BAFTA Nominated Journey Director Jenova Chen - Interview

Jenova Chen. Chen is easily one of the most exciting talents in the whole gaming medium. He is was the creative director behind the games Flow and Flower (the latter not a sequel to the former). If you have been lucky enough to play his latest game Journey, you will know Chen is an artist and innovator. His mission goal is stated simply under his twitter account. "A video game creator devoted to innovation and expanding the emotional spectrum of the medium." It is a simple concept, but one that is rarely considered or put into practice. For my money, last year was one of the most important years in gaming for a long time. From interesting choice systems like Dishonoured and Mass Effect 3, games focused heavily on narrative like the Walking Dead, Interesting subversive games like Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 3 and some very interesting story experiments in Halo 4, last year was full of encouraging experimentation and innovation But it is also no mistake that Journey is the game that seems to have taken home the most awards. It is a testament to the innovation, beauty and emotional depth of the game. For my money, it is one of the most entrancing linear games I have ever played. But to Chen, it all comes back to story.

My take on the whole narrative and open world, it doesn't matter how open your world is, in the end the experience you get is still linear right? We as human beings live in the fourth dimension and that is time. If you are measuring your experience from the beginning, from where you start playing to where you stop playing, it is a linear narrative, emotional arc. What ever game that is, it is linear. With Journey it is not entirely a straight line. It is like a rubber band. It is all about to you. It might happen slightly slower or faster but we wanted to control your overall progression. You need to form an emotional arc like in a Hollywood movie with a three act structure. To create strong emotion, you need a climax, to create a climax you need a low moment so you have enough of a lift in any kind of emotion. I think the three act structure is important for any medium we are designing for, where you consume it over time. It is still linear.

Having spent my fair share of time looking at story structure, Chen's point interests me. Video games are their own artistic medium and I have often assumed that the structure would need to be reworked for games. However, Emotion is king for chen when designing a story.

I wouldn't say there is an advantage In the end we are trying to make a cathartic emotion. As we have grown up watching films or playing games, we get jaded, you know? We start to feel intentions, we feel like directors are trying to manipulate us. The only thing that can truly move us, that can bring us to that magical world of immersion is when something truly extraordinary and surprising. Entertainment is all about surprises for an audience. So in order to touch someone who is jaded, you need an emotion that is stronger than the thing you are typically accustom to. To really make an adult who has seen a lot of entertainment feel that sense of wonder again, you have to rely on the three act structure to create a strong emotion that they didn't see coming, you have to go beyond their expectation. No matter what medium you are in, even if you are a dancer, you have to do something or it won't be a satisfying experience in the end.

But it wasn't just surprise that stirred something inside of fans of Journey. The experience was a deeply personal one for many, even with the games innovative multiplayer system. Journey is a canvas for players to put their own life onto, and I wanted to know, "How do you make a game that is so broad but also so universal to anyone?"

I was trying to design a universal experience from the ground up. When I was touching on Joseph Campbell's study, the Hero's Journey and the power of myth, I spent a lot of time researching outside of his book about various religious and mythical stories, I realised how they are all very similar deep down. As I was analysing the Hero's Journey, its basically that three act structure. The arc of the three act structure matches perfectly with the Hero's Journey. Then I was looking to what essentially is the Hero's Journey? People were saying that it was basically a formula of a transformation Any sort of transformation of life. It can be something small like, switching job or getting a new relationship but the ultimate transformation for any human is from life to death. So I started to look of eastern philosophy . Fuschian said that you define life through different stages. So I kind of line them up to see what he thinks any life has to go through. I lined them up against the three act structure and the Hero's Journey and they just happen to be perfectly aligned I was like, "Oh my god, these are people from various backgrounds, from various times in history, have already figured out a very simple truth about our lives and I wanted to make that into an experience. I believe this is something that resonates with a lot of people.

But what of challenge in terms of a three act struture? If a game is trying to craft a narrative experience for a player, where does Challenge fit in as a tool that disrupts that. If there is no challenge, it says nothing. If there is too much, it ruins the flow of the experience.

Conventional understanding in video games is that you want to make a balance between a players ability and challenge. A very simple example is something like Tetris, where as you play better, the difficulty increases and you have to keep up with the challenge presented to you, until you get into a flow state. But I think that because most people have been following that curve, people forget that challenge is another narrative tool. In directing films, you use all your tools, you even use colour to evoke emotional high and lows. I think challenge can be used as a way to create art. For example, in Journey we kind of don't introduce challenge until very late. The early game is care free, it is safe, you are never in any kind of danger. We used that to create the feeling of childhood. You can't really hurt yourself. You just go down the dunes, you don't have a worry about anything. Then, as you grow up, you go through middle age, you get a little lost. The direction is not clear, you don't know where to go next. The mountain has disappeared. You are trying to figure your way out. And as you get towards the end part, you are getting closer to the end of your life. We have to use challenge as a way to make you feel weak. To make you feel like the things you have are slowly dripping away. So we put most of the challenge at the very end. Then it makes you feel how hard life is. The struggle you have to go through. But then it all comes together, the beauty and the carefree, the lost and the struggle, all together to create the experience in the final level, which is kind of like a flashback with it all together just to see how beautiful life is.