Sky: Children of the Light may only be celebrating its fifth birthday, but the idea for a social MMO has been in the mind of thatgamecompany CEO Jenova Chen since before the studio’s first game was released in 2006. While he was still a student at the University of Southern California, Chen was working on a game called Cloud, the first iteration of Sky as we know it today.
After three successful game launches with Sony Interactive Entertainment, Chen was able to go it alone with his team and finally work on the game that launched his career, leading to the incredible live game that SkyFest 2024 was meant to celebrate. I was fortunate to sit down with the CEO and Creative Director of thatgamecompany at SkyFest to discuss all things Sky, community, and video games as an art form.
Jenova Chen has been brutally straightforward and open in his panels, talks, and interviews before, and my experience was no different. In fact, when we started talking and I thanked him for inviting Pocket Tactics to the event, his response was, “Thanks for coming—we were worried no one would talk about it.” It’s understandable to be apprehensive; Sky: Children of the Light is a relatively miniature and niche online game in a market full of the likes of Roblox, Fortnite, and others, but both the game and its creators are filling a unique market that’s fascinating to look at in detail.
“When I was touring the museum, I realized that it wasn’t going to change public opinion. It was going to change some critics’ opinions about the gaming medium, but the vast majority of people don’t go to museums. So we thought, how can we speed up that process? How can we really change a huge number of people’s opinions about gaming? And so we thought, okay, we need to make gaming more accessible to people of all ages, because it’s a very male-dominated space on console.”
Many studies have shown that mobile games are more popular among women than men, including Statistical reportand Sky’s 70% female audience is proof that mobile gaming has the power to engage women of all ages in the space. SkyFest itself was packed with fans of all ages making friends and swapping stories about their time spent in the game. Japan in particular was a perfect location for SkyFest because, according to Chen, 86% of women in Japan own an iOS device, so when Sky initially launched as an iOS-only game, the Japanese female market made up a significant portion of its demographic.
So the rationale behind Sky is to continue thatgamecompany’s mission to prove that games can be art, and multiplatform and mobile were the logical best moves to get the game into the hands of more people. But what’s the emotional reason? Chen said: “When we released Journey, it was a really tough time for me. We almost closed down the whole company because we had no money left.
“I was visiting someone in Beijing, China. I woke up at nine in the morning and I had three emails from three different IGN editors. I don’t know them – I’ve only met one of them once, briefly. But they’re like, ‘Hey, I know this is embargoed, but I just can’t wait. I have to tell you, Journey won game of the year.’ In that moment, I felt like I saw a golden thread of connection across the entire earth. And I felt this huge sense of gratitude and love.”
Chen saw this image so clearly in his head that he drew a sketch that would later 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 motivated Chen to create Sky, a game that has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of others. He shared stories with me from players at the event, about how the game and the friends they’ve made through it have helped them carry on through their darkest moments.
“The game is supposed to be about gratitude,” he said. “It’s a game that allows people to connect deeply, so a lot of vulnerable parts of people have been shared. with others. And that’s why a lot of people want to help. But the truth is that more and more people are, I think, psychologically wounded these days.”
We talked about how incredibly cordial and welcoming the Sky community is, especially compared to the open chat boxes of other online games. It wasn’t always that way, but Chen said the basic power of de-anonymizing players among their friends stops most toxic messages before they even get published.
In his GDC 2024 keynote, he goes into much more detail about designing for reduced toxicity, but during our interview, he broke down some of the “secret sauce.” He explained, “Online gamers are human beings, but they’re not adults. Because when you go into cyberspace, everything is novel. So you’re basically a kid. As a kid, you’re looking for maximum feedback. You don’t really know what feedback is good or bad, you just want what’s maximum. And that’s why most of the messages online are creatively humorous or nasty, because both are getting maximum feedback.
“So what we did to make them feel more like adults was we first created a social network. If you want to leave a message publicly, your friend can see that it’s your message. So the minute we released that feature, everyone logged in and tried to delete all the nasty stuff. Right? It’s a simple change because we all care about the people we’re friends with and how they feel about us.” Turns out, social responsibility is incredibly powerful!
The biggest news from SkyFest was the upcoming IP collaboration with Moomin. After the game’s previous crossovers with The Little Prince and Sanrio’s Cinnamoroll, I wondered how thatgamecompany would choose IPs to integrate with Sky. Chen told me that Moomin was an overwhelmingly popular collaboration choice for Japanese gamers, especially after The Little Prince, and at first he didn’t understand why, but upon closer inspection, Moomin and Sky have a lot in common.
During his SkyFest keynote, Chen almost casually mentioned that “the game wasn’t built to last five years,” so naturally I asked him to elaborate. “We didn’t even know if people would download the game, and we were focused on making it an emotional experience. Hopefully, they’d tell their friends to buy the game. We didn’t really plan on making it a live service game, you know?
“When we designed the game, we designed it maybe two years in advance. So we only planned for six months. But those people don’t leave—they love the world and they have friends now. Someone said to me, ‘Hey, I have 6,000 candles and 3,000 hearts. I have nowhere to use them. Can you think of something I could use them for?’ That was probably someone who had played for 10,000+ hours.” So thatgamecompany’s current challenge, while not negative in nature, is to create more endgame content for the thousands of dedicated players who log in every 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 hear the stories they tell me, they heal me. I can be very tired, stressed, and worried, but meeting them makes me reaffirm that everything we work hard for is meaningful and worthwhile. I think everyone is just very happy to be around other people who love the same things, and not feel lonely just for, you know, two days.”
After speaking with Jenova Chen face to face, I gained a whole novel level of understanding of why Sky: Children of the Light has such a dynamic, caring, and enthusiastic community. Every thatgamecompany member I met at SkyFest is in love with the game they’re making, and that really makes a difference.
For more details on SkyFest 2024, check out our community-focused interview , or read more about how Sky: Children of the Light concerts are competing with Roblox and Fortnite.
