Video Games at a More Peaceful Frequency: Caio Jiacomini and Sky: Children of Light

Any notion that all video games are alike is thrashed by a single play of Sky: Children of the Light. Offered by Thatgamecompany in their pursuit of radically unique and positive gaming experiences, this is a social MMO whose open world exploration prompts empathy and the holistic connection of all living things. Awarded Apple's iPhone Game of the Year in 2019, Sky (as it's popularly known) has received numerous awards, high ranks from industry pillars like GameSpot and Game Informer, and holds two Guinness World Records. Over 270 million downloads confirms this game is also a tremendous hit with the gamers themselves.

With the U.S., China, and Japan holding the highest number of players of Sky, there is clear proof of a desire to put cultural and political differences behind the greater goal of creating a more positive world, even if it exists online. Rather than rewarding kills or theft of pricey objects, Sky: Children of the Light uses a barter system heavily reliant on "hearts" and candles. Players use magic capes to float around and explore. From intent to implementation, Sky: Children of the Light is unique in every way and challenges the ubiquity of violent gaming. As a live service game, Sky offers new possibilities to users each season (roughly, every 3 months).

The aesthetics of Sky are captivating, as are its sonic attributes. Boasting a soundtrack that includes FAME's Macedonian Symphonic Orchestra and vocal talents like that of Aurora (Frozen 2, Chemical Brothers, Hans Zimmer), the game takes great pains to make every aspect singularly identifiable with its character. Audio designer Caio Jiacomini considers it the realization of a dream to be invited to join the team of Sky. Designing new sound effects for the game (including recording and synthesizing new material from scratch) and implementing interactive audio behaviours, Caio has a strong fingerprint on the soundscape of Sky. One example of this sonic world building is found in Caio's design for the hidden underground sanctuary in the Season of the Two Embers in which the main character attempts to rescue a light manatee who has been caged.

Jiacomini states, "I believe music is the most abstract art form humans ever created, so to contrast the more realistic aesthetic of the rest of the ambiences for the season, I wanted to make the sanctuary feel musical. I thought about how to create an ambience that felt musical but still felt real and natural, and how to 'justify' the fiction. The closest thing we have to naturally occurring music (as in, without any human or animal intervention) is when wind is blowing against a small hole or crevice—depending on the circumstances that can produce a musical note. I took a recording of the sound of wind, filtered it to extract a clear pitch from it, and threw that recording into a sampler that allowed me to play that wind sound with my keyboard. I started improvising to generate ideas and settled on this constant drone note paired with a very slow and steady melodic line that's perceived more as atmosphere than as a melody. That gave me something that felt really reverent and magical but still grounded in reality."

Manipulating the pitch of wind sounds, Caio crafted an ethereal tone showing glimpses of hope amidst the darkness that the Season of the Two Embers portrays.

A prominent aspect of Sky is that there's no use of spoken language or human voices. While likely a key to its international cross-cultural popularity, this also made the demands on the audio department far more complex when that was turned into its head for the Season of the Two Embers. During the season, players travel 500 years into the past, where they get to see the spirits that populate the world of Sky as people made out of flesh and bone. The bustling urban environment of that season contrasts the sparse and idyllic landscapes of the rest of the game, and a good part of that contrast is communicated through the crowd sounds and human vocalizations present throughout the season.

Caio describes his solution to attaining a large crowd sound. "We needed material that both didn't convey any one language strongly and had a range of expressions. The only way to really pull this off is to record custom sounds, so that's what we did. We are also a fully remote company so gathering a lot of people in a single space is not easy. Luckily the game design team was having an onsite in LA that we were able to tap into to record a lot of bespoke sounds. Our audio lead, Ritsu Mizutani, is the only member of the audio team who lives in LA, so I worked closely with him to draft a plan and a script for the recording and asked him to record both as many people he could gather as a group but also do individual recordings with people to allow us flexibility with the implementation. We recorded everyone vocalizing four emotions, one for each gameplay state for each quest: happy and cordial vocalizations for quest 1; sneezes, coughs, and annoyed grumbles for the rain in quest 2; screams of terror for quest 3; and whimpers, cries, and extra screams of fright for quest 4. I also supplemented these with my own recordings of myself, my girlfriend, and a neighbor," states Jiacomini.

Supplementing these bespoke utterances with minor elements from sound libraries, Caio carefully edited out anything that might be recognizable as a language known to players, regardless of the country they are living in. The final result is a moment where emotion shines through without the need for language.

One of the most affirming moments of Caio's work on Sky occurred when the Jellyfish Dance Emote became a viral hit on TikTok and other platforms. For the Season of Migration, he was responsible for designing sound for all of the new emotes. When content creators began posting videos of their characters doing this dance. It gained international attention.

The goal of the gamemakers of Sky is to bring strangers together and provide meaningful moments of connection with fellow human beings, with opportunities for social interaction designed to bring the best out of us. This cannot be achieved by replicating the status quo of gaming, it requires rethinking and restructuring. Thatgamecompany has created something that directs players of Sky to navigate a different path; one that is both kinder and still intriguing. For those who have not played it yet, Sky: Children of the Light will almost certainly be the most relaxing gaming experience you've ever had.