Thatgamecompany
Logo of Thatgamecompany since 2006
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Video game industry |
| Founded | May 15, 2006 |
| Founder | |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, United States |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Jenova Chen, Creative Director |
| Products | Video games |
| Website | Thatgamecompany.com |
Thatgamecompany, LLC (stylized as thatgamecompany) is an American independent video game development company co-founded by University of Southern California students Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago in 2006. The company was a developer for Sony Computer Entertainment, contracted to create three downloadable games for the PlayStation 3's PlayStation Network service, and has since secured independent funding. The first of their games is a remake of Chen's award-winning Flash title Flow, with enhanced visuals and sound, added multiplayer modes and compatibility with the PlayStation 3's motion sensitive controller. The title was released on the PlayStation Store in 2007. The company's second PlayStation 3 game, Flower, was released on the PlayStation Store in 2009, and their third game, Journey, was released in March 2012 on the PlayStation Store. Their untitled fourth game is currently planned for 2017.
The company focuses on creating video games that provoke emotional responses from players. Its employees have stated that, while they are not opposed to making action-oriented games, they believe that enough such titles are released by the established video game industry. When designing a game, Thatgamecompany employees start by mapping out what they want the player to feel, rather than by establishing game mechanics. Employees have stated that the company does not plan to produce large, blockbuster titles, due to their belief that the pressure for high sales would stifle innovation.
In late 2005, Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago began thinking about creating their own video game company. The two were in their final year as master's students in the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and had just released a video game—Cloud—that they had developed with several other students. The group intended the project as an experiment, meant to reveal whether they could create a game that "expressed something different than video games had in the past", and to determine the public's level of interest in video games of that nature. Due to the game's strongly positive reception, Chen and Santiago began to consider founding their own company, so that they could continue making games like Cloud—in which the design is not based on gameplay mechanics, but on inspiring emotions in players—after they left college.
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Wikipedia