First try! I have many notes from all the talk attended throughout my THU attendance. This one sticks because it is one of the most recent, secondly, it is for a game I have in high regards: Journey. It was a pleasure to see the creator talk about their experiences and reflect on my own. Let me know if you want more like this! Here are my notes transformed in a short article:

Design Philosophy

Jenova Chen designs games to help people connect with each other. His inspiration came from Zynga's vision for social gaming but wanted to change how online games work. He wants to remove the power fantasy elements that often make players act badly toward others. The games created ask: how can we make people care about each other when they don't know who they are?

Journey: A Story About Life

Journey is analogous to a story about human life. Players start as babies in a desert, travel through different life stages toward a mountain. The story follows the classic hero's journey, taking players from poverty to wealth and back again. Chen calls it an "anti-GTA game" because it focuses on being weak, not powerful.

Building Connection Through Weakness

Chen made several design choices to help players connect:

• Removed fighting and weapons
• Made players feel small in dangerous places
• Limited how many players could meet
• Created mystery and wonder to bring players together
• Gave players only simple actions: leaving footprints, jumping, and making sounds

Being weak made players stick together to survive, like how mammals bond with each other. This changed even aggressive players into peaceful partners.

Emotional Impact and Who Can Play

The game creates strong emotions through:

• Changing scenery that matches the story
• Characters that change as you play
• Different emotional moments and ways of moving(freedom versus slow movement)
• "Silent" interactions between players, like a duet

Chen wanted to create emotional challenges and relief to help players heal. The game reached 20 million monthly players across different platforms, from 7-year-olds to 79-year-olds.

Using Limits as Advantages

With a small team, Chen used his limitations to spark creativity. His approach: choose one thing and make it excellent, go deep instead of wide. The art style mixed familiar and new elements (90% familiar, 10% new) to avoid being dull or shocking.

What Journey Achieved

Journey became one of the most social games ever made. Players created their own art showing what moved them most. The game proved that the games medium can grow from "for kids" to "for everyone," reaching all types of audiences. Chen's work asks the big question: "We can heal, but why?". Showing that games can transform how people connect and grow emotionally.