‘I was born for this’: Perspectivas sobre el storytelling (ludo)musical a través del videojuego Journey (thatgamecompany, 2012)

Abstract

As ergodic texts, videogames have introduced new ways of creating, narrating, and experiencing both new and old tales, redefining the limits of textuality by offering their users a varying grade of creative agency over the final ludic product. The inherent interactivity of the medium causes the semiotic chain within videogames to become a circular one, where the player assumes the triple role of listener, transmitter, and co-creator of the game’s original soundtrack, thus determining the final meanings realized through its synchresis with the visual and affective dimensions during the ludic experience. The transient and ever-changing nature of semiotic processes in videogames necessarily complicates the communicative functions of music within the medium, posing interesting questions relating to how can music effectively contribute to the ludic narrative. Taking this into account, this paper builds from the semiotic levels identified by Hart (2014, 2021) and makes use of Mouraviev’s synchretic network (2017) to reveal the many particularities that inform (ludo)musical storytelling in Journey (thatgamecompany, 2012), a game with no texts or dialogues, where music becomes the cornerstone over which a whole spiritual catharsis based on Campbell’s (1949) monomyth is constructed.