Comments on: What is immersion

By: Do Violent Video Games Actually Teach Us to be Peace-loving? | Harlots Sauce

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:32:46 +0000

[...] the most valuable, and possibly considered by some to be the most dangerous aspect of gaming is immersion. And that’s because immersion into a medium has the potential to teach us to think differently, [...]

By: Tesh

Tesh — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:19:36 +0000

Speaking of Braid and the “metagamish” rewind function (also in Prince of Persia, Sands of Time), I’m idly wondering what role the “fourth wall” has in immersion.

By: Tarsus

Tarsus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:25:41 +0000

The thing I think is missing from WoW (and most MMOs) is any kind of toolbox for telling stories. I mean, given the limitations on what players can do, the immersion you get in WoW really never gets beyond an advanced chat program. I might as well play D&D via mIRC, there are no images to distract from imagination and the person running a plot has a lot more control of how to tell their story.

Not having a “storyteller” for roleplaying is bad news for other reasons IMO. Invariably what happens is that certain players will take it upon themselves to take on the role of the storyteller for their character. And down that path lies the indulgence of pregnant half-demon elf vampire cat girls.

By: spinks

spinks — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:11:23 +0000

That’s a good point. I guess it makes sense that players mostly want to run around and kill things, so the most immersive games are those which are about running around and killing things.

But maybe with smaller, more controlled types of games, with limited scope. We probably already are seeing these types of game (I’m looking forwards to trying out Braid when it comes out for the PC, for example, because I keep reading about how immersive it is).

But there’s got to be something more we can do than just giving all the abilities really evocative names (LOTRO does this a lot).

By: Tesh

Tesh — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 04:18:26 +0000

One trouble with mechanical immersion is that it often requires giving players power over their characters and over the world. That’s awesome when it works, but oh, so fraught with griefing and abuse potential. I’ve long thought it’s worth exploring, but it’s wild territory when dealing with internet denizens.

By: Ysharros

Ysharros — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:31:27 +0000

“(traditionally often accompanied by wigging out on your friends and trying to shoot them but that might just have been our games)”

Oh no, that wasn’t just your games. It’s traditional CoC — and the more the characters have tried to remain sane, the worse the wigging will be.

I still remember on poor bastard moving to Denver after his FIRST brush with … oh, probably something horrible in Innsmouth, because he discovered that Denver is about as far from the sea as you can get and promptly moved there.

In RPGs, immersion is also (among other things) what happens when your characters start behaving as themselves rather than the way the player thinks they would; it’s huge fun, but it can be a little surprising (as with the Denver-moving chap above). It also happens when you’re writing fiction, but that’s not usually a multi-player activity.