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Sky’s CEO “almost closed the company” before social MMO’s launch

At SkyFest 2024, we sat down with thatgamecompany CEO and Creative Director Jenova Chen to learn more about the past five years of Sky.

Sky Children of the Light Jenova Chen interview: A high res photo of Jenova signing an art book at SkyFest

Sky: Children of the Light may only just be celebrating its fifth anniversary, but the idea for the social MMO has lived in thatgamecompany CEO Jenova Chen’s brain since before the studio’s first game release in 2006. Back when he was still a student at the University of South California, Chen worked on a game called Cloud, which is the first iteration of Sky as we know it today.

After three successful game launches with Sony Interactive Entertainment, Chen was able to go independent with his team and finally work on the game that launched his career, leading to the incredible live service game that SkyFest 2024 aimed to celebrate. I was lucky enough to sit down with thatgamecompany’s CEO and Creative Director at SkyFest to discuss all things Sky, community, and videogames as an art form.

Jenova Chen has previously been brutally honest and open in his panel talks, keynotes, and interviews, and my experience was no different. In fact, when we started talking and I thanked him for inviting Pocket Tactics to the event, he responded with, “Thank you for coming – we were worried that nobody is going to talk about this.” It’s an understandable fear to have; Sky: Children of the Light is a relatively small and niche online game in a market filled with the likes of Roblox, Fortnite, and more, but both the game and its developers are filling a unique market that’s fascinating to look at in detail.

From watching Chen’s presentations, I knew where the origins of Sky came from, but I wanted to know more about why thatgamecompany finally decided to release the game in 2019. He said, “There are emotional reasons and there are rational reasons. We founded the company because in early days, [fans of Cloud] told us ‘please found a company, you can tell society that games can be good, games can be art.’ We shipped Flower and Journey, which we were hoping would win some awards to prove that games can be art. The next step we thought is to put the art into the museum so more people who don’t play games can see them and realize games can be art.

Sky: Children of the Light Jenova Chen interview: Jenova in an old TGC office directing the team

“As I was touring this museum, I realized that it would not change the public’s opinion. It will change some critics’ opinions about the gaming medium, but the vast majority of people don’t go to museums. And so we were thinking, well, how can we speed up this process? How can we really change a massive amount of people’s opinions on games? And so we thought, okay, we’ve got to have to make the game more accessible to people of all ages because, on console, it’s mostly male.”

Multiple studies have shown that mobile gaming is more popular with women than men, including this Statista report, and Sky’s 70% female audience is a testament to the power of mobile games to get women of all ages involved in the space. SkyFest itself was filled with female fans of all ages, making friends and exchanging stories of their time in the game. Japan in particular was the perfect location for SkyFest, as according to Chen, 86% of women in Japan own an iOS device, so when Sky initially launched as an iOS-only game, the female Japanese market was a core part of its demographic.

So the rational reason behind Sky is to continue thatgamecompany’s mission to prove that games can be art, and cross-platform and mobile was logically the best move to get the game into the hands of more people. But what’s the emotional reason? Chen said, “When we shipped Journey, it was a very tough time for me. We almost closed the whole company because we didn’t have money left.

“I was visiting somebody in Beijing, China. I woke up at nine AM and three emails popped up from three different IGN editors. I don’t know them – I’ve met one of them just once briefly. But they’re like, ‘Hey, I know this is under embargo, but I just can’t wait. I have to tell you that Journey has won the game of the year.’ At that moment, I felt like I could see a golden thread of connections around the earth. And I just felt this tremendous feeling of gratitude and love.”

Sky: Children of the Light Jenova Chen interview: A picture-in-picture of Jenova's initial sketch of the soul bird and a painting of everyone's souls swirling the earth

Chen saw this image so clearly in his mind that he drew a sketch that then went on to inspire Sky’s entire ethos as a social MMO. It was clear from talking to him that the emotional impact of Journey’s Game of the Year win gave Chen the drive to make Sky, a game that has now influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. He told me stories that players had told him during the event about how the game and the friends they made through it helped them to continue going during their darkest moments.

“The game is supposed to be about the feeling of gratefulness,” he said. “It’s a game that allows people to connect deeply so a lot of people’s vulnerable parts have been shared. with others. And that’s also why many people want to help. But the truth is, more and more people are, I guess, mentally hurt these days.”

We chatted about how Sky’s community is incredibly welcoming and kind, especially when compared to the open chatboxes of other online games. It wasn’t always this way, but Chen said that the simple power of removing players’ anonymity among their friends stops the majority of toxic messages before they’re even posted.

He goes into much more detail about designing to reduce toxicity in his talk from GDC 2024, but he broke down some of the “secret sauce” for me during our interview. He explained, “Online players are human beings, but they’re not adults. Because when you change yourself into cyberspace, everything is new. So you’re basically a baby. As a baby, you’re seeking for maximum feedback. You don’t really know what feedback is good or bad, you just want whatever is maximum. And that’s why most online messages are creatively funny or nasty, because both of them get maximum feedback.

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“So what we did to make them feel more like an adult is create a social network first. If you want to leave a message in public, your friend can tell that’s your message. So the moment we released this feature, everybody logged in and tried to delete all the nasty stuff. Right? That’s the simple change, because we all care about the people that we befriended and how they think about us.” It turns out that social accountability is incredibly powerful!

The biggest news to come out of SkyFest was the upcoming IP collaboration with Moomin. Following on from the game’s previous crossovers with The Little Prince and Sanrio’s Cinnamoroll, I wondered how thatgamecompany goes about choosing IP to integrate into Sky. Chen told me that Moomin was overwhelmingly requested as a collaboration by Japanese players in particular after The Little Prince, and at first he didn’t understand why, but upon closer inspection, Moomin and Sky have a lot in common.

He told me, “So I realize this is an IP created right after World War Two, and both Finland and Japan have essentially suffered the loss of war. [Tove Jansson] was feeling those emotions of society and she wanted to tell them, ‘It’s okay. The world has been through a terrible time but we’ve still got to stick together and live our life.’ That’s essentially her message and her value in the books.” Plus, Moomin was made into an anime in the 90s, so most of Sky’s player base grew up watching it.

Sky Children of the Light Jenova Chen interview: Jenova on stage with the Moomintroll and Ritsu, Japanese staff member and translator

During his keynote at SkyFest, Chen almost too casually mentioned that “the game wasn’t built to last five years”, so naturally I asked him to expand on this. “We didn’t even know if people would download this game and we were just focusing on having an emotional experience. Hopefully, they’ll tell their friends to get the game. We didn’t really plan for a live service game you know?

“When we first designed the game, we only designed maybe two seasons ahead of time. So we only planned for six months. But these people don’t go away – they love the world and they have friends now. A person was telling me, ‘Hey, I have 6,000 candles and 3,000 hearts. I have no place to use them. Can you please figure out something I could use them for?’ This is probably someone who played over 10,000 hours.” So thatgamecompany’s current challenge, while not an inherently negative one, is to make more endgame content for the thousands of dedicated players who log on every single day.

Finally, I asked Chen what his favorite part of SkyFest was. He told me with a smile, “Every time I meet our players and I hear the stories they tell me, they heal me. I could be pretty tired and stressed and worried, but meeting them makes me reconfirm that everything we are working hard for is meaningful and worthwhile. I think everybody’s just very happy to be among other people who love the same thing, and to not feel lonely just for you know, two days.”

After speaking to Jenova Chen face-to-face, I’ve gained a whole new level of understanding about why Sky: Children of the Light has such a vibrant, caring, and enthusiastic community. Every single member of thatgamecompany who I met over the course of SkyFest is in love with the game that they make, and it truly makes all the difference.

For more insights from SkyFest 2024, check out our community-focused interview next, or read more about how Sky: Children of the Light’s concerts are giving Roblox and Fornite a run for their money.