I know more than a few of you are interested in what it’s like to work at a video game company, and from time to time we’ll try to give you a look at our ritzy, glamorous, fun-filled lives as gaming rockstars. Oh, wait, I’m thinking of someone else… scratch that.

Anyway, yesterday I got to head over to offices of Secret Level, the studio that just developed our Iron Man game and is hard at work on Golden Axe: Beast Rider. It was my first visit to their headquarters, which is only about six blocks from the SEGA offices in San Francisco and is situated in a great location right across from AT&T Park, the home of the Giants.

The building itself is brick both inside and out, and the interior workspace had a lot of character; it was fairly dark inside, but the walls are covered with concept art and posters from Golden Axe and various other games, and employees’ cubicles are also adorned with lots of pictures, action figures, and other random gaming paraphernalia. You definitely know that you’re at a gaming company when you’re inside, that’s for sure.

While Mike, our Golden Axe: Beast Rider product manager, received status updates on the game from various producers and artists, I tagged along and took a bunch of pictures, which I’ve posted on our Flickr account here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23380910@N04/sets/72157604845979266/

There are some decent Beast Rider concept art shots in there, as well as a look at a few computer screens that have various animatics and render art on them. There are a couple other office interior shots as well as a good shot (poached from the Secret Level website) from the roof of the building, showing the ballpark across the street. Finally, I’ve thrown in two exclusive preview screenshots and two new pieces of concept art from the game, so you can get a clearer idea of how Beast Rider is shaping up.

As for experiencing the game itself, I didn’t see any specific gameplay, but the art and renders I saw were pretty unique, and I did see a demo of Tyris riding one particular beast that will deal some severe swipe damage with its claws. There are several types of beast mounts in the game, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and my bet is that there will be points in the game where you have to ride a specific beast in order to accomplish certain goals — but that’s just a hunch.

FYI, our SEGA of America community team (Clumsy, EggShen and myself) are off on Sunday to London to meet with our European counterparts, so we’ll be a bit scarce for the next week. I’ll be back after that with tons of photos of Stonehenge, the Tower of London, and Shakespeare’s birthplace, which I know is all you guys want to see from our big England trip. Until then, happy gaming…