The whole of a game's narrative is told with play as well as story - thinking about mechanics and story through each other's lens can do wonders to ensure a game has holistic design values.

Verisimilitude has countless vectors, many of which don't stop at photorealism. I've found that focusing my budget on ways to make my games feel surprising and alive (extra dialogue and other responses to player input, for example) is the best way to make my work shine.

Game design is a line of work that benefits from trying to understand the person behind the controller. The best tools to understand player motivation are open eyes and ears to discover peoples' needs, wants, and hopes.