Journey was arguably one of the most remarkable
games released in 2012 and its impact on the video game industry is still present to this
day. However, the journey leading up to its release
was one with many problems along the way. At one point, it even drove the development
studio Thatgamecompany to bankruptcy a couple of months before Journey was released. In 2006 Thatgamecompany agreed to a three-game
contract with Sony. The first game they delivered was Flow, the
second Flower and the last one was Journey. All three games were released on PlayStation
3. The studio started development on Journey
right after they had finished work on Flower in 2009. Jenova Chen was the creative director of both
Flow and Flower so he once again took on this role for Journey. Nick Clark, who also worked on Flow and Flower,
joined him as the lead designer. Additionally, many creators who worked on
the previous two games joined Chen and Clark on the third and final game for Sony. Kellee Santiago, the producer of Flow and
Flower did not return however and decided to focus on her role as president of the company. Instead, Robin Hunicke took on the role of
producer shortly after the start of development. All in all, the entire team counted only seven
people at the start and would expand to 18 people throughout the whole course of development. Journey went through several prototypes, but
all had one core idea in mind: player cooperation. It was very important to Chen to move away
from the "typical defeat/kill/win mentality" of most video games and instead he wanted
to focus on creating an emotional connection between players. The very first prototype titled “Roping”
was a 2D side-scroller where players needed to work together to traverse their way up
a series of platforms. This concept was cut from the final game however,
since Chen wanted players to be able to complete the game all on their own if they wanted to. The second prototype called “Dragon” more
closely started to resemble the final game, despite the simplistic graphics. Once again players had to work together, only
now they had to draw away big monsters from other players. While the first prototype had two players
working together, this one could be played with four players in total. The developers quickly discovered that although
having more players increases the number of interactions you can have as a group, it wasn’t
leading to that feeling of connection that the company really wanted to capture. For example, people would create situations
where three players would leave the other player behind. That player would feel socially left alone
according to Chen. Therefore the team decided to discard the
four player prototype and move on to something that could support a more rich and personal
two player experience. After the Dragon prototype, the developers
moved on to 3D prototypes and tried to incorporate more of the artistic elements they envisioned
for the game. What’s most notable about their first early
3D prototype titled “Ninja”, is that the player character has arms as opposed to the
final design, which is much more minimalistic in nature, but more on that later. The last prototype Thatgamecompany produced
iterated on the previous one and was missing only a couple of features that are present
in the final game. The player character was more or less finalized
in this version, although Chen calls this the “Chicken” prototype, because the main
character looks like a chicken under the robe. Before the developers settled on the artstyle,
they produced a concept trailer to try and determine the visual tone of Journey. The trailer shows off a desert landscape,
which ended up becoming the starting area of the game. It also features a character that closely
resembles the player design of the Ninja prototype. The last shot shows two characters looking
up at a mountain that looks very similar to the one in the final game. Journey’s desert landscape was chosen for
a couple of reasons. All Thatgamecompany’s previous games had
a specific theme and environment: Cloud was about the sky, Flow was about water and Flower
was about lands. Therefore, they wanted to try something completely
different for Journey. Since the developers wanted players to mainly
focus on their fellow travelers, they needed to create a backdrop that wouldn’t be too
distracting. Taking all this into account, a minimalistic
desert environment was the perfect choice that fit all the game’s needs. Journey’s story is based on a popular narrative
template created by Joseph Campbell called The Hero’s Journey, which dates back to
1949. Campbell divides the template into three acts. In the first one, titled Departure, the hero
or protagonist follows the call to adventure. The second act, Initiation, sees the hero
traveling to an unknown world where the protagonist must face a set of challenges. In the last act, called Return, the hero returns
to the normal world with the reward he or she received from overcoming the challenges
in act two. This three-act structure is widely used in
all forms of media such as movies, tv shows, books and videogames. "The hero's journey essentially is a narrative
structure of any life transformation, Journey is very much a classic parable of life...
that was totally intentional." The soundtrack for Journey was composed and
orchestrated by Austin Wintory, who had previously worked on Flow. He and sound designer Steve Johnson worked
closely with the development team to create music that would dynamically change based
on the actions of the player as well as sound effects that were triggered by nearby objects. As mentioned before, one of Jenova Chen’s
main goals was to create an emotional connection between players and therefore he had to reinvent
the very nature of online multiplayer. "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 made it his mission to make the game
feel as intuitive as possible so that players could explore the areas without direct instructions
and feel a sense of wonder as they progress through the game. To achieve this the team took a minimalistic
approach for the game design and removed any elements that stood in the way of the others. The more the developers started to remove,
the more they started to see the game’s true potential. "We build our games like a Japanese garden,
where the design is perfect when you cannot remove anything else. I think that by doing that, the voice of your
work is more coherent. If you have a lot of clutter on the top, the
work may be more impressive, but you won't really know what it's trying to say. Games have to be emotional. People need to experience a powerful range
of feelings." Chen applied this Japanese garden design philosophy
to the entire game, even the main character. As mentioned before, early designs show the
character having arms, but when it was decided that arm-based climbing wouldn’t be supported
in the game, the arms were removed. The developers went back and forth on this,
but Chen commented that he really likes the elegance and simplicity of the final design
and that it’s essentially a combination of all the factors the team wanted to capture. Another reason for removing the arms was to
avoid players from thinking they were able to pick up weapons and deal damage to other
players, since this would simply distract from the real experience. When the team was exploring how players would
be able to communicate with each other, they tried many conventional options such as voice
chat, text chat and a thumbs up/thumbs down system. However, during playtests they quickly noticed
that those options created toxic experiences for players, since people would use the thumbs
down more than the thumbs up for example. Text chat was especially tricky because of
the lack of a keyboard on the PlayStation 3, so instead the team opted to focus more
on interactivity rather than traditional communication. They implemented a ping system that allowed
for a more ambiguous form of communication. Players can either ping quickly or send out
a large ping and it’s up to the player to figure out what the other player is trying
to say. This form of communication actually instilled
a more fun and interesting experience, rather than a toxic one. The team also experimented with usernames
and whether or not to display them to other players. Jenova Chen is an avid World of Warcraft player
and has said that he encounters “very wacky” names during his playthroughs. Ultimately, Chen said that most usernames
aren’t very inspiring and might even offend some people, ruining their experiences in
the process. So Chen and the team made the decision to
hide all PlayStation usernames. By stripping the game of common elements found
in most online video games such as objectives, maps, leaderboards, voice chat, usernames
and so on, the developers had created an environment where cooperation wasn’t forced upon players. Instead it’s completely up to gamers themselves
to choose if they want to share their journey with someone else. This is where the emotional connection comes
from, according to Chen. If a player actively chooses to cooperate
with someone else without being forced to do so, then that is the real essence of connecting
two players. Robin Hunicke also added to this that it’s
about wanting another player to be there, as opposed to needing them to be there. This was a big challenge for the small development
studio, but over time they came to learn how to overcome this task. Sony however wasn’t too pleased with all
the decisions about the online portion of the game. When Chen told the company about hiding the
usernames, Sony insisted that the team change their minds since multiplayer games sell better
if you can invite your friends. Sony told the developers that the option to
put your friend’s name on the HUD had to be in the game. Eventually Thatgamecompany was able to convince
Sony to remove usernames once Sony understood what the team was going for. Initially, Sony gave the team a year to complete
Journey, but Chen and the other designers knew this was an unrealistic deadline and
that it more likely than not had to be extended eventually. Yet, they never anticipated that it would
take an additional two years to finish the game. After the first year it was clear the game
was far from finished and Sony agreed to give Thatgamecompany an additional year to finish
Journey. When the end of year two was in sight, the
developers were faced with a difficult decision. They felt that the game still wasn’t hitting
the emotional level that they were aiming for, but they had run out of time to iron
things out. The team had to decide to either ship the
game in its current state or ask Sony for another extension. Thatgamecompany had come too far to release
an imperfect product so they asked Sony to give them another year, which Sony agreed
to. During testing, the ending of the game wasn’t
getting the emotional response that the team had hoped for, but Chen was convinced they
could take the game to a whole new emotional level after he witnessed an unusual playtest. This particular playtester experienced a bug
just before the end of the game. When the player was about to ascend the summit,
the game froze which made it seem like the main character had died. This caused the tester to feel a kind of sorrow
for the character. There was something very sad but pure about
ending it all before the big climax of the game. This happy accident sparked new ideas in Chen
and the rest of the team on how to improve the ending and make it more moving. The last year of development was crucial for
Journey and the developers went above and beyond to make sure players would go through
an emotional journey while playing the game. They especially made sure the ending was perfected
by adding more animations while the player was struggling on the snowy mountain. Furthermore, they added whole new sections
on the mountain and implemented the huge stone serpent to add more suspense. Lastly they redesigned the summit section
that takes place right before the ending. Originally, this section was on rails, but
they reworked it so that the character can be moved around freely. The developers wanted the player to have full
control to walk towards the light. When everything was fully implemented, Chen
said that three of the 25 playtesters cried at completing the game. Unfortunately, a big chunk of Journey’s
development was riddled with stress among the team, because they were constantly worried
about not having enough time and money to finish the game properly. Thatgamecompany had big ideas for Journey,
but according to Robin Hunicke many of those ideas were simply unfeasible. However, this led to some team members feeling
pressured to perform way more than they actually could. Additionally, the small team suffered from
internal frustrations and anxiety, causing many arguments among the designers. Hunicke talked about a “culture war” that
was present within the team, further describing two distinctive types of people that worked
on Journey. People who needed to work all the time and
people who needed ample time away from the project so they could relax and clear their
mind. The studio was able to fix this problem by
improving daily communications and reducing the time spent working on the game. Hunicke said they allowed themselves to be
human again, to have lives and to sleep. Although this change caused more delays, it
had a very positive effect on the developers and created trust between them which allowed
them to be nice to each other instead of arguing all the time. Even though Sony had given permission to extend
the deadline for a third year, that didn’t necessarily mean the studio had the money
to keep the development going for that long. Jenova Chen explained during a D.I.C.E. Summit Talk in 2013 that in the last half
year of development, they weren’t able to pay some of the developers for their hard
work. The company owners dipped into their own funds
to finish the game, which inevitably took the whole company to bankruptcy a couple of
months prior to Journey’s release date. Luckily, this incredible risk paid off when
Journey was finally released as an exclusive download for the Playstation Network Store
on the 13th of March 2012. It was immediately met with high praise from
both critics and gamers and Thatgamecompany had clearly accomplished their goal. Many reviews talked about the emotional impact
of Journey and its meaningful cooperative experience. Not to mention all the people that underlined
its artistic significance in the video game industry as a whole. As a result, Journey won many many awards
and is still recognized to this day as one of the most important videogames of all time. Aside from all the praise, Journey also broke
sales records and at the time became the fastest selling PlayStation Network game to date. On August 28, 2012 a collector’s edition
of the game received a retail release and had many extras such as the inclusion of both
Flow and Flower, creator commentaries, art galleries, soundtracks for all three games,
non-related minigames and additional content for PlayStation 3. Three years later Journey was ported to PlayStation
4 and owners of the PS3 version were able to upgrade to the PS4 version for free. This new version came with better graphics,
a higher resolution and framerate and improved texture quality. Studio Tricky Pixels, who were in charge of
the PS4 port, commented that the PS3 version was "a masterpiece of PlayStation 3 programming"
and that “translating all of this to a new CPU, and GPU, was an immense technical challenge”. There were many thousands of hours spent making
the re-master as faithful as possible according to the studio. In 2019 Journey was also ported to Microsoft
Windows. While Thatgamecompany has accomplished all
the goals they had set out with Journey, Jenova Chen admits he’s far from done with trying
to make games more emotional and intellectually relevant. "My biggest complaint for computer games so
far is they are not good enough for adults. For adults to enjoy something, they need to
have intellectual stimulation, something that's related to real life. Can games make you and another human learn
something intellectual and relevant from each other? Can games make you and another human experience
an emotion that's deep enough to touch adults? I'm working on all of that. Making emotional games and making them intellectually
relevant; making games where people can connect and come together.”
My favorite memory of this game, in one of my many play-throughs, I had the max scarf / robe and so did my buddy.
We got to the mountain climbing part and instead of going up the way we were supposed to go we tried to go up a part that was clearly not intended to be climbed. After an extended period of boosting my buddy got me up! But I couldn't abandon him down there so I went down and boosted him up. He wasn't going to abandon me so he came back down and after a while of boosting and reboosting each other we both got up! We jumped around singing notes in celebration for 10 minutes before we continued on with the journey.
Afterwards we friended each other and gushed about how awesome getting up that cliff was. I never saw him signed into PSN after that but I don't think I've ever had a more pleasant online experience before or since.
Interesting that the developers were so stressed during production. This is the game I go to when I need to feel zen. It is so beautiful and calming that I’ve played it through more than any other game.
I don’t usually play online games because people are competitive and mean, which generally brings down my mood. I enjoy playing couch co-op games, which nobody seems to make anymore.
I think Journey is a masterpiece, and has valuable lessons for gaming culture.
Took me a while during my playthrough to even realize it was co-operative... Thought the second player was an A.I. that just appeared at important moments. Once that clicked the second half of the playthrough was definitely better. Little details like the melodies from communication bursts overlaying the background music were super neat.
If you loved journey and want a similar experience, get Sky: Children of Light from your app Store. It's from the same dev and carries much of the elements of journey inside it's heart. The audio is as usual, a treat on its own.
I love this game. Abzu is really great also.
I see this game mentioned alot, is it really that good?
I thought it was A.I. up until after the game ended. When we reached the summit, I remember the other player making a heart in the snow at the top, and I thought to myself, "Huh, that's such a cute coincidence." and chirped back and forth with him a bunch until we ascended into the mountain.
Once the screen that says, 'Players met along the way' showed me the username, I burst into tears. It was hands down the best online experience I've ever had, and I didn't even know it was happening.
Journey is even coming to steam in june this year!
No way. I literally just dusted off my PS3 the other day and was super excited to see this game was still on there. I’ve been planning a replay soon. This is a sign that I need to get on that.
Side note: the soundtrack to this game is on Apple Music and Spotify. It’s excellent.