Journey is one of my favorite games, I played this game at my friend’s place very late at night and we are totally immersed in the vast desert.  I almost cry towards the end when climbing the mountain with other players and he/she fell down and blown away by the strong wind, I try to go back to find he/she but I couldn’t. This is the only game which gives me a strong desire of helping other players and makes everyone in the room so touched. In Journey, there is not any language involved and there is no dialogue or explicit plot points either, players can only communicate with each other by sending a sound chime. It successfully helps to bring emotional connections and cooperations between players instead of prejudicing to others which is a common phenomenon under the cover of cyberspace. It also helps to reduce the discrepancy between different gender, religion and wealth.

Journey is developed in PhyreEngine and support PS4 and PS4. I began to wonder why Journey can evoke players’ emotion so effectively, so that’s why I choose this game as my game designer profile research.

One of the reason is that each level is presenting the stage of life. The early level is about joy and wonders with exploration and adventure, which reflects the innocence of childhood. Then the game playing becomes a little bit challenge, the levels inside the tunnels recall the feelings of anxiety and uncertainty we all feel when childhoods lead us and the responsibilities of adulthood come knocking while the ascent up the temple represents the quickening of time as it passes us by. Then towards the end, the game is pushing the player closer to our inevitable death. The player needs to face head-on while traversing up the mountains in cold winter and slow down, everything in life becomes harder. Eventually, the player die and ascent to the heavens where everything is more glorious and transcendental. The game ends with rising into the light while another player begins the journey right behind. 

I become more curious about what kind of people can develop such a wonderful game and the way they implement this kind of philosophy of life experience into game design. 

Journey is developed by ThatGameCompany, which is an American independent video game development company co-founded by University of Southern California students– Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago in 2006. The company focuses on creating video games that provoke emotional responses from players. Its employees have stated that, while they are not opposed to making action-oriented games, they believe that enough such titles are released by the established video game industry. When designing a game, Thatgamecompany employees start by mapping out what they want the player to feel, rather than by establishing game mechanics. Employees have stated that the company does not plan to produce large, blockbuster titles, due to their belief that the pressure for high sales would stifle innovation.

One of the quote by Chen is explaining the mechanics part of  Journey, “The goal was to create a game where people felt they are connected with each other, to show the positive side of humanity in them. A lot of games today have a list of quests, places to go, items to collect and rewards to receive… We just ignore each other. So in order to make players care about each other, we have to remove their power, and remove their tasks.” Chen also said creating games makes him a better person.

With the further study on ThatGameCompany and Chen, I found all of the games they made have a kind of same DNA. They are all very calming, beautiful and contain the features of flying and floating.

Cloud is a puzzle game and developed in 2005 when Chen was still a student in  University of Southern California’s (USC) Interactive Media Program. In Could, the player can fly around the collect cloud in the sky.

The next game is Flow, it was created in 2006 by Chen and Nicholas Clark. Originally released as a free Flash game to accompany Chen’s master’s thesis.

In Flow, the player navigates a series of two-dimensional (2D) planes with an aquatic microorganism that evolves by consuming other microorganisms. The game’s design is based on Chen’s research into dynamic difficulty adjustment at the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media Division, and on psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theoretical concept of mental immersion or flow.

Then Chen and his team moved to their next game Flower in 2009.  In Flower, the player controls the wind, blowing a flower petal through the air using the movement of the game controller. Flying close to flowers results in the player’s petal being followed by other flower petals. Approaching flowers may also have side-effects on the game world, such as bringing vibrant color to previously dead fields or activating stationary windmills. The game features no text or dialogue, forming a narrative arc primarily through visual representation and emotional cues.

So what about the future with ThatGameCompany?

Their next game Sky is coming soon,it is reminiscent of Journey, in that it combines exploration with a light social experience. Players will fly through the clouds in order to collect light from around the world, controlling a mysterious cloaked figure. The main idea of Sky is also focused on helping and sharing with each other.

Sky will have online multiplayer support for up to eight players worldwide, Chen said they have been received a lot of good feedback from the players of Journey. However, there is a large demand that people want to play this kind of game with their family and friends together. So Chen and his team embedded the multiplayer features in Sky for the first time. I am very looking forward to this new game and curious how the no-language- communicate system can work in Sky.