Just about everyone fell in love with Journey . But in order to achieve such acclaim, which ultimately resulted in numerous end-of-year awards, developer Thatgamecompany quite literally had to go bankrupt.
In speaking to Polygon , Thatgamecompany boss Jenova Chen said said that the creation of Journey exhausted all the team's funds:
"I wouldn't say that the development of Journey was a successful example of game development. We bankrupted the company."
Thankfully, the game went on to break PlayStation Network records and they did earn their money back, plus some extra profit. That being said, Chen said that due to the limited availability of the title ( Journey was a PS3 exclusive), that ultimately hurt the game's sales potential. He said that in order to be a true financial success, "it has to be much bigger than a game on the PlayStation platform." And as we know, Thatgamecompany's next project is slated to arrive on multiple platforms; the studio got $5.5 million in venture capital funding to start.
So it seems the developer had to go through a lot to give us Journey , so we should be all the more appreciative.
Related Game(s): Journey
