Life is a Journey

I was in the middle of writing a post about how Nintendo abandoned the audience that they've spent years making wonderful, meaningful games for to cash in on less-than-successful shovelware titles and rehashes when I had to stop suddenly to write this. I had to stop because my female friend, who was sitting directly behind me, just finished the game Journey for the first time.

Journey, a wonderful and beautifully constructed game by thatgamecompany (who also produced the games flOw and Flower), is more of an experience than a game, but presents that experience to you through its gameplay, which is something that many game developers seem to have a hard time capturing. Either the game lacks immersion, the gameplay is stale and detracts from the experience or the game falls short in both categories. Journey has simple controls and a well presented goal that make it easy to get into the game early on, which is good considering this game should only take you one or two hours to complete the first time. The main goal of the designers was to tell a story, which, in my opinion, should be the goal of any game designer, script write, author or artist.

The story that you're experiencing should be an integral part of a game, but that being said, a video game shouldn't need to take time out of the gameplay to progress the plot, and if it does, it should do so as briefly as possible to help maintain the immersion. Super Mario Bros., for instance, takes the time to show a brief cutscene before underground portions of the game and an even briefer bit of dialogue at the end of each castle to inform you that your adventure must continue to reach your final goal. Journey follows a similar pattern and only gives you a brief cutscene at the end of each section that explains a little more than your silent protagonist's travels could. Game designers need to be aware that most people who play their games aren't doing so to reach each cutscene or read every in-game novel they've written (I'm looking at you The Elder Scrolls series). There are other forms of media readily available to satiate our desires for written and visual entertainment. The ability to progress the story yourself is what creates the strong sense of immersion unique to video games. There may only be one direction to go on the map, but you get to decide to go there, you don't have to watch someone else do it. This is why people play video games, to feel like they're experiencing their own story.

She didn't make a sound the entire time she progressed through the game; didn't talk, didn't get up, nothing. In case you were unaware, Journey has a feature that allows someone else playing the game to randomly appear in yours and, as long as you don't lose sight of eachother, you can continue progressing through the game with them. So, very early in the game, she had someone show up in her game and help guide her through. Literally feet from the terminating point of the game, the other palyer stopped and started running around in circles. After 30 or so seconds had ellapsed, they stopped and started chirping (the circle button in this game allows you to make a chirping sound and is used by players to get their attention) at her. This was the point when I walked over to see how she was doing. She didn't know what he was trying to tell her, so I suggested she turn the camera to get a better look at where he had been running. When she rotated the camera you could see that they had used the path created by their character running in the sand to draw a small mural for her. Multiple hearts, some with arrows through them littered the ground around them. She immediately wanted to know if there was any way that she could contact this unknown person to say thank you. Luckily, the game lists the players you met along your Journey after the end credits of the game, so I let her send a message through the Playstation Network.

Now, I've beaten this game several several times, so the magic has worn off a little for me, but the end of this game still stirs up my emotions and fills me with a strong sense of accomplishment. I had never seen anyone do something like this before, however, and it made the game's ending that much more amazing. The fact that so much could be communicated with so little gives me hope for the future of video games, because that's what video games are all about in my eyes. Giving you the tools and letting you create your own experience, even if there is only one way to go.

The Video:

A good picture of one of the hearts: