chief operating officer.

Even in the crunch period leading up to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, this week’s video game convention in downtown Los Angeles, where the company introduced 23 new titles, four guys in T-shirts left behind the virtual violence indoors to vie for real on the just-opened basketball court. Several other employees dined and read al fresco in the courtyard.

EA pondered a few locations before unveiling last August its agreement for the two Water’s Edge buildings at Playa Vista. Completed in 2002 at the depth of the commercial real estate slump, the structures had long sat empty on the northeast corner of Lincoln and Jefferson boulevards, about a mile from the Pacific Ocean.

Before making the deal public, EA hired HLW, a global architecture and design firm known for its work with Fox, Disney and other movie studios, to lay out the campus. HLW faced two challenges, said Michael White, managing partner.

The firm had to figure out how to meld the distinctly different buildings into a cohesive campus. And it had to get the job designed and built in a year, a quick turnaround.

To solve the latter problem, HLW’s Los Angeles designers tag-teamed with the firm’s Shanghai office, enabling the project’s two dozen architects to work around the clock.

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Two buildings, two looks

Linking the two buildings was trickier. Designed by the Gensler architecture firm, they look as different as after-and-before Cinderellas. One is sleek, with green-tinted glass and steel; the other is concrete and silver and gray glass, still modern but much less showy.

Both buildings have visible structural elements and huge expanses of glass to allow for views and loads of daylight. And both have open, flexible office space and high ceilings. For now, all the actual game development is in the concrete building with the silver and gray glass to the north.

From the parking garage that serves both buildings, one climbs a flight of stairs to the sunshine-bathed courtyard, with its ipe decking. Around the fountain and pool -- intended to recall a tidal pool -- are ornamental grasses, sedges and palms.

Passing through a wood-and-metal gate, one enters the concrete building’s lobby, which offers, in addition to the coffee bar, an atrium, a saltwater aquarium, a company store and a floor of caramel-colored beechwood and sand-colored concrete. Sofas and chairs are covered in leather, velvet and wool in colors described as espresso, black cherry, mink and sea-foam green. At the rear is a resin-topped reception counter, fronted by beach grass encased in resin and backed by three large plasma screens.

“The intention was to make it feel like a beach house,” White said. Sure enough, somebody has left a trail of taco chips, just like at home.

Three work floors rise above the lobby. Walls and spacious hexagonal cubicles are decorated with posters, storyboards, drawings, helmets, weapons and figurines pertaining to the EA franchises -- “Honor,” “LOTR,” James Bond and “Command & Conquer” -- that are being developed here.

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The versatile cubicle

As one might expect, each 64-inch-high cubicle (perfect for prairie-dogging) is outfitted with multiple flat-screen monitors and the latest in high-tech gadgetry. Each comes with a padded bench for visitors and white boards inside and out, to facilitate impromptu brainstorming. Cubicle panels are removable. At one pod, two mates have removed a panel and installed a chess board and a mirrored disco ball.

Although the atmosphere can seem intense, the lighting is subdued. Ceilings are painted eggplant, to cut down on glare.

There is not a straight line in the joint. Walls swoop and undulate; cubicles are clustered into “neighborhoods,” so that different teams have their own sense of community, with kitchens and war rooms.

“You tend to wander and meander through the space,” White said. “That was very important to the culture.”

Some higher-ranking producers and executives have offices, but they are grouped in the center. The best views are reserved for cube dwellers like Junki Saita, 30, who by “the luck of the draw” looks out on the Ballona Wetlands and the freshwater marsh cater-corner across Lincoln.

A few employees are taking advantage of an off-campus perk: proximity to the housing that Playa Vista offers (with rental discounts and other incentives for EA employees). From the window outside his cubicle, Amer Ajami, 28, can point to the apartment he leases in Playa Vista’s Fountain Park complex, a five-minute walk away. “I can roll out of bed at 9:45 and hit my desk at 10,” said Ajami, associate producer of “The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth.” The only downside, he added, is that “I can’t use traffic as an excuse if I’m late.”

Most lunchtimes, Matt Rice, 27, trades IKEA slippers for well-worn Birkenstocks and pads to his Fountain Park apartment to see his wife, Amy, and 8-month-old daughter, Taylor. He grills burgers on his tiny balcony and relishes the view.

That affirms Schouten’s theory that location was key. “What they really want is this Westside lifestyle. We’re ideally located for that.”

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On the Web

To see a video report on Electronic Arts’ new campus, visit www.calendarlive.com/eala.