Xinghan Chen (; born October 8, 1981), known professionally as Jenova Chen, is a Chinese video game designer. He is the designer of the award-winning games Cloud, Flow, Flower, and Journey, and is co-founder of Thatgamecompany.
Chen is from Shanghai, where he earned a bachelor's degree in computer science with a minor in digital art and design. 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.
As Chen was born in a culture other than the culture he lives in, he tries to make games that appeal universally to all people. His goal with his games is to help video games mature as a medium by making games that inspire emotional responses in the player that other games are lacking. Although he and Thatgamecompany can and have made more traditional games, he does not plan on commercially developing any of them, as he does not think that it fits with their goals as an independent video game developer.
Biography
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, having previously worked on "one of the earliest giant computers in China". Although Chen was interested in art and drawing as a young child, his father influenced him towards computers, entering him in programming contests from when he was 10 years old. He found himself interested in video games that he saw there, but was not as enthusiastic about programming. While a teenager, he had deep emotional experiences with games that he played, including The Legend of Sword and Fairy, which he ascribes to the fact that he was not as exposed to books, films, or life events that other people would have had those experiences with. These experiences drove him to try to create those types of feelings in games as an adult, when more emotional maturity had caused his "standards to rise" in what would move him in a game. It was during high school that he chose the English name Jenova after a character in Final Fantasy VII, wanting a name that would be unique anywhere he used it as there were "thousands of Jason Chens".
He earned a degree in Computer Science & Engineering in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which due to his background in computers he found "quite easy", but describes himself as spending much of his time there teaching himself digital art and animation, and later did a minor in digital art and design at Donghua University. Still interested in video games, he was involved in making three video games as part of a student group while in school. Upon graduating, he had trouble finding a job in the Chinese video game industry that combined his interests of "engineering, art, and design", and additionally felt that "very few games [had] actually achieved those qualities that would be interesting to an adult". He also considered working in digital animation for films.
Chen went to the United States to earn a master's degree in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Chen studied in the Interactive Media Program, a new division of the School of Cinematic Arts. His intention at the time was to use the degree to get the kind of job he wanted back in China. At USC, he became inspired when he went to the Game Developers Conference, where he positively compared the games he had made in college with the student work present at the Independent Games Festival portion of the conference. While at USC he met Kellee Santiago, another student in the same program, and the two decided to work together on games that would be outside of the mainstream.