This winter break my girlfriend started playing Stardew Valley a farm-simulation + RPG combo that I've purposely kept my distance from because of how addicting it appeared. I have so many takeaways from observing how she and her brother play this game but in this post I examine the journey is the destination axiom.

Since her brother has been playing this game for years, his farm is much further ahead. There has been many dozens of hours put into this game, growing digital vegetables, forming and maintaining digital relationships, and other digital activities to get to where he's at.

Going by the visual outcome of all this effort what you would see is just a large pixel-art farm. If you were to ask this same gamer to exert the same amount of hours using a pixel-art drawing software to recreate that same art they would most likely decline. The important thing to them isn't the literal outcome of the digital farm, but rather the little tasks and milestones they achieved along the way.

I find this to be an easily observable example of the journey being the destination. I also think that video games pull off some of the most effective implementations of such phenomenon.