Game Freak, makers of Pokémon, offered one-of-a-kind tour of their studio

Game Freak is not really a company that’s too public about their development work. In fact, I’d argue that you could say the same for almost all Japanese game studios. They tend to work behind closed doors, they have a spokesperson or two that serves as the face of the company and they produce game after game in this manner.

Well, Game Freak opened their doors to Game Informer, and they gave the U.S.-based magazine a tour of their studio. The Game Informer Team recounts that tour alongside some images in the video below.

There are all sorts of interesting nuggets of trivia about Game Freak in the clip. My favorite bit is that Game Freak asks employees and visitors to take off their shoes and toss on some slippers.

If you know anything about Japanese culture (though this applies to lots of cultures), they are very specific about the social rule of not wearing shoes indoors. In an office, though, that rule changes. It’s not a home, after all.

Game Freak wanted to recapture that spirit of home, so to speak, so they brought the home-like rule of keeping your shoes at the threshold to the studio. That culture spreads to their staff as they work on the Pokémon franchise.

I thought that was pretty cool.