Thatgamecompany's creative director, Genova Chen, wanted to reach a broader audience after the critically acclaimed 2012 emotional musical adventure Journey. Journey was popular on consoles, and Chen jokingly described himself as a convenient 30-something male as a journalist and awards judge, but "teenagers hated Journey," he says. I must have been an outlier.

So Thatgamecompany decided to create an MMO. While the genre is undoubtedly popular with teens, it is rarely synonymous with the wholesome, friendly experience with strangers that Journey was known for. In an interview at GDC earlier this month, Chen spoke about the difficulties of designing a harmless social space in Sky: Children of the Light, just ahead of the PC version's release.

"Right now, so much is wrong about how the Internet was designed. As a designer, I resent that people are so careless about maintaining the culture of a space, that too many online spaces, from YouTube comment sections to online games, are shocking, trolling, or truly offensive, that people are constantly encouraged to seek maximum constantly encouraged to seek out reactions, he says. When given great power to influence those around us, we revert to a state of being like primitive babies, constantly seeking social feedback, good or bad.

Chen was thinking about this issue during the development of Journey. In his talk at this year's GDC, "Designing to Reduce Toxicity in Online Games," Chen explained how he went through several iterations of Journey's core system to ensure that players saw each other as friendly collaborators rather than resource hogs. Ultimately, Thatgamecompany nailed it. All of my Journey memories are of those magical moments when unknown other players patiently guide you through a difficult area or walk into the light with you at the end of the game.

"When we created Journey, someone who had bullied other players in Call of Duty suddenly posted on our forum. My mother called me for dinner. 'That player was a jerk in another game. So I realized that no one is born toxic. It's really just the environment we form."

Fostering an anti-toxic environment became an important part of Sky's development, and while TGC utilizes tools to report and resolve offensive messages, Chen said that Sky's goal is to introduce proactive and preventive measures rather than reacting after the damage has already been done He said

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"You have to get a permit to get a shotgun, right?" (Thatgamecompany is based in the US, where this is not universally true, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is.) He adds, "But shotguns are given to a lot of babies who are new to the online community. They have no understanding of social norms, but they are basically blasting out very controversial texts in order to elicit maximum feedback." For example, public text chat is a staple in other MMOs, but not in Sky.

"One of the most beneficial things we're doing is that we have to earn the right to apply our social powers, and that's what we're doing.

One of the foundations of Sky is what Chen calls the "double consent" socializing system: in Sky, everyone around you is an indistinct silhouette at first; in Sky, you are a single person, a single person, a single person. To see each other in the game, you must offer each other candles indicating that you have agreed to interact. To become official friends, you must actually spend candles, Sky's main currency of progression. To unlock additional interactions, such as emoting together, sending text chats, and eventually teleporting, you must continue to spend candles. However, offering candles to befriend other players signals trust and goodwill.

The only thing that others can do to annoy you without your explicit permission is to fly erratically around the vicinity and make the universal cry of sky, whatever the equipped voice color is. I once nicknamed someone a "wailer" because he was so annoying that I had to keep my eyes open for him. This was because that person used the most annoying voice setting and was constantly chirping while we were flying together. Hidden nicknames are just another way Thatgamecompany is trying to reduce the "maximum feedback" players can get from each other.

They have not always gotten it right. During his talk on toxicity, Chen described one of Sky's implementations of social benches (where players can sit together and exchange text chats). At one time, the bench could accommodate eight players at a time, an irresistible opportunity for reaction-seeking baby brains. At one time there was also the infamous "eggplant boy". He was the player who would sit on a packed bench and spam the eggplant emoji to other chatting players. So now the chat bench is back to a one-on-one experience.

It's been five years since Sky launched: hopefully the TCG's non-poisonous design will stand up to the influx of PC players. And even if it doesn't, it will still be in Early Access for a while yet.

Sky: Children of the Light is a free-to-play MMO that is in open beta on mobile and consoles; it will launch in Early Access on Steam on April 10; the game will be available for free on PC and PC, and will be available for free on the Xbox 360 and Xbox 360.