The Art of Video Games exhibit opened up in March to great fanfare from people all over the United States, and thatgamecompany was there to see it open.  Kellee Santiago was part of a panel on Friday, and Robin Hunicke had her own talk on Saturday evening.  We also had our first East Coast Community Meetup on Saturday afternoon, as well.

flOw (PC) and Flower (PS3) were both in the exhibit, and Flower is one of the five playable games, sitting alongside Myst, Super Mario Bros., Pacman, and The Secret of Monkey Island.  It is an amazing honor to have Flower playable in the exhibit, let alone having flow and Flower just being there!  We are very thankful to the exhibit’s curator, Chris Melissinos, everyone at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and everyone else who volunteered and helped out with the exhibit.

If you want to see some pictures from the opening weekend events and links for the photos on Facebook, click the “Read More” button:

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It’s been more than five years, but the flOw soundtrack is finally available for purchase on iTunes and the PlayStation Network!

To thank people for waiting so long for the soundtrack, Austin made some completely new tracks and improvements, such as having Tina Guo, who played the amazing cello music for our latest game Journey, in one of the tracks!  The soundtrack has ten songs on it and is available for around US$5 worldwide on iTunes, and on the PlayStation Network for the same price in North America and Europe.  Here’s the link for iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/flow-original-soundtrack-from/id518403684

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News everyone!

The Journey Original Soundtrack, composed by Austin Wintory, is now available worldwide on iTunes, and is making its way to the various PlayStation Stores as we speak!  Or as I write this message and you read it.  And possibly it will be up everywhere by the… Anyways, it’s available for US$5, 750 Yen, 4.99 Pounds, and in other currencies throughout the world!  Journey was the 29th most downloaded album on iTunes yesterday!  That’s huge news for a soundtrack to an exclusive PlayStation 3 game!  Austin Wintory is truly a great composer!  Congrats, Austin!

To buy the soundtrack on the PlayStation Store, just turn on your PlayStation 3, find the “Search” button on the top-right corner of the screen, and search for “Journey soundtrack.”  It will pop up right away, and you can quickly get to listening to the soundtrack in 320 256 kbps MP3s!

Or, if you prefer to listen to it in 256 kbps MP3s, or AACs, (whatever iTunes has), then here’s the iTunes link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/journey-original-soundtrack/id511359368

If you’ve downloaded the soundtrack on iTunes or the PS Store, what do you think?  Or are you going to wait until the CD release of the soundtrack?

EDIT:
Even though, if I remember correctly, other albums on the PS Store have been in 320 kbps MP3s, it appears as if the Journey soundtrack isn’t 320 kbps on the PS Store, but 256 kbps… 

Cross-posted from the U.S. PlayStation Blog on behalf of Jenova Chen.

Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers. It has been an exciting two weeks for us since we launched Journey on PlayStation Store. We see the personal connection between our work and the players, which is the most real and priceless reward for us. For that, we thank you so much for your support, for spending time and money to play our game and for spreading the word about Journey to your dear friends and family. Thanks to you, Journey has officially broken PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store sales records, surpassing all first and third-party games to become the fastest-selling game ever released in the SCEA region on the PlayStation Network.

After we released Flower in 2009, players sent hundreds of emails about their experience with the game. They varied from a nine-year-old girl to a 65-year-old man, from a marine serving duty overseas, to a soldier returning from Iraq. There were even stories about a mother’s memory of her two children in the wheat fields, a surreal butterfly fantasy from someone’s grandmother who passed away, and a young man who spoke about his brother who has Down syndrome. Those kinds of letters are what drive us at TGC to keep working.

And now, the reaction to Journey has been even more overwhelming. We have received more letters from fans in the two weeks since Journey’s launch than we did for Flower over the past three years!

We owe a lot to our fans. In fact, idea of forming the thatgamecompany team to create games with Sony Santa Monica originated from several dozen emails that players sent in after playing our first student game, Cloud, from our time at USC. It was the players who told us how moving the game was and how it is important that we keep making these types of games so that more people in the world will realize what video games can be, and can grow to love games through our work. To me, that was a life-changing moment. I knew making games was my life calling.

This art piece expresses our gratitude.

Lastly, a lot of you have seemed to really enjoy the music in the game, which was composed by Austin Wintory. And we’ve received a lot of requests to release the soundtrack of the game. Well, I’m happy to announce that the soundtrack will be hitting the PS Store and iTunes on April 10, and there will be a limited CD release in the near future as well.

Thanks, again, for all your support. We’ll see you online!

Cross-posted here from Gamasutra.  Article by Leigh Alexander.

Just off a wave of critical acclaim for Thatgamecompany’s newest PlayStation Network title, Journey, big changes are afoot at the studio: As the studio begins work on a new game, co-founder and president Kellee Santiago departs.

Gamasutra sources say that other key staff departures may be forthcoming as well. Santiago declined to confirm or to speak to her colleagues’ plans, but suggested future announcements are ‘likely.’ As for her own departure, it’s entirely amicable, Santiago tells us, explaining that it’s simply time to seek new challenges.

Santiago co-founded the studio six years ago with creative director Jenova Chen, but the two first teamed up even prior to Thatgamecompany. While they were University of Southern California students, Chen and Santiago worked together on an experimental game called Cloud, and launched the company based on a mutual vision to create new forms of expression through video games.

Thatgamecompany, which has enjoyed much support from Sony, has released PSN titles FlOw, Flower and Journey, and the most recent game is viewed by many critics and fans as the attainment of the style and vision for which the studio aimed through the first two.

“After doing these three games, I think it was a really great opportunity for all of us to look at what we’ve learned and what I’ve taken from that experience, and go forth and take it into new arenas,” Santiago tells Gamasutra.

In addition to the learning experience of founding a studio and gaining exposure to all its inherent roles and responsibilities, Santiago had the opportunity to take a leading role in establishing an oft-publicized unique internal creative process the studio applies to all its games.

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