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‘Journey’ studio brings a dreamy fantasy game to iOS and Apple TV
At Apple's iPhone 8 announcement event today, founder of Thatgamecompany Jenova Chen went onstage to introduce a new title coming exclusively to Apple TV: Sky. Calling it a "romantic social adventure game," players will use the set top box's remote to control a character careening peacefully through the air.
A numerical history, and future, of flOw dev That Game Company
On the first floor of Moscone's North hall last Friday, flOw developer That Game Company presented their storied origins. Co-founders Jenova Chen, who took a brief recess from the company to help on the DS version of Will Wright's Spore, and Kellee Santiago, met at the University of Southern California. "I don't see [video games] as being any different [than other interactive media], it's all story telling," Santiago said. Chen, who affirms that his proudest work is flOw and Cloud, explained their place in gaming with an ever-popular culinary allegory. Think of Gears of War as steak and World of Warcraft as chicken. Let's give lettuce a relation to Nintendogs and fish can be Brain Age. "Let's say you focus on chicken, but somehow you find a way to make it accessible and customizable," said Chen. The according Power Point slide shows the chicken transition into a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. "That also expands the audience or customers. How can you make existing games more accessible to wider audiences?" Does that mean flOw is a bowl of cereal? All we know now is that we're quite famished.
GDC 07: fl0w was almost on Wii
Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago and the rest of the thatgamecompany team discussed their latest motion-controlled PS3 title fl0w. The game certainly would have been an incredible addition to the Wii library, considering its use of motion controls, relatively subdued graphics, and non-gamer-friendly gameplay. Santiago revealed that fl0w was pitched to two companies: Nintendo and Sony.Well, Sony won. Sony's aggressive approach to supporting new developers was what gave PS3 the edge. "They [Nintendo] weren't right for us at the time. Sony kind of came to us with the process of incubation ... They helped us get our studio started."Sony has proven at GDC that they care about developers through the announcement of Edge and extending their Network offerings to independent developers. When will Nintendo jump on the bandwagon, and give Wii owners the ability to download new, original content on the Wii Shop Channel?
