Jenova Chem told the Push games website...
When we make games at thatgamecompany, our philosophy is to try to bring a new and fresh experience that the player has never had in the past. When we worked on Journey, this is our third PlayStation Network game, so we wanted to try to make a game about multiplayer, particularly about making the player have an emotional connection with another player.
And this is something that I rarely see in a console video game, because most of them are about, y’know, killing each other, or killing something together. The player rarely has a bond with another player. And so when we worked on Journey, that was the focus — how can we create a world, and a type of gameplay, that people will actually like each other? (laughs) Have a feeling that they are actually companions.
We call it an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure, that is exploring life’s passages, and how they cross with each others, with other peoples’ life passage. It’s very much like hiking. A lot of people go to hike and they wanna go to the peak of the summit, the top of the mountain. On the way you might actually run into other journeyers who are also heading to the mountain. If you like each other you can stay together and travel as a group. If you don’t like each other, you pass over each other and you continue to travel alone. Sometimes the team might break up, you might lose track of each other, but later you will run into each other again. It’s very much how life is. We run into all kinds of people. We might depart at some point, we might reunite. It may sound pretentious, but if you actually play the game, if you actually experience it, it is very, very different.
Read the full interview here..
