Jenova Chen

Lore & Background

Chen was born in Shanghai on October 8, 1981, and lived there until 2003. His parents were a middle-class family. His father worked in the software development industry. He earned a bachelor's degree in computer science with a minor in digital art and design from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He moved to the United States, where he earned a master's degree from the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division. While there he created Cloud and Flow, and met fellow student Kellee Santiago. After a brief period at Maxis working on Spore, he founded Thatgamecompany with Santiago and became the company's creative director. The company signed a three-game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment, and has sold Flow, Flower, and Journey through the PlayStation Network. He also worked as creative director on Thatgamecompany's first mobile game, Sky: Children of the Light, released in 2019.

In Their Own Story

The wind picks up at the edge of the grey town, and you feel it first as a tug behind your back, a gentle insistence. You are small. You are a flower, no bigger than a child's fist, and the world around you is the color of old newspaper. But the wind does not care about your size. It lifts, and you rise, and the rooftops slide beneath you like a slow river. Ahead, a single petal drifts in the same current, tumbling end over end, and you reach for it the way you would reach for a friend's hand in a crowd. You catch it. The grey cracks, just a little, and a streak of green bleeds through the pavement below. You keep going. The wind keeps lifting. And somewhere past the last dead building, the valley is waiting, and it is alive, and it has been waiting for you.

Reader's Guide

Chen tries to make games that appeal universally to all people. His goal is to help video games mature as a medium by making games that inspire emotional responses in the player that other games are lacking. He does not plan on commercially developing more traditional games, as he does not think that fits with their goals as an independent video game developer.

Did You Know?

• Chen chose the English name Jenova after a character in Final Fantasy VII.
• His first major game, Cloud, won a grant of $20,000 from USC to produce.
• Flow became the most downloaded game on the PlayStation Network in 2007.
• Flower was intended by Chen to provoke positive emotions and act as 'an emotional shelter'.
• In 2008, Chen was named to the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 list.