Return

This final stage accounts for players’ return from the virtual world to reality (or, perhaps more tellingly, the acceptance of players that the virtual world is part of reality).

• Refusal of the return. The player has power, respect, friends, and peace. Why would they want to return to the real world?

• The magic flight. The live team will usually not want a player to leave, and may provide a compelling elder game to try to ensnare them. They don’t, however, want their boon back (or wouldn’t, if they had one in the first place) and the barriers they erect are of the temptation variety rather than the physical or emotional of common myth.

• Rescue from without. Your parents, your workmates, your significant other—“Stop spending so much time on that computer!”

• The crossing of the return threshold. The player finally separates from the virtual world. Contrary to what many players think, this rarely involves a “burn all your bridges” deletion of characters (that will typically happen in the atonement step). If it involves an account cancellation, it’s for practical rather than symbolic reasons. The player stops playing simply because they don’t need to play any more.

• Master of the two worlds. The player’s virtual and real self are the same. The player can return to the virtual world, but it’s a place like any other. It has lost its mythical significance (to that player).

• Freedom to live. Players can finally be themselves.

Apart from the problem with the boon, this all looks very neat and tidy. The very general nature of the hero’s journey, however, with its mythical and symbolic components, means that with a little imagination it can be applied to stylized sequences of action where perhaps it isn’t really appropriate ¹. To what extent is this true for its use concerning player development tracks?