ThatGameCompany hints at next game

ThatGameCompany president Jenova Chen has hinted at what the developer may be working on next in a recent interview with UK publication The Telegraph.

Chen said that while the next project is still in "pre-, pre-production mode," the studio that brought the arthouse games Flow, Flower, and Journey to the PlayStation 3 will continue to evolve its focus on social gaming.

"The next game after Journey is like, OK, we've done it with strangers on the Internet, can this also happen among people who know each other. It's a natural evolution of everything we are doing," he said.

With the studio's three-game agreement with Sony now complete, Chen said that the team is eager to move away from publisher-funded development. In June last year, ThatGameCompany announced that it had secured $5.5 million in venture capital funding, and hoped to bring its future games to multiple platforms. Despite critical acclaim and strong sales, the company cited platform exclusivity as a factor in its financial troubles while developing Journey.

"We've made three games and have completed the contract. So from this point on, we've raised venture capital because we wanted to own IP and put it on any platform we want," he said in the interview. While Chen didn't discuss any specifics surrounding the studio’s next game, he said, like all previous works, it would have broad appeal.

"Cloud and Flower are very much egocentric about my own expression, Flow is more utilitarian, and Journey is more about collaboration between various creative voices in the team. Our next game is going to be something that will relate to a wide audience on a human level. It is very exciting to see my own maturing and the team’s maturing, and I'm curious to see what this next game could be.”

Earlier this year, a job listing at the studio sought a scalability engineer for a "full-scale online service," which would be able to accommodate hundreds of thousands of users.

In a recent interview with FamilyGamer TV, Chen also revealed his interest in the Kinect 2.0 sensor that will ship alongside Microsoft's Xbox One console. He called out the technology's ability to capture facial expressions and subtle gestures, and is interested to see how they may be combined with gaming.