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Alejandro Gil (31st Union): "Having companies from a specific sector come together in the same area is very positive"

Alejandro Gil is the manager of the 31st Union studio in Valencia, the European branch of the studio of the same name in California. The company emerged after the acquisition of the Valencian studio elite3d by the Californian distributor 2K.

Two years ago, Mr Gil travelled to Spain to study the possibilities of expanding the company. They were going to develop a new game for which they needed two teams in two different parts of the world. One of the chosen cities was Valencia. In this interview, he explains the company's decision-making process and his vision for the future in the Community of Valencia.

"I am very grateful to IVACE for all their help: for showing us Valencia and introducing us to the network of companies and educational institutions such as the Polytechnic", says Gil. "We have very ambitious plans for the project and for any growth-related issues, I know that IVACE will be there for us"

 

What is 31st Union and how does it fit into the 2K group? What kind of video games do you develop?

Our corporate structure is simple: Take-Two is the parent company, and it has several important subsidiaries: 2K, Rockstar Games, or Take-Two Mobile, of which Social Point, based in Barcelona, is one of the main developers.

Within 2K, there is 2K Games, 2K Sports, and 2K Play. We are part of 2K Games. In that division there are about eleven studios. The latest addition to the family is 31st Union, founded in 2019 with very experienced people in the industry. Many of us have worked together before on very big projects in companies like Electronic Arts, Activision, Square Enix, etc.

31st Union was founded with the idea of creating a team focused on a new game, not part of an established franchise. The two teams, the one from the San Francisco Bay and the one from Valencia, work exclusively for that project. I can't say much about the game, it's a very ambitious AAA with a complex development both creatively and technically. The team is much more diverse than is typical in the industry and for those of us who have been in the industry for a while, it is a fresh and exciting start: not only because of the project itself, but because of the people we work with.

Did you first open the San Mateo office and then make the decision to launch in Spain?

Yes. The California studio opened a year before the official announcement of the expansion in Spain, which also coincided with the name change to 31st Union. But the idea of having a second location has always been part of the studio’s strategy. This is not new to the 2K modus operandi. There are other studios, like Cloud Chamber, which is headquartered in California and have another studio in Montreal. Hangar 13, which is on the same campus north of San Francisco as 2K's headquarters, has offices across half of Europe: in Prague, Brno, Brighton. It's something 2K already has experience with and a system that has delivered results. Right from the beginning we knew we were going to expand abroad.

And did you know it would be in Europe? Or did you just decide there would be another office and then pick a location?

Yes, the idea was to focus the search on Europe. There were many reasons to set up a second location, but one of the main ones was diversity. Attracting different kinds of talent, with all that it entails, their fresh ideas and other things like a different work and problem-solving system. One of the ways to achieve this is that the chosen location is not in the same geographical or cultural area. There are other reasons, such as the time difference that allows for working in shifts, which speeds up development and allows a game like ours to have full-time support in a sustainable way. As I have commented before, it has already been done with other studios.

The relationship with the other 2K studios and offices throughout the rest of Europe is very good and their help has been essential to open the studio and be running almost at full capacity in a matter of months. For logistical issues, for example, I work directly with an office in Dublin that offers IT and engineering services. T2 already had a presence in Spain with Social Point, and a little before us a studio was opened in Madrid, 2K Madrid, for game testing and quality assurance, which has a completely new team dedicated to our project.

Within Europe, you chose Valencia. Did you consider any other option?

Yes, especially in Spain. We did two trips, in the Summer of 2019, Michael Condrey, president and founder of 31^st Union, went with the team to analyse the different possibilities. I started working here in February 2020, and in March I was already in Spain visiting cities. It was a very short trip because in a week everything began to close due to the pandemic. I made the most of these few days, I made a presentation to the 2K team endorsing Valencia as the ideal location and that is where we ended up. In Valencia.

Do you have links with Valencia?

Yes and no. I am from the Basque Country, but I have spent a lot of time in Mallorca. I grew up in Barcelona and, when I was a child, I lived for a year in the Sierra Calderona near Sagunto, so I do have a special connection with the Mediterranean. But nothing at a professional level or as an adult. As soon as I was in Valencia, which I knew little about, I saw that the quality of life was like in California: the climate, the sea, the people… all of which make it an ideal place to attract talent from Spain and the rest of Europe.

Both offices work on the same game. How do they coordinate?

It is too big a project for just one team. The workload was already distributed, although with the pandemic it has become even more so. We have refined the tools to work together, and there is still work to be done, the search for asynchronous work systems is never ending.

The nine-hour time difference is a problem for meetings, but at the development level it is almost an advantage. There are many things that, even if the team were bigger, could not be done in parallel, such as testing the game. So, there are advantages to one team being ahead. A lot of development is done in a 24-hour cycle.

You mention the quality of life in Valencia and the attraction of talent. Did you consider any other features?

Valencia is a city that captivates you just by spending a few hours relaxing in the Ciutat Vella. Last November, when we were making the official presentation at the Palau de Les Arts with the whole team, my colleagues from California agreed with me. It is the third largest city in Spain and is perfectly connected to the rest of the country.

One of the things I did when I came on my first trip was to get on the AVE and see how fast you can go from one city to another. During the visit, which the people from IVACE helped me organize, I visited the Polytechnic, the ESAT school, the Berklee College of Music, the technology start-up incubator in the Lanzadera building in the Marina and the Innsomnia group. It just so happened that there was also video game festival underway, the Valencia Indie Games Festival organized by my friend Ramon Nafria, where I saw many games created by students from local centres. And then, the icing on the cake: I saw a lot of energy on a professional level. I got the impression that a lot of very interesting things were coming together to set up a studio with young people who wanted to try out new things. The institutional support was very enthusiastic and professional, and they gave us very detailed information on all the support and employment incentives that the Generalitat and the city of Valencia can offer. In fact, on that first trip I met people from all areas, including visits to video game studios already established in the city.

I was surprised by the city's institutional interest in technology and video game companies like ours. That companies from a specific sector come together in the same area seems very positive to me. I have seen this happen in the San Francisco Bay and synergies are created to attract talent, because there is competition.

The end result is always better than if there were no business fabric. When I returned, I did so with a general impression of what the private and institutional sectors offered, which opens doors for a studio and company like ours. We chose Valencia for several reasons, and we hope to continue growing rapidly and sustainably.

Which of those features do you think the administration should highlight to attract new companies?

One of the fundamental factors is the attraction of talent, not only from the rest of Spain but at a European level. After acquiring elite3d, 40% of our staff are foreigners and 60% Spanish. It is a very diverse group: there are people from Portugal, Germany, The Netherlands, England… Half of Europe is represented in the studio.

Valencia meets the criteria to have people working together. Our idea was to set up the studio in the center of the city. One of the aspects that mattered to me from the beginning, and so I put it in the report, is the quality of life. That the office is not an hour away in the middle of the highway. It is something important when you hire young people. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is less and less interest in spending a lot of time on the commute. Large cities with distributed companies or external technology campuses have problems in this regard.

It is important that you can finish work and have a drink or coffee. And for us, who work between California and Spain with a nine-hour difference, it is important that if people start early or finish late, they can go out and have dinner, or take public transport to return home.

On the first trip I saw that the whole city was one big building site because they were expanding the entire cycling track network. That confirmed the original impression I had on the first trip: the commitment to improving quality of life, to enjoy the city not only in terms of work.

Is it easy to convince people to move?

It is not easy anywhere. We started hiring before announcing the studio’s location. The first ten people we hired remotely didn't know where we were going to establish ourselves but announcing that it was going to be in Valencia really helped us recruit workers. It was the question on everybody’s lips: where is the studio going to be? One of our animators comes from Berlin and when we told him we were going to Valencia he said: that's it, I'm interested, in addition to the project I'm interested in the city. It was a very convincing point. Also, the fact that there would be a physical studio, a team of people and an office.

IVACE helped you with the trip. Do you regularly collaborate with them, now that you are installed, or with any other private or public technological development institution?

The relationship with IVACE has been very fluid, right from the beginning. I am very grateful for all their help showing us Valencia, introducing us to networks of companies and educational institutions such as the Polytechnic. Through those contacts I connected our head of recruiting in Spain with this University. The job is done.

In the future, could they help you with anything else?

I'm sure they could. We have very ambitious plans for our project in Spain, future expansion and to start other projects and games. For everything that requires growth, I know that we can count on IVACE.

What is the long-term outlook for the studio in Valencia?

In the medium term, the goal is to release our first game together with the team in California. In the long term, to continue expanding the creative project and grow with other projects.

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