Defining Tom

Their ability to move and thrive in this world is highly dependent on their motivation to do so, characterized visually, physically, anatomically, and mentally, by their Flame. As they get more and more exhausted and demotivated, their Flame becomes less accepting of collecting Light from the world, and of spending time out in the realms.

This betrays volumes on a vastly hidden secret about Descendant biology and health. They are not the endless spouts of energy and Light that they are believed to be. They exhaust themselves completely and wholly, more quickly than it had ever previously been assumed. And once they are exhausted, they spend a dozen or more times as long to recover their energy. If the Flame is powered by the skychild’s motivation to Be, then the skychild has very little motivation at all. They grow tired of existing almost immediately.

Once they have become decidedly too tired to remain, they ascend back up into the Sky. It is unclear whether we are returning completely to Orbit, or just dematerializing into Light in the upper atmosphere, until we are ready to solidify and take form again. Some of us dematerialize and rematerialize within our nests, as a sign of our connection to our new homes. When we dematerialize into the atmosphere, our minds and souls can prepare to form again within the Mental Space we know as the Homespace. In this Space, the souls of skychildren collect together, preparing and planning where to descend back into the world again.

The younger a Descendant is, the longer their Flame burns between hibernation cycles. Descendants that have seen less than four to eight Seasons pass by are sometimes even known to spend two to three times as long within the world before hibernating. There are many factors contributing to this. Those who are with friends for all or most of the time will be Connected and retain healthy Flame, and may stay within the world longer, and have a longer complete lifetime before completely extinguishing.

As Descendants exist for longer and longer, they will appear into the world for less and less time, and require much greater hibernation periods, sometimes even lasting months, years, and even decades. This phenomenon has common correlations with previous friends fading as well or having already had been extinguished.

When we lose our form and rest within Mental Spaces beyond the world of Sky, we often will dream of countless other realities. Within these dreams are entire worlds, and sometimes entire universes; completely beyond our comprehension. Entities made of “organic flesh”. Beings that do not live directly tied to the flow of energy within their worlds. We had known of aliens from beyond the Sky that exist outside of our natural order. Yet we do not know why we dream of them, or what it might mean for us to dream of them so. These beings do not seem so immediately connected to each other as we are. They are often selfish in nature, and cannot begin to understand each other or how the other feels. This inefficiency is similar in nature to how our Ancestors had once been. Their influence within our dreams has a tendency to affect how we interact with each other when we are together in the realms. It is a dangerous phenomenon, and requires further studying.

Perhaps, then, this is the most critical yet implicit reason to study and understand the mechanics of our hibernation. For every time we go to rest, we are bombarded with dreams of the Other. It has been examined as such that these dreams of the Other can be so overwhelming, that it can bring hibernations to become longer, and for the lifespan of a skychild’s Flame to extinguish faster and faster. These dreams are dangerous. And yet while many around me pay them no mind, and avoid discussing them, I feel compelled. Almost… drawn to them. I must understand more.

I will continue my search.

Phase One: Why was Sky made? 1. The Side By Side

The title of the 'first phase' should stir the air quite immediately. Well- especially if I'd been able to fit the second part of the question into the same line.

Why was Sky made... when Journey already exists?

There we go! Much more polarizing. Much more eye-catching. But seriously, we are here today to highlight a real question that pops up in reaction to Sky: Children of the Light. "Oh cool, so it's just Journey reskinned and on mobile." And while it's understandable to be frustrated at how often these comments pop up, I'd like to clarify that these are valid concerns. They are similar, often in almost one-to-one ways!

The levels follow the exact same emotional curves: ~~~ A mysterious beginning within an endless desert. A defined area where you must gather the multitudes of the creatures. A troubled space filled with emotional turmoil. A dramatic and exciting slide... Into a dark and threatening trial. The past is recollected... and the final challenge is revealed. The perilous descent into the storm tears you apart... But you are reborn, and ascend into the light to begin the cycle anew. The basic story premise doesn't shake the foundation up either: ~~~ The Ancestors lived in harmony with the creatures that partake in the Cycle, but they found they could create powerful machines by entrapping the creatures. Without enough creatures, the Cycle never began anew, and the Ancestors fought each other to control diminishing resources, resulting in a tragic downfall. Their Descendants would enact the Cycle for the rest of eternity, slowly healing the damage left by the ruined kingdom.

If we were to cross-examine our past six years of research and community dispute, this is a description that undeniably describes Sky: Children of the Light. But it also describes the hit Playstation 3 game Journey.

2. The Reaction

In a way, this revelation stung, as my hooded character trudged, flapped, and slid along their Journey. People have told me every year along my searches- to varying degrees- that my belief that Sky: CotL held something special that nothing else had ever touched on before was just that flair for the romantic in me. But as someone who had been so obsessed with Sky for many, many years, I had the strange and ironic reversed effect of Journey being some kind of strange parody of Sky! Every single ounce of awareness of the irony stung, as it would and should. I have to wonder how many players who absolutely adored Journey before Sky- in its experience, story, and message- found Sky to be a pale imitation of what was a perfect game. And from my reversed experience upon playing it as an adult, I was shocked to also find Journey as a far more grounded and comprehensible story than Sky. Sky's lore requires developer concept art, interviews, and heavy community interaction and discussions to understand. But Journey conveyed everything I needed to know about its world and story at the cost of just two hours of my time to sit down and feel.

Similarly to Sky, we could explore more of how - the anatomy of living beings - the energy that powered them - the blessings and guidance of the Ancestors - and the Cycle itself worked. But unlike Sky, we simply don't have to extract meaning out of these topics down to a science!

Why do we do it in Sky, then? ...good question.

3. Passing on the Baton

I think what makes Journey perfect is its simplicity. There is a mystical aspect to Journey's magic soul power that is far more grounded in functionality than Sky's Light, which is narratively designed to be caught in a dance of endless transformation, ever-changing.

Collecting real evidence from TGC, we can see Sky had a much more complex agenda than Journey, and I think through this evolved agenda, we can find what makes Sky singled out as the heavily-pressured Descendant of all of TGC's games before it. (This is also crucial for us working in the Lore community, as well.)

[Link to article here]

In another interview with the journalists at GamesIndustry.biz, Chen notes that the deal to create Flow, Flower, and Journey for Sony on the Playstation revealed that working exclusively with "...a console platform holder like Sony was not an ideal partner for his goals."

Journey and the rest of TGC's prior games were heavily restricted by contractual agreements. The exhaustive work that went into creating Journey and the rest of the games was sold to Sony, and TGC was restricted from accessing and building upon the content that they had created. Not to mention all of the red tape that likely happened even as they were creating them!

A good friend told me that they see Journey as a "proof of concept" for Sky, and I think that may just be a fair assessment. Though he and the team were burnt out, Chen knew all along that Journey was never his complete vision.

From the same previously-mentioned interview: "Deep down I was always curious if I could tackle this problem with a bigger crowd," he says. "Can I still create emotional bonding with more than two people? So Sky is our challenge to the next step. If you could actually chat and you had more than two people, can you still protect the community and create an environment where people show the brighter side of their humanity rather than what we consider the darker side?"

Within my own interpretation of all this information, Sky was always meant to expand on the Themes of Cloud, Flower, and Journey, in a vast, ever-growing multiplayer setting. His mind has always been set, from day one, on the Connections we can feel to our world and especially to each other. Sky would be the ultimate test of creating unique and powerful new Connections between people. If Journey was a very personal interaction with our environments and more intimate by comparison to its successor; then Sky would allow for both personal togetherness, and a huge collective social platform.

4. A Medium to be Shared

Sky enables you to experience both a personal journey and the societal impacts of belonging to community, and the frameworks behind this game confirm this.

[An excerpt from "The Art of Sky", a artbook collection of concept art regaling the creation of TGC's live-service title.]

As The Art of Sky explains it, the game's structure begins with "The Hero's Journey", also known as a 'monomyth'. In any usage of the Hero's Journey framework, the 'hero' main character must answer 'the call' and adventure out, meeting guardians and overcoming challenges along the way, until they arrive at the ultimate trial, from which they will emerge from reborn and transformed. They complete their journey and rest, until a new journey calls to them. Sounds familiar enough, right? This is the framework they used to design both Journey and the initial gameplay experience of Sky; where you begin in the Isle of Dawn and traverse the kingdom to the storm in Eden. I tend to nickname that initial gameplay as "the moth's journey", with moths being the community nickname for new Sky players, of course. The moth's journey follows "The Hero's Journey" framework to a tee.

But the artbook then says they also implemented a gameplay model reflecting something called the "Collective Journey". What exactly is that? If the Hero's Journey expresses the transformation of one sole individual as they undertake a personal adventure, then the Collective Journey represents a call to action shared between multiple people, sometimes even entire societies! The Collective Journey is harder to grasp and narrate than the story of one person, which makes it meta. That's right, I said the scary word. It's not easy to write a story about all 270 million skychildren that are or that have ever been around to be another star in someone's constellation.

But in all fairness, TGC can write a hero's journey, but never a Collective Journey. All they can do is provide us a platform to be able to be there for each other, and for all our seasonal and systemic grievances about the quality of the platform, we are given a platform nonetheless. From there, it becomes our story to write, together. The blank canvas becomes painted by our Experiences. And Jenova Chen's vision not only comes closer to being 'fully' realized, but it is expanded- liberated, even- by becoming the shared vision of the Collective. The vision becomes more complex than Chen ever dreamed of- which is saying something, because that guy was definitely a dreamer.

Phase Two: What Does Sky Accomplish? 5. Finding Connections

Unfortunately, there's still some ground we need to cover. We still haven't fully answered that previous question: Why do we dig through the Lore of Sky with such confusion and discord, when the lore of Journey is that much more self-explanatory?

I could've solved this in full when the question was first mentioned, but I wanted to resolve the very mainstream, primary reasons behind why Sky became the way it did. Now, we can deep-dive into the mind-boggling world of epistemology, ontology, and meaning-based worldbuilding. We've established that Journey influences the moth's journey to Eden, but why and what changed about this strange Cycle and the soul energy that flows through it, that makes the games different? We could talk plenty about Chen's "theme park" philosophy for Sky, but today I'd rather stay in my lane and in the meta-structure of the narratives.

Earlier, we addressed Journey's soul energy as a very spiritual, mystical power, brought out by the Ancestor's glyphs. And meanwhile, Sky's "Light" was some sort of living, shapeshifting, ethereal macrosystem-bearing substance. Both belong to a mystical Cycle of souls, creating the living beings that spread each force further.

Though the moth's journey matches up very closely to the game Journey, Chen said in an interview that Sky's world encompasses the feelings of virtually all of TGC's previous games!

This is the reason that Sky's Light is infinitely more transformative, flexible, and nebulous. ~~~ It is not Journey's spiritual glyphs, enchanted with the soul energy of millenia of Ancestors long gone. It is not the petals in the wind, carrying enchanted magics of the earth to bring flowers and life to the world. It is not the creatures of the abyss, feeding, absorbing, merging, mixing, and dancing in the circle of life. And it is not the longing of a child to soar and shape the sky.

Instead, it's somehow- in some way? Something attempting to encompass the feelings of all four of those. ~~~ That's what the "Light" of Sky: CotL is. It is the creatures, the energy that powers the creatures, the plants, the trees, the wind, clouds, storms, rain, earth, skies, sun, moon, dreams, nightmares, love, joy, bitterness, and shame. Light is all of these things. It is Experience itself.

There is much to say about how TGC lets this experience be portrayed through Sky. It is fair to assert that any profound emotions we get to feel because of Sky is through our own ability to interface with the media, not because TGC necessarily gave us these gifts. As before; all they do is provide the platform. The emotions we experience are ours.

6. Conclusion

And finally, we arrive at the end. TGC has found powerful ways to provide us with mediums and platforms for emotional reception, and every addition to their list of projects has not been 'unique' IPs in the sense of producing content for the sake of it, but for advancing and honing a powerful, intentional dream of reaching out to people and touching their hearts. This, in summary, is why Sky was bound to end up so similar to not just Journey, but all of TGC's games. But also especially Journey.