Words often fail us as a means of communication.
Take "awesome," for example. Today, we've diluted the term into an affirmation, a toothless term meaning something is "good" or "cool." But in its archaic sense, "awesome" evoked breathtaking magnitude, arousing fear and wonder in equal measure.
In part, I raise this point so that when I say the recent Playstation Network release "Journey" is awesome, you will understand what I mean. This is a transcendent experience, possibly the single greatest example of video game artistry to date. "Journey" has more in common with the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley or William Ernest Henley than with Super Mario, conjuring romantic images of days gone by and glorious places yet to be seen. It is an inherently literary experience.
However, where poems use words to elicit emotional response, "Journey" manages to forgo the former and still elicit the latter. The game casts the player as a solitary pilgrim wandering across a vast desert; a monolithic mountain in the distance is the only apparent destination. There are no stated objectives, no enemies to fight, and it can be "beaten" in just over an hour. To call it a game would be misleading.
Instead, the power of "Journey" stems from the uniquely personal—and utterly wordless—way in which it allows individuals to interact.
As players make their way along their pilgrimage, they may randomly come across others like them wandering the same golden sands. These two people can choose to travel together, but they cannot talk. Rather, they can only communicate by chirping a brief tonal song consisting of alternating short and long chirps—a kind of Morse code. This may seem limiting—and almost certainly seems pretentious—but it very deliberately circumvents some of the issues inherent in language itself.
As a general rule, I tend to avoid online multiplayer games. It's not that I dislike competition; anyone who has seen me play a game of "Super Smash Bros" can attest to that. Instead, my issue lies in the way the accepted structure of a multiplayer setting limits communication between the people playing the game and distances them from one another in the process.
In most multiplayers, players are paired at random, interacting for only a few brief minutes before never seeing each other again. This has a number of significant consequences. When you can't really get to know your competitors, it's easy to define them by superficial traits, creating stereotypes and enabling bias. Whenever I hear the telltale crack of a prepubescent voice over my headset during a round of "Call of Duty," I immediately assume that my competitor is an immature blowhard, and that when I die, he is most likely going to teabag my corpse. These constrained interactions enable a culture in which people say and do things they would be ashamed of in any other context.
In most games, communication breaks the diegetic experience, pulling players out of the world the game has created. War games like "Medal of Honor" or "Call of Duty," for example, should make their players feel like brothers-in-arms, squadmates indelibly bonded by the trials of war. When the voice in your headphones is clearly that of a 13-year-old, it is nearly impossible to ignore the reality that you are only playing a game. Allowing players to speak to each other only serves as a reminder of the medium's artifice.
By removing that option, "Journey" strips away any assumptions one might hold about the other player. Age, race, gender and nationality become unknowable. The character model for each pilgrim is identical, meaning every player is just like you. The only thing you know about your fellow wanderers is the common journey you share.
When "Journey" does allow players to communicate, it does so in a way that encourages camaraderie. By replacing words with tonal chirps, the game swaps out a verbal vocabulary for an emotional one. Where words can only describe a feeling, the game's musical cries are that feeling, enabling players to connect with each other much more directly. I have written before that games have the power to establish an empathetic link between a player and their avatar, but "Journey" goes a step further and connects individual players on a deeply personal level. The chirps can tell the other player, "come here," but they can also express something much more powerful. It feels, at times, as if the chirps allow you to embrace other players in the fullness of their humanity.
It could be argued that the most emotional part of "Journey" is when one is able to jump. Much of the game is defined by the constrained monotony of the pilgrimage through the desert; the steep incline of every dune is a struggle against gravity. Therefore, when the game allows you to laugh in the face of its rules and soar above the landscape, you feel as if you're bouncing on the face of the moon. The feeling is overwhelmingly euphoric.
Yet the ability to jump is limited; the song of another traveler is the only way to replenish it. No one can experience the rapturous bliss of jumping without coming together with another player. This mutual dependency forges bonds of intimacy not unlike a real-life relationship.
At one point during the game, I became so distraught over being separated from one of my companions I actually had to stop playing. There are no words that can describe such a powerful emotion.
In the end, though, isn't that the point?