The prevailing reputation of Journey's multiplayer system is one of anonymous kindness and emotional connection, which is about as opposite as you can get from the experience of multiplayer in Dark Souls games (unless you're visited by the fashion police or Let Me Solo Her, that is). I wouldn't have thought there was anything in a Souls game for Thatgamecompany to draw inspiration from in its extremely kind MMO Sky: Children of the Light, and yet that's exactly what its message system is based on.
This was part of the talk that creative director Jenova Chen delivered at this year's Game Developers Conference: "Designing to Reduce Toxicity in Online Games," prior to which he gave me plenty of details on designing a non-toxic MMO. Sky has been a free-to-play MMO on other platforms for nearly five years now—heavily inspired by the flying and collaborative exploration of the studio's prior hit Journey—and is launching into early access on PC next week.
