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There's no showbiz, and zero spectacle. There never really is inside a development studio, no matter how bombastic the games they produce are - but there's something slightly different about Sony's Santa Monica studio, a small two-storey stretch of red brick tucked away on the outskirts of Los Angeles' Mid-City. For a developer that's built its empire on a foundation of shredded intestines, shattered eyesockets and to the war cries of angry Greek gods, there's an unnerving sense of peace throughout the offices. A Kratos statue rests calmly in reception, while in one corner there's a miniature Japanese garden that's been scruffily combed over. The silence is only broken when Giant Sparrow's Ian Dallas, the developer behind last year's offbeat wonder The Unfinished Swan, rolls in on his bike and has trouble getting past a receptionist who isn't quite sure who he is, but the contemplative quiet soon returns. This is a developer that's all about contrasts, and it's a contrast that places them at the very heart of Sony's philosophy.
It's a studio born out of the desire to be different. Allan Becker, a highly regarded Sony employee who was working at Sony's Foster City base, wanted to make a break. "They had internal development going on, and I think for him there was this persistent corporate feel to the environment there," explains Shannon Studstill, the current studio director who was around when the studio was formed in 1999.
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