When we think about game design goals, and rules, and those types of things, we have some very simple ones that are pretty obvious. Um, you know, the first one is, empower the player. Um, and what I mean by that is, let's make sure that the player feels like they can do cool stuff in the game. Um, very often, in the past, what, what we've seen in games is that, um, teams will create an elaborate cut scene, right? They'll show you something totally amazing. Oh wow, I want to fly that spaceship, or I want to fight that giant monster -- and then it's a cut scene. You're not playing it; you're watching it. You're not, you're not actually doing the thing; you're being shown something that's really cool, but then you have this feeling of, like, "Well, man, I wish I could have done that." So, for us, we're, we're really focused on empowering the player by letting them do those cool moments. So, if we come up with something cool, like flying a spaceship, or fighting a giant, uh, enemy, we want to make sure the player is connected to the game at that moment, and doing that themselves -- so that that special moment that may be in other games will have just been, like, a linear piece or a movie; we're letting you play it. So, that's, that's one of the things that we really want to make sure we do for our players. The other one is a little bit more, um, challenging, and that's, we want to make sure that, rather than telling you what to do, the player is naturally doing those things -- or under -- getting informed through what's in the game world. So, with, you know, the Dead Space series, for instance, we put a lot of emphasis on de-cluttering the screen of any kind of, um, heads-up display and U, UI elements. We said, "Okay, we're going to make sure all of this end game information which is critical -- we want to make sure that the player knows how much health they have -- um, is there, but we want to do it in a way that is, um, you know, integrated into the world." So, our character design actually allows for you to see the health of that character based on the gear that he's wearing. So, rather than seeing this little thing up in the corner, you're actually more immersed and focused on your player character -- and getting this level of information. So, again, it's, it's showing the player what they need to do, or letting them discover what they need to do, rather than telling them, "Do this. Do that. Look here. Do that" -- so really, um, guiding the player through, um, motivation of what's fun or what makes sense in a space, versus, "We're going to tell you exactly what to do in these situations." I think that's another thing we try to do.
