“Journey” was one, as players would drift among sandy landscapes and speak to one another only in song. Yet games such as “Myst,” Chen says, are “very, very rare.” They’re the exceptions, and Chen is well-versed in exceptions. It’s a game that “Sky” will undoubtedly be compared to, and it’s long been considered one of the best-selling games of all time for its ability to reach beyond a core gaming audiences. He also studied the company’s history and thinks the game industry has yet to have its “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” that is, a refined narrative work that appeals to high and low culture and forever changes the course of the medium.Ĭhen is aware he speaks in broad strokes, and he brings up “Myst,” an early 1990s abstract adventure that treated games with the seriousness of literature, before a journalist can. To brainstorm “Sky,” Chen spent quite a bit of time at the Anaheim theme park trying to understand its timeless appeal and how it encourages exploration of American pop myths. The comparison to Disneyland is no accident. We want to use our game to change more people’s opinion of what games can be.” “Now new people, their impression of games is this completely different picture. All the work we’ve been doing trying to make games appeal to more people, and make games look like a respectable industry, suddenly went backwards,” Chen says. Chen, then, looked into the future, and didn’t like what he saw - a medium whose most successful games would be dominated by violence, action and tacky, click-bait gameplay. Some have likened such mechanics to gambling or pay-to-win. “Suddenly, 9 out of 10 people have never experienced a high-quality game.”Ĭhen dismisses much of the field as “predatory” the mobile market, he says, is dominated by games that attempt to get players hooked on endlessly making small purchases. “For every 200 million people who own a console, historically, there are now 2 billion people who fiddle around with games on their phone,” Chen says. But also because the bulk of the free mobile game market annoys the hell out of him, and Chen wants to change that too. He’s releasing “Sky” first on mobile devices, in part because Chen envisions it as a family game, one spouses and children can play together on their own individual devices, and mobile is simply where the largest game audience resides.
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