Chen Xinghan's Unfinished Journey

In the gaming industry, are there still any unexplored blue oceans?

For the 19 years since the company was founded, Chen Xinghan has often used a single image to illustrate what TGC (ThatGameCompany) aims to do.

This chart comes from the British film industry; the x-axis and y-axis represent gender and age, respectively, with film and television genres that cater to different emotional needs plotted on the graph.

The prime real estate in the spectrum is occupied by Disney and Pixar, whose animated films combine the optimistic romance of fantasy, the humor and wit of comedy, and the dramatic twists and turns of drama,and, most importantly, the thought-provoking depth of art house films—capable of bringing tears of joy or sorrow even to adults. These animations are known as “family films for all ages,” capable of moving people of all ages and genders alike.

By creating a map based on human emotional needs and marking the areas covered by games, Chen Xinghan discovered a striking imbalance: most mainstream games are clustered in the upper-left emotional region, much like ships crowding into congested waters.At the center of the map, however, lies a diamond-shaped void—a space that should be filled with emotional experiences enjoyed by people of all ages and genders, much like the territory occupied by Disney and Pixar animations. Chen Xinghan refers to these as “Zone 4 games.”

The gaming industry has been around for decades, with an output value more than double that of the film industry, yet it has yet to produce a true “family-friendly” title.Nintendo once came close to tapping into this untapped market—based on motion controls and the concept of family entertainment, the Wii console launched in 2006 attracted many people who had never played video games before, ultimately selling more than 100 million units, with the accompanying game *Wii Sports* selling 80 million copies,nearly realizing then-President Satoru Iwata’s vision of “expanding the gaming population.”

However, due to a lack of fresh content, the Wii’s glory days did not last. Since then, we’ve rarely seen heartwarming scenes of families sitting on the couch playing games together; instead, people have been talking more about how mobile games are driving them apart.

Some have attempted to analyze the Wii’s “failure” and drawn the lesson that abandoning core gamers and embracing casual users is a risky move. Chen Xinghan doesn’t see it that way; for the past 19 years, he has been striving to introduce new emotional dimensions into games, with the goal of helping more people fall in love with gaming.

“If adults don’t feel moved by it, they’ll think this movie is just for kids—a Saturday morning cartoon, not a Pixar film.” This is also one of the reasons Chen Xinghan believes the Wii’s success failed to last.

He wants to use a product to change the public's perception of games and, in turn, shift the mindset of game developers.

Just as animation was once considered entertainment for children before the advent of Disney and Pixar, the release of *Frozen* and *Toy Story* changed that perception. When adults, too, began to be emotionally moved by these films, people started to recognize the artistic value of this medium.More importantly, after Pixar’s *Toy Story* grossed over $100 million, Sony also established a CG animation studio, followed by DreamWorks and Blue Sky Studios—each employing thousands of staff members.

Just as Disney and Pixar have done—by opening up new markets and proving that games that touch people’s hearts can also achieve commercial success and attract more people to join the journey—this is the goal Chen Xinghan hopes *Sky: Children of the Light* will achieve: to use market forces to validate the existence of demand and drive greater supply.

Six years after its launch, *Sky: Children of the Light* has partially achieved this goal—the game’s commercial performance has far exceeded even the most optimistic initial expectations. Yet, despite this clear success story, very few peers have followed in its footsteps.

At the same time, the gaming industry today is facing a paradox: while industry professionals feel lost because their past experiences are no longer relevant, they continue to turn a blind eye to the new opportunities Chen Xinghan has uncovered.

01

Another Dimension of Human Nature

In its sixth year since launch, *Sky: Children of the Light* has reached a new high in daily active users.

This goes somewhat against the typical patterns of a game's lifecycle—most blockbuster games begin to decline two or three years after launch and then enter a prolonged period of decline.

At this stage, the industry as a whole is grappling with a certain dilemma: aside from a handful of evergreen games, many titles are rapidly declining in popularity. Yet when launching new projects, developers are unsure what new markets or genres to pursue, leaving them with no choice but to compete over IPs and art design.

In the pursuit of high-quality games, some leading projects have teams numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, essentially turning game development into a matter of human resource management. Meanwhile, TGC has fewer than 300 employees company-wide, with R&D staff making up less than half of that total, yet its metrics continue to grow against the trend. Why is that?

Unlike game companies that simply chase commercial success, TGC has had an unusual goal since its inception: to infuse games with more positive emotions, to move even those who don’t normally play games, and to make games an art form recognized by society at large, just like novels and movies.

Nineteen years have passed, and the industry has seen its ups and downs, with mainstream players shifting from PCs and consoles to more convenient mobile devices, but Chen Xinghan’s goal has never changed.

As the company’s most commercially successful product, *Sky: Children of the Light* underwent seven years of development and six years of continuous operation; Chen Xinghan devoted 13 years of his life to this game—nearly one-third of his life.

Today, *Sky: Children of the Light* has earned many accolades that are the envy of its peers: long-term operation, high DAU, multiplayer social interaction, UGC… These terms all point to the key to the game’s enduring success. But in Chen Xinghan’s eyes, *Sky: Children of the Light* is a “platform of goodwill” that helps people forge genuine emotional connections.

In psychology, there is a term called “nudge,” which refers to “influencing people’s decisions through subtle interventions to guide them toward certain choices.” This is very common in game design.

In a sense, game designers are like lawmakers; by altering the laws and natural laws of the virtual world, they can “nudge” people’s behavioral tendencies toward the vulgar or the noble.

When designers hold the power to set rules and guide interactions, different values can lead to vastly different outcomes.Games driven solely by commercial goals often exploit human weaknesses: using virtual currency to obscure real-world prices, employing random rewards to induce gambling addiction, and stoking mutual hatred to drive spending on warfare. But Chen Xinghan believes that “legislators” should uphold ethical standards.

In *Sky: Children of the Light*, there are no levels, no combat, and no leaderboards.To foster a friendlier environment for player interaction and make the game more welcoming to introverts, *Sky: Children of the Light* has set certain requirements for in-game socializing: players must first unlock actions like holding hands, high-fives, and hugs before they can start chatting. When opportunities to connect are hard to come by, people tend to cherish them all the more.

It is the many subtle details that collectively make *Sky: Children of the Light* unique, and each unconventional design choice required time to conceive, refine, and test—which is why the game took a full seven years to develop before its release.

As a game in continuous operation, the official launch is just the beginning of a long journey. As large numbers of players join the game, the diverse feedback they provide serves as the basis for designers to improve the game, introducing elements of “co-creation” into this virtual society.

“*Sky: Children of the Light* has over 20 million monthly active users—that’s equivalent to four Norways or one Shanghai.” With so many people, there are bound to be different opinions and feedback; I really feel like we’re drafting laws and revising policies.”Chen Xinghan said that beyond “legislating,” the *Sky: Children of the Light* team must also maintain order and foster a positive atmosphere within the community, shouldering responsibilities akin to “governing.”

It’s inevitable that a leader’s inbox will be flooded with complaints from citizens. Chen Xinghan has publicly shared touching letters from players, but he rarely mentions that he now wakes up every day to find dozens of complaint emails in his inbox—there are always those in favor and those against.

He showed me a player’s handwritten notebook containing 35 suggestions for improving *Sky: Children of the Light*, along with a box full of similar feedback. He carries these with him and flips through them from time to time.

“I visited three cities last year, and in each city, about 300 people wrote down their opinions.” From last year’s in-person events alone, Chen Xinghan collected 900 pieces of feedback. “I tallied them up to see what came up most frequently—and what were the second and third most common issues—and then shared the results with my team.”

It's a huge amount of work, and players' opinions often conflict with one another. Sometimes he even finds himself wondering, "What kind of job is this?"

“But if you don’t take the time to listen, you’ll end up making the wrong decision, and more people will be disappointed.” He acknowledged that designers often underestimate the complexity of human nature and inevitably mean well but end up doing more harm than good; however, it’s only after experiencing many such situations that one can learn to truly listen by learning from one’s mistakes.

When I talk with Chen Xinghan, I often get the impression that he approaches things from a different perspective on human nature. The “reverse growth” in *Sky: Children of the Light* stems from every aspect of how he does things and is closely tied to his values.

02

A Different Starting Point

As a teenager, Chen Xinghan once shed tears while playing *The Legend of Sword and Fairy* and *Final Fantasy*. Games allowed him to experience the feeling of “loss,” prompting him to reflect on how to avoid such loss, how to live his life, and how to become a better person.

An idea began to take root: if a creator can use their work to improve the lives of their audience, then he must do the same. Although at the time, he didn’t yet know that games would become his medium of expression.

It all really began in 2006 with Chen Xinghan’s senior thesis project at the University of Southern California—*Clouds*. At first, he wanted to create a game similar to *SimCity*, but his advisor, Tracy Fullerton, asked, “Does your game have a protagonist?”

“What kind of protagonist does *SimCity* need?” Chen Xinghan asked, puzzled.

“What if the main character were a child?”

To fulfill his advisor’s requirements, Chen Xinghan began thinking about how to introduce a protagonist into the game. He delved into his memories: as an only child who suffered from asthma, he had spent much of his childhood in solitude.While his classmates were running around the playground during P.E. class, he could only lie in bed or sit alone in an empty classroom. Gazing out the window at Shanghai’s gray, hazy sky, he fantasized about flying up to the clouds, gathering the dark clouds to bring down a refreshing rain that would wash away the city’s pollution.

“Subconsciously, I felt the city needed a good wash.” In his memory, after it rained, he could smell the freshness of the earth and the scent of grass, and the city seemed even more beautiful.

And so, *Cloud* was born—a little boy flies up into the sky, plays with the clouds, and purifies the world with rain. This small game, created by a group of students from scratch without the use of any game engine, unexpectedly touched the hearts of many people.

Prior to this, Chen Xinghan had created more than one game, but they were all student projects based on existing games. *Cloud* was the first time he incorporated his own experiences and emotions into a game, and it was also the first time he received letters from players.

Strangers from all over the country wrote letters thanking *Cloud* for the wonderful experience it provided,some saying it was the first time a game had moved them to tears. In their letters, they encouraged Chen Xinghan to start a company and create more games that touch people’s hearts, showing society that games aren’t just about competition and killing—they can also be rich in emotion and make people’s lives better. This is precisely the true reason behind the founding of TGC.

Some people have written in to say that, although they had never played video games before, they were deeply captivated by *Cloud*. This made Chen Xinghan particularly happy—he had finally sparked an interest in video games among people who didn’t play them, fulfilling his childhood dream.

However, *Cloud* also revealed some issues: the game is “too difficult,” and while it attracted a group of players, many of them eventually gave up because they couldn’t get the hang of the keyboard and mouse controls. This left Chen Xinghan feeling regretful: “I finally managed to get this group interested, only for their final experience to be so terrible.”

He realized that when faced with entirely new needs and audiences, even the most obvious assumptions could fail—you might think “WASD” (keyboard controls) is simple, but to someone who doesn’t play games, it’s a foreign language. To enable people who don’t know how to play games to enjoy them, he needed to build from the ground up.

Since there were no established models to draw upon in the gaming industry, he turned to older disciplines and found inspiration in positive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow theory”: when challenges and abilities are in balance, people enter a state of complete absorption. Since players have different skill levels at different stages of the game, the appropriate level of challenge should also vary accordingly.

Based on this theory, Chen Xinghan proposed the “Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment” (DDA) design method and created *Flow* to test his hypothesis—a game that appears extremely simple, in which players control microorganisms as they swim, feed, and evolve in the primordial ocean, adjusting the difficulty through their own choices.

This little game, created by a tech guy to test his mental model, unexpectedly racked up 6 million downloads, allowing players of all skill levels to enjoy it. Later, the game also served as the stepping stone that led to TGC signing a deal with Sony.

*Cloud* and *Flow*, two games created during his student years, served as the catalysts for Chen Xinghan to found TGC and collaborate with Sony, respectively. They also established TGC’s approach in its early stages: to explore new emotional dimensions in games and to engage a broader audience through innovative design.

03

Awe and Vulnerability

“Our core focus is on meeting the emotional needs shared by everyone, and then building games from scratch,” Chen Xinghan told me.

Having no reference points is perhaps the most daunting challenge for game developers. But Chen Xinghan chose a completely different path. In his view, following in the footsteps of those who came before would result in a lot of unnecessary bloat; only by starting from the very basics can one create a design that perfectly suits the target audience.

When TGC was developing its third game, *Flower*, the team attempted to completely abandon traditional control schemes, retaining only a single button and relying on a six-axis sensor to determine movement direction. Players tilt the controller to control the wind and guide the petals as they dance through the air. The design is so simple that even players with disabilities can enjoy the game.

The game eventually made its way into the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where it was recognized as a work of art. However, during development, the team faced significant challenges because there were no precedents to draw upon. The game took two years to develop, with 14 of those months spent hitting a wall.

However, this has not altered Chen Xinghan and TGC’s product philosophy; they continue to introduce new emotions and explore new designs in their latest works.

After *Flower*, TGC spent three years developing *Journey*, including a year and a half of trial and error; the subsequent success of this indie game finally established them as a major player in the industry.

"Journey" was inspired by Chen Xinghan's feelings of loneliness while pursuing his graduate studies in the United States. At the time, he had just arrived in the country, struggled with English, and had to work five jobs to make ends meet, all while harboring a deep-seated longing to connect with others.

How can we overcome loneliness? Chen Xinghan painted a picture: a giant walking on a snow-capped mountain, while people at the foot of the mountain walk hand in hand—one false step and they’ll be trampled to death. Visibility is extremely low in the thick fog, so people can only rely on the guidance of those ahead of them to ensure their safety.

“Someone is holding my hand, completely dependent on me to survive, and I, in turn, depend on the person ahead of me.” Chen Xinghan believes that this kind of interdependence may be the only way for people to escape loneliness. He wants to capture this feeling through his games, allowing players to truly feel, in a single moment, that they are not alone.

Most games on the market encourage players to compete—so how can we make people interdependent in games? TGC spent a long time mulling over this question until Chen Xinghan found inspiration during a conversation with an astronaut.

Chen Xinghan noticed a mysterious phenomenon: after returning to Earth, astronauts who had landed on the moon all began to seek faith and became exceptionally devout—even if they had originally been die-hard scientists.

Curiosity drove him to track down the first astronaut to drive a lunar rover.When asked what was on the moon, the man’s answer was unexpected: the moon was the most boring place he had ever been—no color, just dust. In this silent, colorless world, the only interesting thing in the universe was Earth, and you could cover it with just your thumb.

“Once you’ve left Earth behind, you find yourself in the most vast expanse in the world. You begin to wonder: Why am I here? Why are we on that tiny planet? What is the meaning of the entire universe? You’re suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling—the realization that you’re just a speck of dust in the universe.”

That feeling is awe—an emotion that is becoming increasingly rare in modern life.

“We live in a world of empowerment,” Chen Xinghan observed. “We can travel at 80 miles per hour, talk to people in any corner of the world, and get answers to any question in a matter of milliseconds. When was the last time we felt small?”

This tendency toward empowerment is particularly evident in the gaming industry. Virtually all mainstream games cater to players’ fantasies of power—playing the hero, conquering the world, and being invincible. When players feel powerful, their first instinct is often to exert that power over others. Even in cooperative games, the focus remains on enhancing individual abilities.

Under the logic of traditional online games, players are given the ability to kill and plunder, so naturally they do not value their connections with others. Chen Xinghan realized that to help players form genuine emotional bonds, this power dynamic must be reversed.

In contrast to strength is vulnerability, which is precisely the key to triggering empathy.

From an evolutionary perspective, this is a survival instinct of social animals. Weak individuals must rely on one another to survive; it is precisely the fear of risk and a sense of insignificance that foster these bonds.Chen Xinghan believes that these two emotions—awe and vulnerability—define the essence of human connection: our vulnerability when we are alone drives our longing for a sense of belonging.

Based on these considerations, *Journey* adopted an unconventional design: players have no weapons and can only evade threats or rely on their companions; the environment is powerful and dangerous, with the desert’s scorching sun and the icy winds of the snow-capped mountains constantly draining their energy; there is no gear to collect or experience points to earn—simply being with one’s companions is the greatest reward.

The environment shapes human behavior, and by creating a world that evokes a sense of awe and vulnerability, *Journey* successfully fosters empathy among players. Ultimately, the game conveys the feeling that people walk alone through the vast desert, only to chance upon a kindred spirit with whom they can journey through life.

After the release of *Journey*, TGC received over 1,600 thank-you letters from players; the game moved many to tears. It also won more than 180 awards, broke two Guinness World Records, and was included in the collections of several museums, catapulting Chen Xinghan and TGC to prominence in the industry.

04

The Scent of a Pirate

"Journey" not only moved players but also inspired many people in the gaming industry, including two Chinese students studying game design at New York University—Chen Ji and Zhang Zhechuan.

In 2013, they began preparing their final project, *Twins*. Unlike the assigned projects they had worked on during their studies, this time they wanted to create a unique emotional experience. Through the department chair, they got in touch with Chen Xinghan and received his guidance.

"Twins" took over three years to develop. In the game, players control a small star and, together with their companions, soar through the sky, overcoming obstacles to illuminate the world.After graduation, Chen Ji joined TGC as a designer on *Sky: Children of the Light*, while Zhang Zhechuan returned to China to join Tencent NExT Studios, where he created the critically acclaimed *Sound of a Murder Case*.

Zhang Zhechuan recalled to me that one incident from back then left a deep impression on him: Chen Xinghan told him that while *Journey* had received excellent reviews, it wasn’t particularly successful commercially and couldn’t prove to game developers who wanted to create similar works that this was a viable path forward.His next goal was to create a profitable game that would prove this genre’s commercial viability—rather than being merely idealistic—and that game became *Sky: Children of the Light*.

“Now that *Sky: Children of the Light* has proven itself to be a profitable game, why aren’t there still more projects like it?” I asked.

“The success of *Sky: Children of the Light* is inseparable from Mr. Chen’s years of experience, yet it is not the kind of success that could have been predicted from a traditional commercial project planning perspective.” In Zhang Zhechuan’s view, this runs counter to the logic of major studios, which typically require mature benchmarks and predictable data before greenlighting a project.

Without any models to reference, it meant reinventing the wheel from scratch. *Sky: Children of the Light* took seven years to develop—a development cycle long enough to deter most commercial companies.More importantly, as a game designed for long-term operation, *Sky: Children of the Light* incorporates multiplayer online elements, social features, user-generated content (UGC), and innovative business models. These design elements are tightly intertwined and may only work effectively in *Sky: Children of the Light*; others would be hesitant to imitate them—and even if they tried, they likely couldn’t replicate them.

“Teacher Chen and his team built the emotional experience from scratch and then developed the business model from scratch as well—it’s extremely risky, and most companies wouldn’t do it that way,” Zhang Zhechuan told me. Validating a business model is very difficult, and the cost of trial and error is extremely high. The approach taken by the vast majority of companies is this: once a few games succeed and validate a set of monetization strategies, they simply keep replicating that model.

Many companies don’t even build user experiences from scratch; they merely engage in incremental innovation. The pursuit of certainty means that most companies need to identify clear benchmarks when launching projects and rely on proven designs for their implementation strategies.

“When project approval becomes driven by short-term gains, design becomes driven by short-term gains as well, and under such circumstances, it’s difficult to create games like *Light·Encounter* and *Journey*,” said Zhang Zhechuan.

Chen Xinghan and TGC’s development model is highly idealistic—it starts with emotional needs and builds the experience from the ground up to avoid the redundancy caused by inappropriate experiences. This requires the team to have exceptional design capabilities, ample time, and room for exploration.However, traditional commercial companies rarely provide such an environment or the patience required; independent teams, on the other hand, are more likely to persist with this kind of exploration. This is also one of the reasons Zhang Zhechuan left a major tech company to start his own business.

Compared to mainstream commercial games, Chen Xinghan has a greater appreciation for indie games. Every year at GDC (Game Developers Conference), he almost always visits the indie game exhibition area, where young people with diverse ideas gather, full of energy—he actually met TGC’s first programmer there. In his view, it is in places like this that one can see the future of gaming.

Chen Xinghan believes there is a paradox in the industry: “You can’t put profitability first and innovation second. Because prioritizing profitability will force you to gravitate toward proven business models.”

“What is an indie game? It’s making games that you really want to create, even though their commercial viability hasn’t been proven yet. It’s full of risks, but developers can visualize that game in their minds and aren’t willing to give up on pursuing it.” Chen Xinghan said, “That’s the spirit of a pirate—believing that treasure lies in places not yet charted on the map. If you’re just in it for the money, you’re better off joining a big studio and becoming part of the navy.”

Chen Xinghan knows the owner of a game company who has made billions of dollars. This person often expresses envy toward those who create unique games, but says he plans to make some money first and then innovate once he’s made enough.

“I asked him, ‘How much do you need to make before you’re satisfied?’ He said, ‘It’s still not enough—I want to make a little more,’” Chen Xinghan said. “I think he’ll probably never really make a game that stands out from the rest in his entire life.”

05

A Company for Everyone

“The production team is now operating on autopilot,” Chen Xinghan said. “I don’t have to micromanage it—it runs smoothly on its own.”

Compared to his early years, one of the biggest changes for Chen Xinghan is that he has learned to let go. Back then, he had to handle many things himself, but now many of the up-and-coming designers are capable of taking on responsibilities on their own.

TGC has been developing games for 19 years, with five titles to its credit, and the core members of its development team have been working together for over a decade. Compared to many top-tier projects with ever-expanding teams, TGC’s team is relatively small. In Chen Xinghan’s view, bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to teams. He compares game development to filmmaking—while a movie may involve hundreds of people, the core crew consists of only about 10 people.

“Hiring more people who score 70 doesn’t increase talent density—it actually dilutes it. Reducing the number of 70s and 80s and keeping only the 90s—the headcount may shrink, but the concentration increases.” Today, TGC has over 200 employees; while communication costs have risen slightly, the company is still running smoothly.

Unlike the pyramid-shaped structure found in most game companies—where the producer is at the top, followed by the lead designer, lead artist, lead programmer, and so on—the organizational structure of the *Sky: Children of the Light* development team is more decentralized: designers take the lead in generating ideas, and anyone can propose concepts for new seasons.

Their way of thinking is quite unlike that of a typical “game company”—they don’t design features just to boost metrics. Take the fishing system, for example: they didn’t consider creating a collection guide where players would have to catch 80 different types of fish just to extend their playtime. Instead, they focused on questions like: Where should the caught fish go? Does this fit with the world of *Sky: Children of the Light*? Because *Sky: Children of the Light* is a real world.

Most TGC employees have a “second talent”—some are passionate about movies, some are knowledgeable about music, and some are audio enthusiasts… In a team like this, with so many voices speaking up, disagreements and lost efficiency are inevitable, but Chen Xinghan wants the company to be exactly like this.

He admires Pixar's culture and even brought in Pixar founder Ed Catmull as a consultant.

Pixar used to have a beautiful long table that could seat 30 people facing each other in two rows. The director and producer sat in the middle, with everyone else seated on either side. To help everyone find their seats, the secretary would print out place cards.

This table had been in use for more than a decade. It wasn’t until a meeting at a square table in a small conference room—where he noticed everyone sitting in relaxed postures and communicating freely—that Katem suddenly realized: this was exactly the kind of interaction he wanted.Although management had always emphasized that rank didn’t matter, the seating arrangement at the long table sent the opposite message—that the opinions of those seated in the middle were important, while those on the edges were not. Immediately after the meeting, he got rid of the long table and removed the place cards.

Pixar’s “think tank” system also embodies the principle of equality. The think tank is composed of key employees from various positions and levels, who regularly provide feedback on film rough cuts. Even the company’s cooks and cleaning staff write reviews of new films, which directors are required to read carefully.

Interestingly, Steve Jobs, as the boss, never participated—this was an agreement between him and Catmull, because Catmull knew full well that Jobs’s strong personality would intimidate people into not speaking honestly, thereby undermining the atmosphere of candor.To encourage young people to speak up, they also had an unwritten rule: for the first 15 minutes of every meeting, veteran director John Lasseter had to remain silent.

Their goal is to ensure that the creative process is driven by the best ideas, rather than by hierarchical rank.

Chen Xinghan agrees with this philosophy. In an atmosphere of equality and openness, the company has shifted from being dominated by the will of a few to a place where everyone creates for themselves.

06

An Unfinished Journey

Six years after its launch, *Sky: Children of the Light* has far exceeded Chen Xinghan’s most optimistic commercial expectations at the time, but there are still some regrets.

Let’s return to the chart mentioned earlier. *Sky: Children of the Light* has only achieved three-quarters of the “Four-Zone Game” goal: while it has won the hearts of mothers and daughters, it hasn’t managed to spark much interest among sons.

Involving young boys as well to create a truly family-friendly experience—that is the goal Chen Xinghan plans to achieve with his next game.

“Just like Pixar and Disney animated films,” he said, “If other media have a market like this, why can’t video games?”

Another regret is that *Sky: Children of the Light* hasn’t yet truly paved the way for fellow travelers to run along it.

The market performance of *Sky: Children of the Light* has certainly caught the attention of major companies, but they may view the associated opportunities from a different perspective—such as the female market or the potential for social interaction—rather than the emotions the game itself aims to convey.

Meanwhile, small and medium-sized teams and independent developers who genuinely want to create similar games are still groping in the dark. The challenges they face haven’t changed despite the success of *Sky: Children of the Light*: a lack of experience and funding, no distribution channels, and an inability to compete in the user acquisition market against games with more aggressive monetization strategies…

“Among indie game companies that want to tell stories, we’re relatively fortunate,” Chen Xinghan said. “But we live in unfortunate times—commercialization only leaves a path for companies that make money, not for those that tell stories.”

He often wonders how he can help those who want to tell their stories well but don’t have the opportunity to be heard. How can he ensure that more people hear their voices?

To use an analogy, the success of *Sky: Children of the Light* is like striking a new gold vein—it proves that there really is treasure here. But the difficulty of mining this area still deters many people—it requires special tools, unique techniques, and plenty of patience.

I once met an entrepreneur who, upon seeing an interview with Chen Xinghan when *Sky: Children of the Light* was released in 2019, was so moved that he left his previous company—which “exploited human nature for profit”—to rediscover his original passion for game development. He returned to his hometown to assemble a team and create games with heart, but he’s taken many detours along the way, and to this day, the project has yet to bear fruit.

Not only does TGC know the location of the vein, but it also has a shovel that has been honed and continuously improved over the past 19 years.

“Since this shovel works so well, why not share it with others who want to mine?” Chen Xinghan said.

Even though *Sky: Children of the Light* has only achieved three-quarters of its goal, its massive user base has already allowed TGC to accumulate sufficient resources and experience. “Under these circumstances, we can actually help companies that are heading toward the same future,” he said.

“We believe in the ‘family gaming’ space—not just developing games ourselves, but also using our experience, capital, personnel, and publishing resources to support this entire sector.”

Chen Xinghan still remembers the moment TGC secured its first round of funding. The investor was Mitch Lasky, who had previously invested in拳头; they had just finished talking that morning, and by the afternoon, they had decided to sign the deal. Without the support of those early investors, *Sky: Light Encounter* would never have been created.

Now, he hopes to help others, just as he was once helped. He wants to encourage more young pirates who carry a treasure map in their hearts to set sail in those remote waters.