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That Journey is an online game is mystery many players may never discover. The game itself never makes any such claims, and as a downloadable it arrives with no manual or instructions. Save for a subtle nod at the end of the game's credits (which many players may overlook or miss entirely), only reviews and interviews with the creators reveal a feature whose extensive design and engineering becomes the silent center of the game, the wind that moves it.

Sometimes while you play, the game will invisibly match you up with another PS3 owner who is also playing in the same environment. There's not much you can do with your companion--speech isn't possible, but touching one another refills the energy in the cloth of both characters' scarves. Pressing one of the controller buttons emits a ping that can help a player find his companion and, when used improvisationally, might allow basic signaling.  Only one companion appears at a time, although a player might encounter many over the course of the game.

These encounters with the other are both touching and disturbing. For one part, there is no mistaking a companion for an artificial intelligence; it moves too erratically, or speeds ahead to steal the next objective too definitively, or falls behind too listlessly. Even given the minimal actions of Journey, somehow these ghost players appear rounder than most of the scripted, voice-acted characters in contemporary videogames.

For another part, you don't really play with these other players. They are there with you, doing what you do, helping at times and hindering at others, plodding senselessly toward a mountain peak that has no meaning save for those imbued by a few foreboding, pregnant camera pans. You're comforted by their presence. It's like sitting on the couch close to someone, watching TV.A Portrait of the Artist as a Game Studio