I think when you’re thinking about the avatar for a game, the character in the game, the person you’re going to be, it really depends on the communication you’re trying to have. So, in Journey we really wanted it to be about two players who would meet and have an authentic experience with one another. They would genuinely connect, which in a lot of online games you see lots of people and they’re - they’re customized. You can read their name. You can chat with them. So, you get a real sense of who this person is, but it’s not necessarily as authentic or as deep of a connection as you might have just walking on a quiet hike with a person that you maybe just met. Um, I’ve definitely met people while traveling who, you know, you have a brief encounter on a trip, you know, you’re going to go climb a mountain and you go to the group and there’s a couple people there. You spend the day with them. And you really get to know each other in a way. It’s very different from if you were to just bump into them in the grocery store or at the office. Um, it’s a different experience. And so forming the character for that game, we wanted it to be gender neutral. We wanted it to be, uh, open and inviting to anyone from anywhere. And because the game is language free, to be expressive without requiring a specific cultural background. Um, and that was a very, very strong influence on the way the character was designed. Um, its animation, its look, uh, the sounds that it makes, everything about it. Um, when you look at a game like, like Katamari or the game that I’m working on now with Kata, uh, which is still unannounced, the characters are more about expressing in a paradigm or a, or a - a trope, you know. They’re about expressing a feeling of childhood and playfulness, of youth, um, curiosity, and um, whimsy. And so they can be a little block or a little apple with legs and arms and like a funny smile. And they can be, um, very, um, inspiring and general in the way that when you look at a, you know, a gaggle of little kids walking from, from school to the bus, you know, you see all the little backpacks and the - the bobbly heads and the way that they walk - they walk and stuff. And you think, wow, there’s just so much potential there, you know. These characters are about expressing the potential of, of curious - curious young minds, you know. Um, and so the - the - the process of designing them is very different. And in a way it feels different. It feels very less, it feels less serious. It feels more, um, more - more fun. Um, and I think that that informs the way the prototypes are working and informs the way you interact with the space. Um, I love of the idea of - of thinking of building an avatar as - as a sculptural project. You know, it’s almost like painting a figure or sewing up a little doll, you know, really trying to put yourself into that character and imagine them and how they would be. And on Journey actually as we working on characters outside of the main character, we actually did create puppets out of paper for the fish type characters and float them around in the office and see how they would move and think about how they would animate, because we wanted them to be basically cloth brought to life. And, uh, if you approach the character design problem from that perspective, what is the feeling? And then you incorporate that feeling in the design. I think you get that synergy between the avatar and the player and the concepts in the world.
