The Hero's Journey (or monomyth) is a narrative template identified by Joseph Campbell: an ordinary person receives a call to adventure, crosses into an unfamiliar world, faces trials, undergoes transformation, and returns home changed. Games map onto this structure almost too naturally -- the tutorial is the ordinary world, the inciting incident is the call, the midgame is the road of trials, the final boss is the ordeal, and the ending is the return. What makes games unique is that the player doesn't just watch the hero's transformation -- they experience the skill growth and emotional arc themselves. The structure works because it mirrors the psychological process of learning and mastery that gameplay itself embodies.