Companionship Therapy – How ‘Journey’ and Its Players Helped Me With Depression
In my mid-twenties, I went through probably the toughest time of my life. I was stuck studying for a career I had no interest in, yet I had no idea what I wanted to do in life and felt pressured to get to a place that society and my parents had decided for me. Day-to-day life was a constant struggle that impacted my sleep for years. I tried to finish my degree and had no money to support myself. I was lacking joy and had no clear vision of my future. Looking back at it now, I realize I was going through depression, debilitating anxiety and burn-out. However, I learned to put on a facade of seeming strong and perfectly fine to my family and friends.
I was raised to believe that mental health issues are not real problems and you need to just get over it. It was hammered into my brain that I was simply lazy and stupid since I couldn’t get a degree and a job. So, I never got help, never went into therapy. I didn’t talk about how I felt to anyone and tried to simply crawl out of that dark place on my own.
Then came September 2013, a time when I decided to play a little indie game called Journey. I did not know much about the game, just that it was apparently visually stunning and had a unique multiplayer system. So I sat down and glided into the desert.
Journey and companionship
In Journey, you first enter an empty desert as a red robed figure. There is nothing to find but sand, gravestones, and the ruins of a long-gone civilization. All the structures are broken and there are no signs of life. Most notably, you’re completely alone. The sound of the wind and the grains of sand under your feet are the only things keeping you company. These isolated dunes and crumbling buildings reminded me of what I was going through, and the self-defeating thoughts in my head: that I was broken and lonely.
However, I kept going and soon ended up on a level with a broken bridge, which seemed to be the only way out of this place. I tried to fly to the first broken platform, but I couldn’t. My journeyer’s scarf was too short and I couldn’t fly high enough. I wasn’t strong enough to do it by myself. I looked around for something that could help, but then I saw a white glow in the corner of the screen. I heard a familiar sound in the distance, the same chirp that my little journeyer makes. To my surprise, another red robed journeyer appeared from behind a sand dune and ran towards me, chirping with what seemed like excitement. I chirped back and my new friend danced around me. From then on, we wordlessly decided to continue our journey together. My companion showed me how to grow my scarf and how to repair the bridge. I had no idea who this player behind the avatar was, yet I decided to trust them and follow. I was not alone anymore.
Journey has an unusual multiplayer system where matchmaking randomly pairs you up with another player from somewhere in the world. While it’s possible to take advantage of triggers and timing to meet up with someone specific, in the regular Journey experience you do not get to choose your companion. It is not region restricted either. In fact, in the years since, I’ve played with hundreds of people from all walks of life, of varying ages and from different countries like Finland, Japan, Germany, Russia, the United States, France and countless more.
But that’s okay, because the game offers no means of communicating with your companion via text or speech. You don’t need a shared language in order to cooperate, only the body language and chirps of your journeyer. Your companion has no name above their head either, so you can’t even guess where they’re from or what kind of person they are. The only identifying marker is a symbol on their chest and inside their chirp bubble, which helps you identify them in case you get disconnected from each other and later find each other again. Companionship in Journey is essentially anonymous until you get to the end of the credits for a revelation of their player ID.
When I reached the end credits of my first playthrough of Journey and wordlessly said goodbye to my first ever companion, I remember bursting into tears. I knew nothing about them, yet felt connected to them through our shared experience of this beautiful game.
Community and positivity
Needless to say, I was hooked from that very first journey. While the rest of my life remained in shambles around me, Journey became a safe place for me to escape within. Nobody in Journey knew me or what was going on in my life, so it became a way to run away from reality. I played Journey on Playstation 3 every day after that.
Slowly I started to realize that Journey and its players were different. Almost every multiplayer game community I’ve interacted with has been plagued by negativity and toxicity to at least some degree, with Journey being one massive exception. Never before had I gotten messages from other players, simply thanking me for playing with them and sharing in the experience of a journey. Eventually, another random companion guided me to the rest of the Journey community.
It all started out in the developer Thatgamecompany’s official discussion forums, where hundreds of players posted about their journeys, glitch discoveries, flying techniques and Youtube-videos. Players also discussed general things, like movies, books and what was going on in their lives. The forums sadly shut down years later, yet the community kept on going, creating a fan forum, a Journey wikipedia, as well as a thriving Discord-server. These efforts were made in order to preserve the wealth of knowledge that had accumulated about the game over the years, but also to remain connected to each other.
One of the most popular threads in the original forum, which would later be duplicated into the new forum and Discord server, was the “Thank you” thread. You would expect a short “Thanks” or “Let’s journey again sometime,” yet the Journey community took this a step further. Players wrote several paragraphs describing their journeys in detail, overflowing with warmth, positivity and even love for how another player made their journey special. I also received “Thank you” posts, showing appreciation for how I brightened up their day, which is something I did not expect. They would thank me for being patient and making their day a little bit better, when I personally felt it was the other way around. Soon it became a highlight of my day to read about these positive encounters that kept people coming back for more journeys.
Mentorship and learning to grow
To fully understand how Journey helped me grow as a person and to deal with depression, specifically the part that makes you feel useless, you need to appreciate the dynamics of partnership in the game. When I started playing, I knew nothing. I was able to walk and sort of flap around in the air for a few seconds. The only antagonistic creatures in the game, the war machines, were scary to me and I would creep around corners to avoid them. I blindly followed my companions like a little baby bird and they happily showed me the way. My companions gave me the courage to jump into the unknown vastness of out of bounds areas, staying by my side and guiding me through what felt like mazes of inescapable traps, darkness, and bottomless pits. My companions spent hours with me, patiently teaching me flying tricks without any means of verbal or written communication. They taught me that the war machines were playful creatures once you learned their behavior, and manipulated their mechanics and triggers. Most importantly, my Journey mentors showed me it was ok to make mistakes and that failing to do a flying technique or a glitch did not mean the journey was ruined.
With time, I got the confidence to explore the out of bounds areas on my own. I received by white robe and learned to fly higher and faster, getting past invisible walls and obstacles. I figured out routes past wind traps and level triggers. I even found new glitches nobody had seen before. Eventually, I started playing with companions who were less experienced and it was my turn to show them things I had discovered and found interesting. In other words, I developed from an inexperienced pupil to a confident and trustworthy teacher. I became a mentor and taught these new journeyers what I had been taught by the ones before me.
With that in-game confidence, daily companionship and the positivity of the Journey community, I actually started feeling better about myself and about my life outside the game.
It’s about the journey, not the destination
The saying “Life is a journey, not a destination” is a cliché, but in this case, it rings true for me. For most of my life I have been told to focus on a goal, my destination: where will I live, what kind of work will I do, what will my future husband be like, how many kids will I have. Nobody had told me to take the time to discover who I am, what I’m good at or what I enjoy in life. Journey players taught me how to relax, take my time and explore those aspects and to enjoy something again, instead of rushing to the end goal.
An average playthrough of Journey will last about an hour. But with the right companion, that hour can turn into three, six, or even twelve. My companions wordlessly told me to take a breath, have a break and enjoy the scenery. I mean this quite literally; I often sat with a companion at some high point of a level, simply taking in the view and listening to the layers of sounds. I’m still astonished at the patience of Journey players and how the gameplay becomes secondary at times when sharing the game with others in the community. I know of a Journey player who would sit next to their friend in-game to help them feel safe and fall asleep at night. Others will wait hours for a companion who has to step away from the game for various reasons, like family emergencies, only to return and find their companion still there, keeping them company.
In fact, Journey players will often find creative ways to use that downtime, like nudging their companion to a place with a better view or to a desert flower to give them a crown of petals. Another common behavior is to wrap their companion up with their long scarf to keep them warm while waiting. This is something you don’t often see in other games, as they’re usually task or goal oriented by design. Players are happy to simply be with another person.
Companions met along the way
In life, we meet so many people and don’t necessarily realize it. Some briefly, some stick around for a long time. They all still have some effect on us and help us grow. The players of Journey showed me it’s not about the goal or reaching the end of the game, but the journey and the people you meet along the way. I wish I had the time to tell stories of all the companions I’ve met thanks to Journey and how those people impacted my life. I would like to highlight, however, that several became dear friends and gave me the courage to make massive life changes. They helped me climb out of the hole of depression I was stuck in. They helped me through my first panic attack. Thanks to their years of support, I was able to change career paths and finish my studies. Essentially, they helped me keep going when I could have given up, all through a seemingly simple video game.
Years later, I understood that Journey and its community had collectively become my support group and helped me through the struggles of depression. My companions were my therapists. While I might never meet them in person, there are multiple Journey players out there who I would like to thank, if ever given the chance, for saving my life.
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