Saw this over on NeoGaf
Journey was a financial disaster, Chen tells me. Pushed back twice, the game bankrupt thatgamecompany. Eventually, it did make it's money back plus some, but not Minecraft money, Chen says. While it was well received, it wasn't well received by a big enough audience for Chen.
"I wouldn't say that the development of Journey was a successful example of game development," he said. "We bankrupted the company."
"I think to have a financial success, that is going to change everyone, it has to be much bigger than a game on the Playstation platform."
Chen is quick to point out how much he appreciates the support of Sony and their willingness to delay the game not one year, but two, at the insistence of the developers. Had Sony pushed thatgamecompany to his their initial deadline it's likely Journey wouldn't have been realized.
But Chen feels that limiting the game to a single platform prevented it from achieving a broader, bigger success.
And it's not really the money that's motivating him, it's the obligation he feels to prove something to the game industry and publishers.
Chen tells me that over the years as he's traveled around the world to do talks, lots of young people approach him to ask if they can work at thatgamecompany.
When he tells them no, pointing out that the team, which grew to 12 for Journey, remains small, they ask him where he can go to make similar games.
"We want to make more artistic games," Jenova tells me they say, "High quality, emotional games."
"I run into a lot of lost and frustrated students who study games to work on great art, but then find there is no place for them," he said. "I feel responsible for them because I showed them that is possible, but there is no place for them."
So now, Chen says, he has to make a more commercially successful game, a massive hit that can prove the viability of this approach to gaming. He has to do that so there are other places for those "lost and frustrated" students to go.
"My resolution is to create a big financial success,"he said.
For Chen, that means creating a game that can be played on any platform. That's why he sought out venture capital funding, and received it, and that's why the game the team is working on now won't be exclusive to any one system.
Chen says that this new game explores one of the main ideas found in Journey but pushes it much further.
In Journey, players travel through evolving landscapes free of visual clutter. They control an anonymous robed figure wearing a scarf. As the collect bits of cloth and ruins, the scarf grows longer and the character's ability to jump extends. The entire game has players traveling to a beckoning point in a distant mountain range. The game is meant to represents a person's journey through life. Perhaps easily overlooked is the game's clever take on multiplayer. Chen built the entire game around the idea of allowing people to cooperate without forcing that or allowing competition. That cooperation is meant to speed along the sense of community and, ultimately, achieve the emotional catharsis that is the trademark of his games.
The ability to form a connection between players is something that still fascinates Chen, and is guiding the creation of his next game.
"Journey was focused on connection," he said. "I think we are trying to do one level above that with this game."
http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/11/3969140/next-game-from-journey-developer-thatgamecompany
