Asian governments roll out 4-day weeks, WFH to solve fuel crisis caused by war

I'm in games as well. I'm pretty mixed on it. For my experience

- first job, fully onsite. More traditional cubicle space

- second job, on-site until COVID came around. Literally a WeWork building as a sattellite office to HQ in San Fransico.

- third job, "0-100%" on site. There was an office and I could come into it never or all the time. More of an open office setup.

I will say it's nice to not need to spend 5 days commuting, and I really don't think we need to do that much collaboration to be productive. If you're local, I think a suggestion of 2-3 days in office would do wonders, reserved for "brainstorming" days or cross team syncs. for job 3, that was pretty much my schedule; typically come in TWTh, unless I was feeling sick (this was still the tail end of COVID).

But some camaraderie was nice. The games scene was really friendly for the most part (in my experience. I have heard second hand stories and don't want to discount those). There were community events, tribal wisdom you'd hear over water-cooler talk, impromptu group lunches, and seasonal parties. It was nice, being around other passionate people who had similar interests to you. I definitely miss that most.

Productivity-wise, I'm not sure I noticed much difference. I had enough space to setup a dedicated office room, so that's definitely one privilege I had. But I had on-off days in office and remote. Maybe my most productive days were in office, but that was usually over guidance from a lead.

I don't think everyone needs to be on-site per se. But I do see some situations where on-site is beneficial to have, at least in partial capacity.

1. Juniors definitely need some on-site guidance (and by that extension, leads need to be available those days). I really cannot imagine those early mentoring being as effective over a screen. There's so much "body language" style of knowledge gained that doesn't come up in zoom meetings (and while proposed, I really hate the idea of an "always on" chat-room)

2. brainstorming, architecturing , and conceptualizing felt much better in person. So some periods may need more in-office time than others where it's focused on development (which feels to have minimal impact, given the nature of "head down" work).

3. Office space might be a consideration depending on your living space. If you are in a small apartment with little desk space, I can see that having a huge impact to productivity.

>at least a small written paragraphs about it before interrupting your colleagues.

Game design is messy and some things can only really be talked through.

Also, nothing here implies that GP doesn't think through their thoughts before bouncing off ideas.

Perhaps you should split the load with another human?

Authentic places certainly exist. That's not generally the sort of place that has menus covering multiple countries, though.

There are also places where they can make stuff like home, but usually won't. They might have made "proper" stuff owing to the presence of your exchange student.

The office serves only one purpose: to keep people in the city. The city exists to house the masses who own nothing, who live in rented accommodation, use public transport, buy useless fast tech as status symbols to show off, fast fashion for the same reason, and order takeaway food with all the massive waste of packaging etc. etc. etc.

It serves no other purpose and, in particular, it isn't sustainable in terms of scale/natural resources.

Whether you like it or not, technology defines the era: when we moved from bronze to iron, those still using bronze were slaughtered by those who had iron. Today, technology dictates Distributism because, like it or not, the "new deal" works through things like domestic p.v. with small-scale storage, an EV integrated in the garage, not skyscrapers and massive solar power plants. Digital tools work well when you HAVE to use them, so you're forced to do it properly or you fail; in other words, by working remotely. In person, steps are "skipped" leaving information gaps and creating inefficiency, and so on and so forth.