After the critical success of its emotional, musical adventure Journey in 2012, Thatgamecompany's creative director Jenova Chen had aspirations to reach a much broader audience of players. Journey was popular on console, with an audience that Chen jokingly described as men in their 30s who were conveniently journalists and awards judges, but "teenagers hated Journey," he said. I must have been an outlier.
So Thatgamecompany decided to make an MMO, a genre that's definitely popular with teens...