the main thing that we were trying to get across with Fruit Ninja is simply a high-quality experience, something accessible, something that is kind of universal that all people can engage in and get something out of. And then, also we kind of infused a little bit of subtext in there, here and there, and, you know, the main kind of subtext that was supposed to be in Fruit Ninja, and I have no idea whether this was successful or not, but - hey, I mean, hopefully-hopefully, it made a difference to someone, but I really wanted something that would uh, that actually had this kind of subtle behind-the-scenes positive life choice message. Um, so - we wanted the fruit to be appealing. A rule that we came up with early on was, no rotten fruit, no fruit cut at strange angles, always like picture perfect, God, I want to eat that fruit. And then we reinforced that with uh, in the results screen, we would always have Fruit Facts. And these Fruit Facts would be a mix of, wow, that’s entertaining, so I should read it, and oh wow - fruit is actually really good for you. We would often say it like, did you know that if you eat, uh, I’m trying to remember off the top of my head, but I don’t remember now - you know, if you, you know, strawberries are shown to reduce the chances of X to Z, some things like that. And so although it wasn’t something that, we’re not flashing this stuff onscreen, right, front row center, there’s quite a subtle sort of approach, because the core thing we were trying to get across was that, that visceral, high-quality experience that - you know, there was that kind of subtext thereof, of that, and - another example, I mean, this is-this is kind of a tough one, but - the game I was just working on up until days ago, there’s versus art, which is soft launch. So the goal was to make a free to play game. The subtext in this is, I think, hopefully much, much more obvious to people, which is we’re creating a free to play game which is a very high quality experience, and there’s things you can spend money on. At the same time, the commentary of the game is that, contemporary art is stupid, and why would anybody pay for that? Because it holds no actual intrinsic value, uh, and we have little cut scenes where the characters are kind of poking fun at that constantly, and it’s very self-referential. But, I mean, I’m surprised at how fewple- few people so far were, we were just in should’ve engaged in the content on that kind of level. And so, a few - no one’s yet come up to me and gone, hey, I totally get what you were doing there, so - maybe I do much too light touch when I’m trying to sell a message, but um, I don’t know. I always find really out there, front row center messages very obnoxious. You know, Ken Wong was saying a really good one about Monument Valley, which is - and it’s very subtle, it’s a game that, instead of about taking, it’s about giving. You-you place something down at the end of the level, rather than picking it up and removing it, and you know. it’s got that really nice kind of subtle subtext message that kind of builds in through the overall experience, and the overall aesthetic of that game.
