“There’s so much misunderstanding about what interactive entertainment is, and what it can be,” Sunni Pavlovic, the studio manager at thatgamecompany, says during a recent telephone conversation. The studio behind Journey and Flower has been on a mission to break down common stereotypes about gaming, and that’s resulted in some of the most unique and acclaimed games of the last few years. Pavlovic spoke to Paste about the recent PlayStation 4 rerelease of Journey and the future of the studio, who is now fully independent after years under Sony.
Paste: Journey came out for the PlayStation 4 earlier this summer. What kind of work goes into porting a game like that to a new system?
Sunni Pavlovic: Thatgamecompany didn’t make the direct port—it was handled by Tricky Pixels with Sony Santa Monica—but we were looped in. They showed us frequent builds. We’d play through the game, work through feedback, sometimes talk through technical issues. But basically it’s sort of like making that code work for an entirely new architecture system. It was nice being able to be hands on in the sense that we saw the game evolve and gave feedback on areas that we felt were important. For example, we really wanted to nail the feeling of the cloth, because we felt that was so vital to what the feeling of the game is and making you feel like you’re in that world and interacting with the creatures and other players. And are a character to yourself in the game.
Paste: You feel like Tricky Pixels did a good job? They got the hang of it, there?
SP: Absolutely. We made many requests and would tell them when stuff was a little bit off. We really wanted to keep the consistency in bringing that experience, making it for all these new players on the PlayStation 4. Obviously what we did on PlayStation 3 was pretty interesting in that—it being the third game we made for the PS3, we grew up on that platform and we knew how to maximize it. To bring that to PS4 so it would run at 1080p and at 60 frames per second, we were just really happy that Tricky Pixels went to the lengths that they did, because it was a long process. They were a great partner, along with Sony.
Paste: Beyond the new audience on the PS4, why was it important for you to get Journey onto that system?
SP: Journey is near and dear to our hearts. It was such a labor of love for our studio when we were originally making it for PS3, and then to see it come out near the end of the PS3 generation, and then finally realize that issue that so many other developers before have had a taste of, what happens when people aren’t on that system. Not necessarily that people aren’t on the PS3 anymore, but eventually the game you make isn’t available. Because always having been on the current generation, it wasn’t an issue we had faced before. We were finally confronted with that. We think Journey is this really special experience so we want to make sure it’s still available. Because when you make something timeless, when you make something you think has value to players, especially people who never took games seriously before, you want them to be able to experience it still the way it was supposed to be experienced, not simply through a picture in a book or watching a video on YouTube years later.
Paste: I know there’s a lot of talk lately about game preservation and how bad the industry is at preserving older games as we move from console to console. Do you see this sort of regular reissuing being the path the industry takes to keep its history alive?
SP: It is a really big issue, something I care about as well. It’s disheartening to see games that are classics, and as we grow up and have future generations and we want to make them available. Having these kinds of rereleases is a great way to keep them going, especially as long as they’re still relevant. Sometimes experiences, and this is true of other media, from movies to music, you listen to them from previous generations and they feel dated. But if there’s something that can surpass that generational time period, having a rerelease, as long as people are still there to appreciate it, is a great way to experience it. And frankly not everybody even bought a PS3, even if they were playing games at the time. So people who maybe just have the new PlayStation get to experience it. I don’t think all games should be rereleased, but for the ones that are fan favorites it makes a lot of sense.
Paste: Looking back on Journey, what is Thatgamecompany most proud of about the game?
SP: When we were making the game we had certain expectations for it and we thought we were going to make a pretty good game, but I don’t think it was until the very end, when the last round of playtests began and we saw the amount of people who kind of teared up at the experience that we realized how great an experience it might be. What we’re most proud of is to see and hear when people write to us and tell us what this game meant to them and that we’ve made something special that has made their lives better, that is something where any creator can feel really good about all that work they did. I don’t know if you’re aware, but with this new rerelease Sony has started this campaign called “Our Journey,” it’s #OurJourney, and there’s been an open call inviting people to share their experience of what Journey meant to them. And I think for a lot of games, or just any kind of experience, it might sound to derivative or even hokey, like why would you even ask that, like that’s so kind of conceited, that the thing you made is so special that people should make the effort to send you a video about their experience, but people have done it. It’s just a response to the kind of fan mail and fan art we were getting anyway and realizing that this really does mean something to people and it connects them, and I think that’s what our studio is about. It’s about making those kinds of experiences that people will remember and that bring people together and make them speak positively about this whole industry. That’s something to feel good about, at the end of the day.
Paste: What do you wish you could do over? What would you change about the game at this point, if you could?
SP: I guess in an ideal world development would be a lot easier on us as developers, if we could have some kind of crystal bowl into the future telling us the best way and the fastest and the easiest way to make a game. I don’t know if I would change the game because it’s already spoken to people the way it has. I don’t know if you know this, but there was originally some plan to release the game after two years of development and it got pushed back multiple times and I think it was because of that ambition—there was a certain kind of response we knew that this game had to deliver, and that if it didn’t deliver on it we couldn’t release it, so we wanted until it did.
Paste: How do you playtest emotional response?
SP: Playtesting is an integral part of our process and Thatgamecompany and it’s something we start very early on into the game because we are making these games that aren’t considered very traditional. We consider them experimental and iterative, so getting that direct feedback during the process is important. Usually that involves bringing in, especially since it’s very early on and the builds are pretty rough, you want to get in people who are familiar with the process so they’re not thrown off too much, so often it’s friends or people we can just casually invite in, people in the industry, family members, and just gauge initially if they’re taking to it. Once the game becomes more solid then wedo invite in people who don’t work in the industry who have no connection, it’s just like any other kind of focus testing, you just sit them down in a simulated experience, with a couch and a TV and the game, and you don’t tell them too much because you want them to come in with fresh eyes. For us a big thing is definitely accessibility—if someone who may not have played our kind of game in the past will be able to make it through the experience and do it in a way that is easy and satisfying. And then on a higher level, are they getting into it, like when we stop them are they going to want to keep going and wonder what happens next. Are they like, “oh that’s so calming or pretty or beautiful,” or “oh I love the music.” It’s about getting real people in to get their hands on and then gauging where they were most interested and where they were having the most trouble and then going back to the drawing board and throwing ten more things at it and seeing what sticks and repeating the process.
Paste: Talking about emotional impact, since obviously that is important to the work that you do: what’s the most emotionally impactful game you’ve ever played? And you can’t say Journey.
SP: I feel kind of embarrassed because I don’t want to say the name of the game but I can talk about how it made me feel or why it’s important to me. I don’t want to share the title because it’s not one of those games that’s deliberately trying to be emotional or to take me to this very different place, but it’s what I was playing when I knew I was falling in love with games and knew games was where I had to be working and why they mattered. It’s the difference when I am choosing to enter this world and controlling and moving in it and I’m making choices, and therefore it becomes about me and my story, because you don’t get that as much when you read a book. And you don’t get that as much with a movie. It becomes more personal because you spend a lot more time in a game, often multiples and multiples of hours, and you put it in your hands and you choose to sit down and go into this experience and I choose to make choices that I couldn’t make in the real world and it’s going to tell me something about myself and it’s going to tell me something about the people in the world around me. That becomes really personal—it doesn’t just become this game experience that exists, it becomes part of me and my story and my life.
And actually, there is a game that I remember that I’m not embarrassed to admit I played. It was a DS game, I think it was called Hotel Dusk. It was not the most technically or graphically impressive game at the time, but it was huge what they trying to accomplish as developers. They used an art style in a very unique way and it told a story. You were going through this experience and you were making choices and you were uncovering this story, and I did feel something, and I wanted to figure it out and feel for these characters, and I think that’s one of the many things that makes games wonderful.
Paste: I feel like there are a lot of people who don’t play games who’d like a game like Journey, adults who think of games and only think of the stuff they played as kids or the stereotypes of the big violent AAA games they see ads for on TV, where you’re killing others and kids are vulgar on the headsets. How do you reach that audience?
SP: That taps into a few components of what our plan and strategy is. The next game we’re going to make isn’t going to be that vastly different from the previous games we’ve made. If you’ve been following, it’s going to tap into these similar motifs and emotions, especially this idea of connection. The next game is going to be a multiplayer game, and part of it is, for those people who do play games, they’re going to want to play it with other people, they’re going to want to ask people if they’ve played this game and if they want to play this game together. So word-of-mouth is going to be a component for those who do pay attention. And again, the idea is, if it’s relevant and it matters, it’s not going to be seen as this timewaster, where you just run around and shoot peoples’ heads off. It’s going to be like, “hey, I remember that, that stuck with me.” This is an experience you need to have, and then you will go and tell people, and just like hopefully anything else in the zeitgeist hopefully it just picks up and rockets off. When you touch a nerve, you touch upon a fundamental feeling that is timeless and relevant, then people are going to be talking about.
Paste: Can you talk more about that upcoming project, beyond just the multiplayer aspect? What’s the main idea behind it?
SP: I can’t say too much, obviously, because I’m here to talk about Journey on PS4, but I can say that we care very much about this idea of connection and continuing to bring positive experiences to players. I should mention, since we did choose to be independent and self-published and raise this money for this next game, that is going to be our most ambitious game, which is why you haven’t heard anything about it yet. We’re still keeping it on the down low because we’re doing something pretty big.
Paste: And we can expect it on systems outside of Sony’s family?
SP: That is part of the great thing about being independent and self-published. You get to choose what platforms it’ll be on. It’s very important to us to be on multiple platforms. That is one of the things that we heard—as great as it was working with Sony, being exclusive mean you do cut off part of the people who want to access your game. Our whole deal is bringing our games to more people and making it more accessible.
Paste: One of the big subjects in the industry right now is virtual reality, especially after that Time cover last month. Do you see any VR in Thatgamecompany’s future?
SP: Nothing that we have committed to publicly yet. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about virtual reality, as a subset of the larger misunderstanding about games. Our goal is to make something that will make you and your friends want to play games again, and not see it as a waste of time but as something they want to experience with the people they care about the most. Like the people you’d go see a Pixar movie with, these are the people you’d want to play games with. There’s so much misunderstanding about what interactive entertainment is, and what it can be. There’s a misplaced focus. It’s unfortunate when even the media itself may be perpetuating stereotypes instead of celebrating what is the best that the industry does offer, and that just creates more motivation and pressure on us as developers. We’re like, “okay, we’ve got to deliver now because this is something we care about. We grew up playing these games, now we’re making them. We’ve got to make sure that people realize this is something worth caring about. They shouldn’t be embarrassed, it shouldn’t be misunderstood.
Garrett Martin edits Paste’s comedy and games sections.