The game was made by one of the programmers I work with actually (plus another designer whom I know).. Really talented bloke..
Wow thats incredible! I would certainly be honored to know someone (let alone work with) from any development team. You say you work with them? Hell i am honored by just replying to you
Exactly..
I don't know any artists that wouldn't use real-life as a reference to model something that is supposed to be a model of real-life..
As opposed to using a model of something from real-life, as a reference to model something..
Yeah, this reminds me of how Disney crew went on trip to Africa to study wild life and enviroment so they can animate it well (The Lion King)
But poster above should be glad his job is to model office which is not really hard to find.
One more way of doing this would be to find film footage from real office.
Something like this
But in any case i would say go for real thing, because you never know if someone else removed few important things here and there from their model