Episode Transcript

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of StoryTelling. And I'm delighted to have you with me today for the FoST podcast. Jenova Chen is known as a true video game auteur, and developer of some of the most beloved and poignant gaming experiences of all time. Born in China, Jenova attended USC's school of Cinematic Arts, and founded thatgamecompany with a classmate in 2006. In 2012, they released Journey, an experience that is fundamental to my understanding of the emotional power of video games. In Journey, the story unfolds through liberating gameplay across magnificent landscapes. But what makes it unforgettable, is the chance to encounter other players and interact with them in limited, but unique ways. Journey has won too many awards to name, over a hundred in its debut year alone, and has garnered glowing reviews across the board. The New York Times called it an almost transcendental experience.

Charlie Melcher:

And IGN described it as one of gaming's most beautiful touching achievements. Jenova's most recent project, Sky: Children of the Light, is a mobile multiplayer game that brings Journey's gorgeous visuals and positive interactions to a much larger community. Carefully designed to bring out the best of humanity, sky was named Apple's iPhone game of the year in 2019, and has been downloaded more than 160 million times. It serves as another great example of how Jenova's games allow us to discover a more altruistic and empathetic world. It's an honor to have a gaming legend share his insights on the FoST podcast. Please join me in welcoming Jenova Chen.

Charlie Melcher:

Jenova, welcome to the FoST podcast. It's really an honor to have you with us today.

Jenova Chen:

Thank you for inviting me. It's an honor to be part of this.

Charlie Melcher:

So I've been a fan for many years of your games, and I really think of you as, not just a game designer, but as a storyteller that makes social stories, stories that we can lose ourselves in. Do you agree with that? Do you think of yourself as a storyteller?

Jenova Chen:

I used to think so, but lately I've been evolving my understanding about storytelling that I want to talk to you about, but yes, I'm definitely a storyteller. And I think storytelling is how we, human beings consume information and remember information. And today, like our moral values, our history, was all told through stories. We don't just give you the Bible without any story and just say, this is what you do. This is what you don't do. And story's what our brain is really good at. I read Joseph Campbell's, the Hero With a Thousand Faces and the Power of Myth. And really, I think the most successful story that has been passed along for thousands of years has been following certain structures. They are usually about the transformation of a character, and that transformation always is difficult, but the heroes of the story persevere, and the heroes of the story always seems to help a bigger community afterwards.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm also a huge fan of Joseph Campbell, and his summary of those classic myths of the hero's journey. And one of the things that's so interesting that you reference that, is that of course, in your games, there is an epic journey. And I mean, one's literally called Journey, of your games. So in a way I would say you're not a storyteller because telling is unidirectional, you're sort of pushing the story one way. But you're an enabler maybe of other people's having experience to be able to-

Jenova Chen:

Yeah, it's definitely strange with your role in interactive media, where the medium isn't completely passive. And sometimes I do use the role as the choreographer for the players. I do plan the whole play, Swan Lake, and there's a dramatic arc of the character who's going to go through various things, and the choreographer would figure out what the dancer needs to do to embody those emotions. And I do feel like the dancer out of the whole audience probably feel those dramatic arc more because they are embodying it through their own actions.

Charlie Melcher:

I just find it so powerful that it seems the kind of emotions that you are going for, the kinds of experiences, everything that you design sort is moving towards a different kind of set of emotions than I'm used to in video games. I grew up playing video games as a kid, everything was fast twitch, it was shooter, or it was some sort of discovery and adventure, but it was a set of almost kind of aggressive emotions, at times outright violent. And tell me about the kind of emotions that you are trying to foster in your players?

Jenova Chen:

Yeah. I think if you follow the history of how each of the medium evolve and grow, since it's initial origin. When cinema first came out, it took cinemas 40 years for people to ditch the fixed camera. They realized they can cut the films, they can change the camera, they can use a fake model, a miniature model to shoot for something. They don't have to shoot the real thing to tell the story. And before that 40 years of exploration, people are just trying to capture what was there. There was a boxing match of some championship. They just shoot the whole thing. And it's kind of ... people didn't know they can edit. That's really ... to me, time is one of the most important things that the cinema really enabled the director and editor to manipulate, but people didn't figure that out. It took them 40 years to just try to do the old school stuff, the theater stuff.

Jenova Chen:

Games is about 40 to 50 years old now. And we are at the cusp of maybe people finally realize we don't have to repeat Hollywood. So for a very long time, the gaming industry was trying to behave like Hollywood. They would try to hire stars, do emotion captures, and they cut movies, they write scripts, they do everything the cinema do. But ultimately that was just film shooting on theaters stages. People who really start to take the medium forward, they need to think about what does this medium offer that was impossible in previous medium? And then you can bring new type of experiences.

Charlie Melcher:

I couldn't agree more to what you're saying. I mean, I've been the biggest proponent of this, and I say the exact same thing often, about how cinema took so many years to create its own organic language, its native methods and tools and understanding of its real potential. What is your understanding of what is really organic to gaming? And what could be done with it that can't be done in other media?

Jenova Chen:

You have input and you have output, which essentially traditional media like books and movies can't, right. No matter what the audience do, what's going to happen next is always the same. But the fact you can control input and output, it's a very, very huge range of things you can elicit. So just a simple thing, like a jump. In Mario, you can press the button to jump, just with a jump, a one button input and the output, you can make people feel very different things. You can make people feel anxiety, you can make people feel synesthesia. Lots of elements, all work together to create a strong climax or climatic emotional harmony.

Jenova Chen:

And so to me, interactions is a new instrument in the orchestra. A lot of the times, especially from early 2000 to 2020, a lot of the games will have very dramatic narratives, like military stories, lots of betray and actions. But those things only happens in the cinematic mediums, like visuals, animations, editings, sound, performance, but the gameplay of Call of Duty, for a very long time has always bought just shooting people in the head, hopefully in the head, and not getting shot.

Jenova Chen:

A lot of the games captures the human dynamics of people in cars, in traffic. And we usually behave pretty bad in those situations, because there's no social consequence because they don't know who I am. I can just slam my horn right? And games is very much like that, you know, you are anonymous and you can do whatever input with no social consequence. So then it brings a lot of the worst part of us into those hot situations.

Charlie Melcher:

And certainly that's a common critique of gaming, is that it creates antisocial behavior, and it's alienating and brings out the worst in people. And it's one of the reasons why I'm so enamored or respectful of the work you do in your games is because you are really trying to train social behaviors that are just the opposite. I mean you're creating games that bring people together.

Jenova Chen:

When I got into the game industry, I felt like this is really a young industry, and it really could become the next greatest medium of all time. Just like how cinema have overtaken traditional medium. But the societies are not kind to this new medium. I think the society was not kind to cinema when it first came out, the society was always not kind to any new medium. So I was thinking about, how can I change the society's view on games? That's really what my passion is, is to earn some respect for the gaming medium that it deserves. And just like the medium, it's kind of funny because we call it films and televisions, but they are motion pictures. But people call them different things and games, unfortunately have a bad association with gambling, are things people do in the playground when they're kids. So by default, we already get this discrimination to start with by having this name, really we are called interactive media.

Jenova Chen:

There's many interactive installation in the galleries, but people don't call that thing games. And so by default, we are already losing on the starting line of trying to create a respectful medium. On the second hand, if it's a medium, the medium can be used for many things. And I think just like there are people who use games and interactive media to run a casino, I mean they have the intention of making money. And then there are people who's trying to use interactive media to teach, which we call serious games sometimes. Then there are people who's using interactive medium just to entertain, Saturday morning cartoon just to keep kids busy. And now those industries will garner enough respect because their audience are really limited to a very niche of the market. So I think only when you use the medium to say something that all of us, people of all ages and genders, can find it valuable and respectful and inspiring, then they say this is respectful content.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, I played recently Sky, and I'd spent some time in that world and enjoying it. And the whole metaphor of gifting, of generosity, was so unusual for me in a video game, in a really beautiful way. I mean everything about that game by the way is beautiful. You have such an evolved aesthetic. They're inspiring. I think I often feel like a sense of artistry, great painting when I'm in the worlds that you create. But just going back to the emotion or the act of being trained to have generosity and to gift. Tell me about why that's a game device that you used in that game. 

Jenova Chen:

Yeah. I have a view in almost all artistic medium, there's always realism versus romanticism. And also there's the reverse of romanticism, which is the dark fantasy. Often people say artist uses lies to tell truth. There are artistic pieces that was super dark, but it actually captured the truth of humanity. That is also very, very respectful. And then there are movies, literatures who's super realistic. They capture the world as it is. The real world is noisy and gray. And I feel in the world of video games, there's a lot of gritty stuff going on, thanks to the realistic rendering engines. A lot of people goes with dark gritty realism. And so for me, I felt like there was a lack of romanticism. Interactive romanticism isn't just like making a painting, looking beautiful and abstract. It should also make the person interaction, either individual interactions or interactions between two players who is participating in this piece. Romanticism, it's beautiful.

Jenova Chen:

And so that's kind of how I approach most of our interactive design, is like we want it to feel real, and we want to capture the beauty from the reality, through these interactions. And that naturally evolved into, we were trying to do that, to capture the interpersonal relationship in the reality. Because in reality human relationship is very, very complex, nuanced, I mean even with my wife, it's not perfect harmony every day. So when you want to capture beauty of human relationships, you kind of have to do some abstractions. And so what happen with relationships in online games? A lot of time it start with a text chat, a voice chat. And usually what happens is people say, I hate voice chat. I don't want to hear these kids talking down towards me. Or if I show my voice as woman, I will be harassed. Those are the first impressions of online gaming.

Jenova Chen:

What I realized over the years of designing games, is that a lot of people have this false impression that gamers are bad, gamers are rude. But really these are human beings, human beings have the capacity to be rude, if they were put in the situation of a particular institution, the environment will force people to be rude.

Jenova Chen:

That's when I start to realize it's not the fault of the player being mean, it's the fault of the designers who created these social situations. They didn't think through all the situations. So really in the end, it's about, how do you structure these virtual societies where interpersonal relationship can actually be nudged towards those positive qualities that we human being are already capable of?

Charlie Melcher:

I love that point, that the issue is really ... or the responsibility on the game designer and developer to create the world, the interactions, the process by which people are going to either act their best selves or their worst selves. And you've used so many tools from your quiver of options to create worlds that encourage this very positive social engagement. And I wonder if you would talk about a few of them. I know for example, the design of the physical world itself, for example, is important. The music, the kinds of gestures and interactions that players can have with each other, limited, but limited to ones that are inducive for positive exchange. So please tell me a little bit about the levers that you pulled in, say Sky, to help ...

Jenova Chen:

Right. Yeah. So it's fascinating. I really enjoy this job because every day I'm trying to understand humanity, because we want them to behave the nice part of humanity. But when we try to push them, it always gave me the opposite. So it's dealing with a kid. It's like, hey kid, why don't you just go give a hug with this other kid? If they're obedient, they will do it. But if they're creative, they're like, why should I just hug like you are? I'm going to hug it from the back. I'm going to hug it from the below. What I learned is people don't like to take orders. They almost rebel against it. When we design, we have this rule we talk about in the studio, I say the best design is a invisible nudge. So the best way is to just apply a tiny little pressure that they don't even notice. And then they lean forward and they fall into it.

Jenova Chen:

And so in our game, we were hoping our player will behave with compassion and generosity. That's like what we want them to behave, but how do you force someone to be compassionate and generous towards others? So a lot of what we do is to remove the obstacles, rather than trying to enforce some behaviors. So what is the obstacle of generosities? Have you thought about that?

Charlie Melcher:

Feeling scarcity, maybe? You don't have enough yourself.

Jenova Chen:

Yeah. So when we designed Journey, we ran into this incident where people in the early test are actively telling me, why are you making this multiplayer game? I hate other players. I would rather play a single player mode. Can you offer me a single player choice? I was like, why would you be worried about the other player? They're here to help you? This is a co-op game. And they will say, well, I saw there was a resource over there. I supposed to get it, but this person took it from me, right? Or I supposed to save this NPC, but that person did it, so he stole my gameplay content. And I realized, basically, if you have scarce properties, ownership-

Charlie Melcher:

Scarcity.

Jenova Chen:

... then there's always going to be a conflict, right? That's not what the game is about. The game is about the witness and the companionship of life.

Jenova Chen:

So we had to kind of change the system and the institution in our game, we made all the resources shareable and abundant. And then people were like, oh, there's a bunch of resources over there. Oh, you are here for the resource too. We have the same appreciation for this resource, that it connects us. But when the resource was limited, it was really bad. And the other thing we learned in the hard way is, our player likes to be mischievous. They likes to be creative, to just kind of hit you in the hard way and establish somehow, be a griefer, right? This happens even among our developers, when we were doing testing, it's like, wait, you know we are trying to design a cooperative, supportive experience. Why are you doing this to me? So for quite a long time, I was pretty sad about the human nature. The fact that my own team member who understand the goal are still sabotaging me in the game.

Jenova Chen:

And one day I ran into a psychologist, I was ranting about the darkness of humanity to her. And she said, oh, you are describing the behavior of baby. I said, what do you mean? So baby was born with no moral values attached. It's a new world to them, they are just testing everything to get feedback, so they can calibrate how they're supposed to behave in this world. So to the baby, it's like, oh, if I knock this magical spoon, I can summon a giant protective mammal to come to talk to me. I'm going to do it more, because it looks interesting. They don't have the comprehension of what's positive and negative, because they were still learning. And if you move somebody from reality to the World of Warcraft, they don't necessarily carry all the social lessons they learn from reality, because too dumb.

Jenova Chen:

It's like, I'm a orc, so everything's new, I'm going to try. What's the boundary of ... social boundary, right? And so we are missing that whole thing about what's the proper social behavior for games. Because people just jump in and start playing, and they're going to do all kinds of things to see what's the boundary. The lesson we learned is, if you don't want people to do something and they are babies, minimize the feedback. So in Journey, we eventually removed the physics where you can potentially squeeze another player off the cliff. But these are simple things that is not very intuitive when we just think about designing. When we design, we just think, oh yeah, we gave them a power to help each other. This person can heal this other person, that would be great. But what we often don't think about, what happens if this person choose to not choose to heal this person, could that be an abuse? The reason Sky is a very kind of wholesome place today, is because we ran into so many of these, and we were working diligently to curb the environment so that this type of behavior doesn't become the default behavior.

Charlie Melcher:

Would you agree that because of that, it's a more supportive and safer space in your game world? And that might help explain why you have a very large percentage of women who play your games? Isn't that right? Much, much greater than the industry as a whole.

Jenova Chen:

We have 70% women. And even in the rest of the 30%, some people would rather not disclose their gender. So we don't know exactly how many women is in the community. But what we hear a lot is, regardless if it's in Asia or in the United States or in Europe, people say like, yeah, I usually don't like to communicate in online games, because the moment they know I'm a woman, it is just a bad experience. But in the world of Sky, they feel they can be themselves. A lot of the effort we did was also by listening to the players. Pretty much in Sky, the social situation, we are trying to capture how real world social life works. You don't just walk up to a random person in the real world and start talking. It's not how real world works. And these day online games, you just go in the game and you start to chat in the public channel, talking about anything basically. And that's not how we develop trust and understand social consequence. So what we do is, even before someone can talk to you, you have to agree that you want to hear what this person has to say. And so then people feel safe. They're not going to be harassed by a random stranger.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, I think this is just a great example of one of the tools as a game designer that you had at your disposal, or that you in fact kind of invented here, to create a kind of behavior and a kind of learning pro-social messages to encourage better behavior. And let's just say the positive side of human nature.

Jenova Chen:

So at very beginning you were asking me, am I a storyteller? I think I am. But I feel like ever since we start to operate the game, when we have a vivid society of players, I spend more time thinking about creating laws, like regulations. And that, a lot of time isn't about telling the story, right. But it's about shaping the behavior of interpersonal dynamics. In a strange way, yeah, I feel more about ... I'm more of a choreographer at this point.

Charlie Melcher:

Choreographer.

Jenova Chen:

Yeah. Just a storyteller on the stage, singing the songs and telling the story. I feel ... yeah. I want to see people to experience those things themselves.

Charlie Melcher:

I love that as a metaphor, and I understand what you mean about setting laws. You're creating a world with a set of rules, a set of physics, a set of parameters that create a certain kind of behavior. And I do think that those are the skills of the 21st century storyteller. The people who are able to build worlds and set up a set of operating principles or laws to enable players or the audience, what we used to call the audience, to be able to create their own stories, or live and have agency and make their own stories within this world. It's the same challenge that people who do immersive theater, or people who are creating Escape the Rooms, or all sorts of other types of immersive experiences, are realizing that their role is not to set one narrative and fix it on a rail and push it to the audience, but rather to create a set of environments.

Charlie Melcher:

And I think physics is actually a good word for this, a set of principles that operate that world so that the guest or the player or the audience member, whatever term we use, can have their own experience. But with that kind of invisible nudge, that gentle nudge you were talking about. So I think you have so much to teach us, because you've been so successfully learning how to give that invisible nudge. And what I also just have found so fascinating is, how much of it is really not about the coding. It's about the human nature. It's about human coding, not computer coding. And you're so insightful of all the lessons you've learned about how we operate as human beings left to our own devices in a world.

Jenova Chen:

Thank you. Yeah, it definitely makes you think about a lot of the things that's currently happening on the internet, the YouTube comment channel, why people are toxic, it's kind of obvious. And makes you think about how these game mechanics can potentially be an inspiration for how laws and actions can be wrong.

Charlie Melcher:

Beautiful note for us to end on. I really honestly don't want to end because I'm enjoying our conversation so much. And again, I feel like there are so many lessons that are so positive for people to learn from playing Journey, and from playing the Sky. People hold up your games as great examples of artistry in the field. It's a movement towards games for change, games for better, games that are going to encourage abundance and trust and generosity and positive social interactions, and sort of the opposite of what we started, as we said, many people currently think of as the outcome of games. Wouldn't it be a wonderful irony to discover that gaming became the tools for which people were positively socialized, and became mature citizens of society. And I think you helped present a path to that, and a vision for that. So thank you, sir.

Jenova Chen:

Yeah. Thank you for having me here and yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Charlie Melcher:

I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to Jenova for joining me on the show today. If you'd like to experience his games for yourself, Journey's available on PC and PlayStation, and Sky can be downloaded for free on iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch, with a PlayStation version coming soon. See the links in the episode's description for more information.

And a warm thanks to you as well for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your podcast platform of choice. We always appreciate it. And to be sure not to miss any news about the podcast and to be part of the Future of StoryTelling community, sign up for our free monthly newsletter at fost.org. The Future of StoryTelling podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope we'll see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling, until then please be safe, stay strong and story on.