I agree with that, that's for sure. But I guess more to your point, people can learn different lessons and then implement concepts in a different way, and that's the important thing.

LH: I think that when we talk about culture, game style, and game design... game design and game ideas become the biggest challenge about being in China.

 In the U.S., we don't have to put any effort onto injecting cultural ideas into design because it's just natural. Here, it was, "Okay, I'm going to have to focus a little bit on informing and helping people to learn about what are the good ideas that work in a Western game as opposed to Chinese."

You know, because Eastern-style games, Chinese and Asian games, there's usually an underlying theme that is different. So, actually, getting that point across.

Actually, Jing Yu and I worked together on that quite a bit, because we also worked together on Ubisoft.

JYZ: Sometimes when we have different opinions on design because of different cultural background, we just discuss who will play this game and which one is better for them.

LH: And of course, the beautiful thing that comes out of that collaboration is something that is unique apart from either side. What you find in the middle usually is I think unique and maybe more interesting.

Well, that would be my hope, that you don't steamroll the creative impetus of the Asian creators you have working for you, but you recognize what can and can't work.

JYZ: Yeah, the beautiful thing about Dust is we're all learning how to create it together. There's no real template for what Dust should be. And especially in the beginning -- of course, now we've gone through design -- but we've all learned kind of together on how to make it good, instead of just everything being dictated.

One of the things that we definitely concentrate and focus on is not snuffing creativity. And sometimes, that's also a challenge. For us, we have to sit back and let some things flow a little bit. Of course, when we do, we find out how to maybe channel it.

JYZ: I think that it will be a problem because we are all video game fans. And most of games we've played, they're developed for the Eastern market. We have general common sense on how to develop games. It's probably not so serious.

LH: Yeah, we get very interesting ideas that get exchanged. That's really nice. We have a couple junior guys on our team that actually were with Virtuos before. We have really nice discussions about how to make our game good. It's nice to see. They're very bright. They absorb a lot of things. It's very nice just to see how they come along and how they contribute.

The primary perceived benefit of development in China is cost savings, but I don't think that's necessarily a creatively interesting way to look at game development.

LH: Yeah. I think you can't discount the fact that that is a benefit. But if you take that in tandem with the creative benefits, then you have a good situation.

JYZ: That's one of the reasons, but not all.

LH: Again, the artistic talent is very high. I guess I would say teaching people to think creatively in a design process is something that's easier to do with gamers. The people that are interested in working in the game industry in China are gamers. I think Chinese people spend a lot of time in front of games. I think there's a mindset there that can be tapped into, and that leads into the creative part.

JYZ: In China, games are not so popular. It's only popular with young people. The traditional Chinese, they don't think games are good for people. So, that's why people working in the game industry say they are only there for what they want to do, what they like to do. In games, they enjoy their work. They are not for salaries or for benefits. They just like this job. That is why we can find a lot of talented people here.