![\"Skyimage1\"\/](\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/75f81f3778cf8\/skyimage1.900x.jpg\")
\u00a9 thatgamecompany<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\nThe Swap eShop had a notable latest arrival, with thatgamecompany making its Nintendo debut with Sky: Kids of the Gentle<\/strong>. It is a studio that achieved notable acclaim in a interval of PlayStation exclusivity, with titles resembling Flower<\/strong> and Journey<\/strong> setting excessive requirements in artistry and emotional influence. After Journey, nonetheless, there was a change in focus as work started on Sky: Kids of the Gentle. Now not centered on PlayStation, after various years it arrived as a free-to-play title on iOS and Android; on the floor that will appear quite stunning.<\/p>\n The sport has earned a sizeable viewers over the previous 2+ years, and its transfer to Swap is an intriguing one. Although the thought of ‘free-to-play’ or ‘free-to-start’ instantly comes throughout negatively to some, this title does do issues quite in another way, unsurprisingly contemplating the workforce that is created the expertise. We have loved our time with it to date, giving it a recommendation in our Sky: Children of the Light review.<\/p>\n We were fortunate to talk recently with thatgamecompany’s President & Creative Director – Jenova Chen – to learn about the game, the team’s goals and motivations, and what makes it a valuable gaming experience as it arrives on Switch. We also cleared up how the free-to-play model and its seasons work, with the answers making it clear that this is a game that the developers want everyone to experience properly, regardless of how much they decide to invest.<\/p>\n We start off with an introduction to the game from Mr Chen.<\/p>\n Sky is a social adventure game where players come together to usher the light back into the world. It\u2019s a game that inspires compassion, wonder and friendship for the players, and it\u2019s a virtual theme park. During this trailer I show two year\u2019s worth of content that came across eight different seasons, and there are many different stories and types of experience. For example there is a season about using magic to turn a desert into an oasis. There is also a season where we take players to a tropical island for a summer vacation, the Ethereal Dungeon that challenged players, and more.<\/p>\n\n In a season, the player not only gets to visit the world and fantastical locations, but the most important thing is that Sky is a game about social connections and friendships. Little Prince is the first IP collaboration \u2013 not only do you get to witness his story and see iconic characters from the book, re-adapted into the world of Sky, the more important part is that you interact with The Little Prince. You can hold hands with him, play hide and seek, he is going to leave you with amazing parts of the book like the absurdity of adulthood, and you can take him on a flight as well.<\/p>\n What were the main factors that drove the decision to bring Sky to Switch?<\/strong><\/p>\n We left PlayStation back in 2012 after Journey, because a lot of people that wrote letters to us \u2013 about 1600 letters \u2013 many of them said \u201cthis is the first game my wife watched me play through or played herself and cried. And this is the first game my daughter wants to play. Can you make Journey a game where I can play with my wife and daughter?\u201d<\/p>\n I realised that our game is not meant to be played by one group, but by everybody. At tgc (thatgamecompany) we aspire to build games that earn respect from society. We want to see video games, the medium we love, to be embraced by people of all ages. Even today people ask \u201care you a gamer?\u201d, because they assume that like movies and music there are certain types of games that you enjoy and you become \u2018a gamer\u2019, but there are other types of emotions that you don\u2019t necessarily get from games.<\/p>\n So we thought in order to make a game that people of all ages and genders can enjoy, it has to be on a platform that reflects that demographic. When we started building Sky, in 2012, we thought that mobile would be the platform. But really it\u2019s cross-platform, and we feel that in the future pretty much the same games will be played on all platforms, and that trend is already happening. After we made the mobile version we felt that the most affinitive console platform was Nintendo Switch. The sheer amount of content and emotions, we feel Switch represents families, men, women, children, and all adults as a platform. That\u2019s why we picked Nintendo as our very first console platform.<\/p>\n I realised that our game is not meant to be played by one group, but by everybody. We want to see video games, the medium we love, to be embraced by people of all ages.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A question about reaching the Switch audience. Do you expect differences in how Switch owners approach the free-to-play model?<\/strong><\/p>\n We had a very big debate, even in the early days when I talked to Nintendo. They recommended that we go \u2018Premium\u2019, they said premium is the way to go for Indies and they know that players, particularly Nintendo players are very friendly to Indie titles. There have been many great successes on the Nintendo platform. However we are an online virtual theme park with millions of players who have already built up their friendships and networks. It would be weird to keep the Nintendo version in a silo, right? A lot of people want to play with their friends, and they might not have good iPhones or Android phones, maybe the only platform they have is the Nintendo Switch.<\/p>\n When the economy connects it doesn\u2019t quite work if you have a premium title where everything is charged up front vs a game that is freemium. When you connect those suddenly it\u2019s a case of \u201cwell, how do you have that hat, I don\u2019t have this hat!\u201d. So, there\u2019s a bunch of animosity and competition that can happen. So in the final process we want to make the player feel that the world is fair for everyone, so that\u2019s why we chose to stay with the free-to-start system.<\/p>\n The interesting part of this is that we spent 7 years building Sky, and we built a whole journey of content on the main path, where if you play that it\u2019s completely free. You don\u2019t need anybody to help you, and you can experience the whole thing. After that, if you stop playing the game you can walk away and we haven\u2019t charged you anything. The only reason people stay in free-to-play games and decide to pay is usually because of social reasons, because there\u2019s a community and if you care about that social standing among friends. For example if your friends all have a certain hat, you wonder whether to conform to those friendships and get the same hat. But, it\u2019s up to you.<\/p>\n So, I know a lot of people are negative to the free-to-play mode, we were as well, and when we first made Sky it was a premium game. But the economic system on iPhone and Android doesn\u2019t allow premium games to survive. That\u2019s why Apple Arcade came out, because a lot of quality games that come out and try to speak to your heart often don\u2019t get a chance to be played, because everything else is free. So we had to make the game free, but whether you want to give us money or not depends on whether you like us and care about the friends you\u2019ve made in the game.<\/p>\n It\u2019s interesting that there\u2019s an importance on relationships and friendships with other players. I noticed when playing on Switch that when you meet other players you can\u2019t tell what platform they\u2019re on, and in a sense it doesn\u2019t matter. Is that at the core of what you’re trying to achieve?<\/strong><\/p>\n Our fans told us they wanted to play with family, for example, but they don\u2019t have multiple PlayStations hooked up to multiple TVs. So we thought it\u2019d be great if every device at home can play this game, so there\u2019s no excuse to say \u201cI don\u2019t want to be part of it\u201d. So we worked on mobiles and tablets, and then Switch is usually the centre of the home, you have a big TV. So it took us a much longer time to upgrade our mobile game to the console quality. Now, you can have someone play on the TV and someone else join in on their phone or tablet, and that\u2019s the vision we had when we started this project.<\/p>\n Did that introduce different challenges in terms of how you structure content moving forward? In terms of player habits on Switch perhaps being different from short play sessions on mobile?<\/strong><\/p>\n What\u2019s really important is the connections and friendships, the family we have, the memories between us. Sky is very much a game about building the ties and connections.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n What we\u2019ve noticed, as the game has been out for two years, what we see is on average people spend 90 minutes to two hours in the game every single day. So most of them play the game after they get home, maybe when they relax in bed before they go to sleep. It\u2019s a very relaxing game, there\u2019s no combat, no horror, so it\u2019s a game that helps you to find a peaceful connection. The most common words used in our community is that \u201cthis is the most wholesome game I can find on Discord\u201d. So it\u2019s a game that helps you heal and feel connections, I think, that\u2019s the most important part.<\/p>\n When we first started this project, The Little Prince was actually a very important source of inspiration. The core message of the book is that many of us grown-ups are obsessed with things like money, popularity, things that are not actually essential to the happiness of life. What\u2019s really important is the connections and friendships, the family we have, the memories between us. Sky is very much a game about building the ties and connections.<\/p>\n We have many players send letters to say that friends they made helped prevent them from taking their own lives, because there are a lot of people that feel depressed in today\u2019s world. Friendships become very important, and that\u2019s why we think Sky as a virtual theme park can continue to serve players and build bonds.<\/p>\n Do you see the virtual theme park of Sky almost as a platform, rather than a game? Is it a world and community that you aim to continue growing and expanding for quite a long time?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, we have more players than I could have ever imagined, and a lot of these people really formed relationships and some have been playing for over two years, since the beta. I\u2019ve seen people during Covid use the game as a way to stay close to their family, I\u2019ve seen people married after playing Sky. I\u2019ve also seen almost \u2018virtual families\u2019 formed, people like a single dad would form a virtual family in the game. They may create a support group where they seek emotional support from each other. I\u2019ve seen a Hawaiian lady, almost 70 years old, she never thought she could find a true friendship at that age, she still feels a sense of bonding and love through playing this game.<\/p>\n My mother-in-law is 67 and plays three hours a day because of friends she made. So we\u2019re going to try to keep this theme park open as long as people find relationships they build meaningful.<\/p>\n To make it artistic you have to channel your own voice and emotion; make the gameplay and music and visuals polished to the point where they all speak the same thing, and then you can touch somebody.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You and your team have a strength in allying these ideas with strong presentation, audio and visual. How big a focus do you put on those aspects like the soundtrack and art design?<\/strong><\/p>\n For the first half of our career at TGC we\u2019ve been trying to prove that video games can be art, we want to put a video game in a gallery and show that we\u2019re not just a distraction of time. To make it artistic you have to channel your own voice and emotion; make the gameplay and music and visuals polished to the point where they all speak the same thing, and then you can touch somebody. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve always been honing our craft, and that is why I feel we\u2019re a theme park and not a playground.<\/p>\n A social network is a place where people talk and make friends, but there are no values, ambience or narratives. In a theme park we have stories we tell, and the stories we tell have universal values, and every gameplay system we design \u2013 how do you make friends, how does the gift system and economy work \u2013 everything we make we try to have value so the community feels wholesome and altruistic.<\/p>\n If we didn\u2019t make those designs, I\u2019m pretty sure this would become like a lot of other social games, where society almost goes into a wild orgy if you don\u2019t control it. So for us it\u2019s about using all of the methods that we know to nudge everybody to show more of the brighter side of their humanity. Small things like we make all of the chat locations in the public space. We don\u2019t want people to go into private rooms and start talking about very inappropriate content, but having the space open means people realise that what they say will be heard, so they tend to say something more positive.<\/p>\n Earlier any player could leave a message on the ground for their friends, so there\u2019s a lot of sexy jokes etc. But then we exposed the names of the people who left the notes to their friends, so then everyone goes into the game to try and erase their messages because they had thought they were anonymous. But then their friends could catch them and say \u201cyou wrote that?\u201d. Then they remove them. So small designs can make a big difference in how people treat each other and the general vibe of the community.<\/p>\n As a practical question, for players that will be completely new to the game, can you explain the structure of the seasons and how they\u2019re purchased, for example?<\/strong><\/p>\n The game is free, and there\u2019s nothing blocking you to making progression. The seasons you can experience all of the story for free. So with The Little Prince you will experience all of his story for free. If you participate in the season by paying you get double rewards, if you don\u2019t pay you still unlock a lot of interesting content based on the season.<\/p>\n It\u2019s happening over three months, and The Little Prince story will unfold every week, so don\u2019t expect to come in day one, play for 24 hours and finish the whole thing! Instead it\u2019s almost like tuning in each week for a television series. During that time if you come every day you can participate more and unlock more outfits, props and so on. But if you don\u2019t care about that and what gadgets and tools you have, you don\u2019t have to play it. You can come every week to just experience the main content, and if you finish the story we\u2019ll be thankful that you\u2019ve played it.<\/p>\n The Little Prince is a very important literary masterpiece and we want to share it with everyone. If you really love the content and want to be in for the season the option is there to buy the season pass and wear something quite different.<\/p>\n As a final question, do you have a message for new players on the Nintendo Switch?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think we are always grateful to our players, it is their letters that inspired us to start thatgamecompany. It\u2019s their letters that encouraged us to make games that are not about guns and violence and competitions, and they want us to make games that show games can be art. They want us to make games that could make people feel respect.<\/p>\n So we tried our best to work on this game for almost 9 years, and we\u2019d really appreciate if you give us a chance and try the game. If you like it please share with you friends, particularly friends that don\u2019t play video games. That\u2019s our purpose making this game.<\/p>\n We’d like to thank Jenova Chen for his time; you can download Sky: Children of the Light now on Nintendo Switch, and get regular updates on events and more on Twitter – @thatskygame<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Sky](\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/60f70399bd388\/sky-le-petite-prince.900x.jpg\")
\u00a9 thatgamecompany<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
![\"Skyimage3\"\/](\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/5056204f537db\/skyimage3.900x.jpg\")
\u00a9 thatgamecompany<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n\n
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![\"SkyImage4\"\/](\"https:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/7b6f4ac2d19a3\/skyimage4.900x.jpg\")
\u00a9 thatgamecompany<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n