started designing xcom 2 we had the world with all these systems going on and the threat level rising and aliens that were going to start catching on to your revolutionary activities and i always end up cutting those because its not clear enough to me again that comes from sid who has a phrase that has always stuck with me is the designer having fun or is the player having fun its a very good question to always ask yourself war of the chosen the expansion in some ways was my favorite i loved going back to the cities its bloated theres so much in it but the dream i had when i was a kid of designing xcom was of putting in all this stuff with war of the chosen xcom 2 was the game i was aiming for in the very beginning it feels complete to me maybe overcomplete it was a very big swing and i felt really good personally when we finished itmarvels midnight sunsimage credit 2k gamesdeveloper firaxis games publisher 2k games format pc ps4 ps5 nintendo switch xbox one xbox series x and s release 2022i understand why players would treat xcom like a puzzle i think i backed myself into those interpretations you get this confidence as a player that all the informations out there but its not all of it the aliens are operating under ai that you dont understand there really are some losses where you didnt do anything wrong and actually you had a tough spot with some systemic elements midnight suns is another step in the direction of telling the player as much as we can our enemies have a symbol on their flag that says i am going to attack this hero next turn and your abilities say exactly what theyre gonna do we have one percentage probability element in the game which is when you knock somebody into a hole or off a building and thats fun because its the only percentage in the game everything else in midnight suns is very explicit you can plan out actions in advance whether its better or whether its worse i dont know but its been fun to work in that space as a designer is it less terrifying to go through a tough prototyping period now yes i didnt know what this game was when i started ive worked with most of my team for a very long time theyre all open to the idea of a lot of rapid change everybody from design to art theyre used to this period of spinning things up theres a lot of creative freedom with my publisher 2k and ultimately taketwo when youre in a place as a designer of this isnt working every show you watch every game you play youll take any lifeline i watched the wonder woman movie and theres a scene where she jumps up into a sniper tower kicking stuff and taking out