The Chinese Room
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| Private | |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Brighton, England |
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Key people
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Dan Pinchbeck Jessica Curry |
| Products |
Dear Esther Korsakovia Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Everybody's Gone to the Rapture |
| Website | thechineseroom |
The Chinese Room Ltd (formerly Thechineseroom Limited until 11 June 2013) is a British independent video game development studio best known for working on experimental first-person games, such as the Half-Life 2 mod Dear Esther, and co-developing its full-fledged remake. The company originated as a mod team for Half-Life 2, based at the University of Portsmouth in 2007, and is named after John Searle's Chinese room thought experiment, however, the origami logo is a japanese symbol.
Thechineseroom's first three projects were two mods for Half-Life 2, named Antlion Soccer and Dear Esther, and a Doom 3 mod titled Conscientious Objector. The modding project was backed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Of these, Dear Esther became a cult hit. In 2009, Thechineseroom developed Korsakovia, which was a survival horror mod.
After Korsakovia, Thechineseroom worked with Robert Briscoe to develop a remake of Dear Esther, this time as a full-fledged video game title, distributed through Valve Corporation's Steam distribution service. This stand-alone version of the mod received several IGF nominations, such as the Seamus McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Visual Arts and Audio, and the Nuovo Award. It finally won for Excellence in Visual Art. The remake featured improved graphics, but was based on the same engine as the previous mods, Source. The game was released in early 2012 and recouped its $55,000 investment in less than six hours of release, when 16,000 copies of the game were sold. One week after launch, the game reached 50,000 copies sold.
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