ALLIED FORCES
During our visit to the studio, someone’s taken a literal sledgehammer to the company’s HQ; it has staffed up from Advanced Warfare’s 200-strong development team to over 300, and that growth has seen the studio expand to a second floor, with extensive remodelling work underway. That’s quite the challenge for Schofield and Condrey, who founded Sledgehammer on the belief that a studio should feel like a family. “About the point where you grow past 150, it changes things,” Condrey says. “The core group we started with eight years ago, we intimately knew each other and there was a shorthand in our development process. Now at 300 it’s about making sure the values and ideas are cascading.” Schofield adds: “The more time you spend in business, the more you realise communication’s everything. Mankind can build anything, but if we can’t communicate, we’re not going to build shit.” Schofield discovered that tank commanders would modify their vehicles – fortifying the side or front – to suit their preferred tactics