Journey was one of the more acclaimed games of 2012, and is even still scooping up awards from industry events. However, the game was delayed and ended up only breaking even for developer thatgamecompany, something company founder Jenova Chen wants to correct in any future titles.
“The current stage of our goal is to create a game that’s actually going to make a commercial success, that’s actually going to make the publishers or investors say, ‘There’s a huge market there. We should put money into seriously developing these high quality games,'” Chen said.
The money thing clearly affects Chen, as he reflects on meeting many young designers. “They say, ‘Wherever we go to find jobs, people always say you need to focus on how to trap the player, keep them playing the game, get them addicted to it, how can you increase the return of investment, make them pay more money,'” Chen said. “And that’s not the job they want.”
“The money guy hasn’t seen any potential,” Chen added. “They are not convinced it’s worth the money to put in all this hard work and effort to make something very emotional and artistic. They don’t see the money there.”
Chen was reticent to talk about his future plans, but he did drop some hints. “This is definitely where the money is flowing,” Chen said. “I think free-to-play is both exciting and also really dangerous. So we’re still testing out what will go there. How are you going to make people feel emotion when they’re constantly on guard that you’re manipulating them to make money That’s something I’m excited to look into, but I can’t commit and say it’s definitely going to be free or definitely going to be mobile.”
Chen also didn’t think that Kickstarter was the way for him to go personally. “The other thing is I think most of the very successful Kickstarters are by veteran celebrity developers who made these games people in their 30s and 40s used to love,” Chen said. “They’re the people who have loads of money to donate. And I’m thinking that most of the people who played our games are teenagers and college students. How much money are they going to have to donate So I think it’s not my time yet.”
On the subject of disruptive consoles like Ouya, Chen said, “I like chaos. Quoting Joker, ‘Chaos is fair.’ In consoles, it’s very difficult to create a fair competition at this point, but with all these new consoles coming out, it’s very exciting. I’m sure we’re going to get the best out of them. I don’t think they all will survive, but the best will. And we will have a cheaper console out there that’s going to be indie-friendly [with] digital distribution.”
Chen wasn’t as positive about next-gen systems, saying, “I don’t know what’s going to surprise me. It seems like it will be the high-end console with a better graphics card and stronger computing power. But I don’t think there will be anything that’s going to be revolutionary like the Wii, for example.”
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
