Sky: Children of the Light is a very successful MMO from Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flow, Flower). It has many features, but overall you can think of it as a relaxing game. Well. Another way to define it isthe Dark Souls of relaxing games. Obviously we're exaggerating a bit, but let us explain.
Thatgamecompany has officially took inspiration from Dark Souls for his system management of messages between players. The aim is to reduce toxicity between users.
The explanation of the creative director Jenova Chen
“In every game we make, because we don't initially understand the nuances, our point of view is very black and white: [per noi] all text chats are bad“said creative director Jenova Chen.
Recall that Journey did not include any textual communication, leaving players to communicate only with musical notes emitted by the character. But players kept telling Thatgamecompany that they wanted a way to communicate via text.
“So when we moved from Journey to Sky, we said, 'Okay, let's take a little step forward. Let's see if we can make this text thing work.'”
Sky now has direct chat between friends, but the other system that Thatgamecompany has created is that of paper boats that Sky players can place in the world for others to find and read: Chen confirms that it was inspired by the Dark Souls system of messages on the ground. In Dark Souls, however, players are limited to specific words to construct messages. In Sky, however, players can freely type messages.
This total freedom it became another challenge. “Soon after they allowed people to leave a message in the world, they started becoming memes on the Internet,” she said.
To make sure the messaging system stayed on a positive track, Chen says the studio announced it would start show your friends which messages were written by you.
“As soon as we announced it, we saw that the community took action and quickly deleted the shameful messages he had written,” Chen said. “They actively deleted their messages. It was actually very satisfying to see. We didn't know it was so effective. They really cared about what their friends thought of them“.
Thatgamecompany expanded this sense of “positive social pressure” by changing the visibility of messages based on what friends in the game think is positive or negative. If some of your friends think a message is great, they're likely to share it with others, but if someone thinks it's negative, it could be hidden.
The final results is that Sky is thus able to offer a positive and pleasant environment where everyone feels better.
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