TVGB: So how hard was it to pull this all together into a cohesive site?

AG: It wasn’t hard because I think we got lucky in a lot of places. It wasn’t easy, but the best thing we did was working with the ESRB to show them everything we were doing every step of the way so we wouldn’t produce all this stuff where they thought we were crazy. It was cool once we started working it all out, the ESRB was really helpful. We also had the producer of the comic books and the animated feature and she was amazing. She came in and took us by the hand through the whole voice action process. The other thing that was funny, is that we worked with a team to create a lot of 3D assets for the game and it’s hard to stay on style to bring in an outside person to recreate their assets. What was funny was that people involved in content lock were able to lend their time and help with the project. It was such an unprecedented level of partnership.

TVGB: How has the reaction been to the site itself?

AG: The interesting thing is that the awareness has been good. We’ve seen over 50,000 people and we don’t have a built in community so the numbers on that are decent. The average time spent on the site is 10-and-a-half minutes which is unprecedented for a webstie. 20 percent of the people on the site spend between a half hour and an hour which is huge. So people are getting on and getting involved. It’s pretty much exciting to me because as a person who’s an online guy, I believe that online can be even more engaging than anything else. The other thing that’s good is that people are really trying to get on the Ishimura aptitude test which is an extra layer we thought a small number of people would participate in. People like it, or they’re at least blown away by the carousel of dead limbs. I think it’s a pretty premium thing, and I’m very happy with it.

TVGB: You mentioned before that you thought the site might not be as accessible as possible. What were some of the challenges in making it something people could get into?

AG: This was the really hard part. It’s just like anything: how much faith do you want to put in your audience and how much do you want to lead them by the hand. We thought since it was all in one place we didn’t have to lead people by the hand. The disconnect came in the transition between regular people and people who wanted to dive in. I think we hit it for people who want to dive in, but for people who give it a cursory glance we could have gone a bit simpler. Most people seem to be used to being given everything and not used to working and thinking. I know that sounds pretentious, but, like with television, it’s more about being entertained than participation. I think as storytelling like this goes along, it will grow. It’s about expectations; the more people doing these types of things, the more it will grow.

TVGB: I was surprised by how downright scary you guys got a single room to be. How did you capture the atmosphere so well?

AG: The stuff from Dead Space lends itself so well. Our team was the one who really killed it on the atmosphere. Some of the voice actors were scaring us with their stuff. Nick from Deep Focus did some great stuff. Once again though, the dev team saved the day. They provided the sound and everything, and from a creative standpoint that’s the sound from the game and you can’t top that. The game has some of the best stuff out there and it makes it really easy to get that atmosphere.

TVGB: With the new release date I guess this will be running a bit over, huh?

AG: I think it actually is going to run a week over, before it was supposed to be a week before. We’ll end the Monday after the launch of the game, which we were obviously not prepared for. The fact that we were able to bring the date in was herculean.

TVGB: What prompted this herculean feat?

AG: Moving around dates is always a kind of strategic business things. Someone else somewhere decided to move it up and they talked to the dev team and they just worked that much harder to get it through everything. Every time I saw them working on builds and working on a new build status they always hit their marks and never really broke the build. To just see how tight and how on point they were was awesome. They were all really accountable and that’s what I think put them in the position to be able to say, “Yes we can do this,” when someone asked them.

TVGB: Will the site be updated after the games launch?

AG: I don’t think we’ll be doing more for this. But we are working on some additional content that will be coming out on a potentially different format. We’ve still got a whole other story though and it’s going to be real different.

TVGB: Sounds great man. Thanks for talking with us about it.

AG: No problem, we’re really excited about everything and looking forward to people getting their hands on the game.

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Dead Space will hit store shelves on October 14. TVGB will have a full review of the game in case you aren’t already convinced you need to own it.