Immersion

[J T]

Immersion

This seems to have become a popular buzzword among game designers lately. More and more people are trying to create games where you essentially lose yourself in the imaginary world of the videogame. It's not clear what the magic ingredient is to make a game an immersive experience though.

Certainly the discussion on the topic has been more prevalent in recent times because of the graphical and auditory realism possible in modern games. Realism can amp up a games ability to immerse you in its world. In fact, what prompted me to create this thread was playing the very realistic Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare recently. When I turned the game off and stood up, I felt like I had just woken up. My real world surroundings suddenly came back into focus, but it was as if they hadn't been there the whole time I was playing. I felt like I had just walked into the room even though I had been there for hours. This made me realize just how immersed I had been in the game. Call of Duty has a lot of nice tricks to do this. Aside from the realistic graphics and sound. The world is very busy. Jets and choppers fly overhead, even though not part of the current gameplay, making you feel like a world exists outside of your linear run through a level. People can be overheard talking off to the side with panned stereoscopic sound. There are remnants of various things strewn across the land (abandoned houses, exploded cars, promotional posters) that suggest stories that's are not part of your story. Many games make it appear that you are the only person that matters in the game, but in some ways, making the gamer feel like they are not the only important person in the fictional world is part of what makes the experience more immersive. Additionally, once you get used to the controls of the game, there is a kind of flow you can get into as well: find cover, fire, move... find cover fire, move... I think flow is a separate, but related concept to immersion. If you can lock the player into a flow state, they lose sight of the real world and they get even more sucked into the game world.

Yet, it seems to me that realism is only one possible route to immersion, and not one that always works, either. I have played realistic games that were simply boring and it was all too apparent that they were games, in part because of the uncanny valley and in part because the game design just isn't fun enough to really draw you in. Also, us retro gamers know that you can be immersed in games that don't look anything like real life. As a kid, I got every bit as immersed in Ninja Gaiden or Final Fantasy as I do now in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. So what's the secret to immersion? How does it happen? What are the elements that define immersion? I'm wondering what your thoughts are.

[Anubis]

I think that you've already said what the most important thing to immersion is. Flow. Good game design flows naturally. You get sucked into a world that is continues smoothly. Whenever a story or game play is choppy or broken, you can feel it. It's a reminder that you are controlling a character that doesn't operate how you want it to. A game that flows properly makes you forget that you aren't that character. The in game character becomes a literal personification of the player.

[MrPopo]

In my mind it is hard to define what will immerse you in a game. It is much easier to describe what will break that. The first on my mind is controls. A good control scheme will feel very natural and responsive. It should be to the point that if I want Mario to jump I mostly think about Mario jumping and my hands move on their own to do it. If I have to think through the steps it breaks it back to a mechanical task and breaks the immersion.

Next in my mind is something that really didn't appear until the advent of the 3D games. This is clipping and its related issues (such as camera controls). Bounding box math is trivial for sprites, but once you add in the 3D world the math becomes much more complex. And to be fair to developers, somethings (like hair) can put them between a rock and a hard place. Do they allow hair to clip through a character's body or do they force it to always stay on top and look just as unnatural? And then there's the associated camera issues with 3rd person games and moving your avatar against a wall. You have to walk that fine line where you allow the camera to still be usable (no massive zoom to the top of the head) but also not reveal the fact that this is a video game (yay for moving behind the wall but now you can see interesting parts of the geometry that are normally hidden).

Poorly done tutorials are another thing that can break immersion. During the 16-bit era many Nintendo games that included tutorials would do them in a humorous way that involved some good fourth-wall breaking (picture in your mind a B button, now hold that to dash). That kind of self-awareness manages to keep you engaged and invested in what's going on on-screen, just like when it happens in live mediums such as the theater. Heck, you can even have a tutorial where the in game characters tell you to "Use" the switch on the wall, which you easily interpret as hitting the A button. Conversely, forced tutorials where they reference button commands seriously tends to pull me away and remind me that I'm playing a video game.

[Hobie-wan]

Having lots of little details draws me in. Even with all the monster closet action, Doom 3 managed to make me jump a few times. Though the game I lost myself in the most so far is Mirror's Edge. I think it did a wonderful job of making things first person when doing most of the outdoor parkour bits. I had a lot of 'shitshitshit... Whew!' moments and I think the good variation of shoe squeaks, scuff sounds, and especially grunts from Faith really worked well. Course then 4 or 5 jerks with machine guns would shoot my ass dead over and over and break the immersion.

[(-_-)]

Realism is indeed one route to immersion, but I kind of wish that route would be abandoned for a little while. The more realistic something is, the more likely I am to pick out visuals that break this immersion. When a game relies entirely on it's ability to seem real through visuals, I start to notice aliasing, low resolutions, pop in, flat environments, and the geometry of objects. If the gameplay is fantastic, I can completely forget about all of this. I feel that Rez is an example of an immersive game. I can completely forget where I am, what I'm doing, or the fact that I'm playing a game for that matter by the surreal visuals and sound alone. The gameplay of rythm and sound draws you in enough to keep your focus off of whatever else is around you.

[Gamerforlife]

I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but the idea of immersion in video games is laughable. Seriously. What happens if someone shoots you in a Call of Duty game? Or most shooters for that matter? Do you suffer a serious injury? Do you lose use of your arm? Do you start limping? Or do you die because you got hit in the head?

The answer to all of these questions is no. Pretty much nothing happens, you take some "damage" as oppossed to an injury or fatality and you just keep playing like nothing happens. If you take too much "damage", then you hide behind something until your character decides to stop being a wuss and is then able to get back in the fight and absorb some more bullets. Most video games effectively make you the Terminator. Bullets don't phase me. I laugh in their general direction. Because it's a video game and it's not even remotely realistic

Some of the my favorite games at least make an attempt to be realistic. I love Sci Fi shooters because your character is wearing some sort of futuristic armor, so I can buy that he can run and gun through a battle and not die or suffer any real injury from all those bullets that hit him. Games like Mass Effect and the original Halo come to mind(well it's true of all the Halos, but I lost interest after the first one). I was also a big fan of King Kong, because any attack that connected brought you near death's door, with blurry vision, heavy breathing and the far off sounding voices of your NPC allies who were freaking out about that hit you just took. I felt mortal in that game, I felt REAL.

This is key for me to be immersed in a game. You can't do anything that reminds me that I'm playing a game. Not having any sort of HUD or onscreen info also helps, another thing that King Kong did. If there is a score on the screen somewhere, a health bar or a counter of some kind(for those silly collectibles so many games have now), immersion lost.

Truthfully, I don't even really look for immersion when I play games anymore. It's a wonderful surprise when I find a game that really does immerse me, but it's rare. As long as video games want to keep playing around in their silly, unrealistic worlds where everyone is essentially a super hero, and there are strange things plastered on my screen, and strange conveniently placed objects everywhere(like the constant red barrels in shooters)they CAN NOT be immersive.

One reason I love Team Ico is that their games do the immersion thing well. No onscreen info or HUD and nothing you see seems to go beyond what a person would realistically be able to accomplish or withstand. Well, you could survive falling off of giants in Shadow of the Colossus, but only on the default difficulty. Even save points seemlessly blend into the environment, rather than being some big fancy object that sticks out like a sore thumb like most games.

Another reason most games today are not immersive, how many times do you have to stare at the words now loading in most games today? Immersion lost

I WISH games could be more immersive, but truthfully 90% of what's out there is not even remotely immersive

[jfe2]

I get pretty immersed in Dragon Age. I seriously lose track of time when I play it.

Also, I tried to get the "Wax Off" achievement on Geometry Wars 2 last night, and blew through an hour before I knew it! It may not be realistic, but the "flow" of the gameplay totally sucked me in. I had that same feeling of walking into a new room although I had been sitting there for an hour.

[Weekend_Warrior]

Intelligent AI will do it for me. The better the AI, the more I'm going to feel a part of the game

[Curlypaul]

Good question - what exactly does make me feel immersed? For me I think there are 2 routes, the first being attention to detail to create a consistent and beleivable world. Realism does nothing for me, I'm talking about details character back stories and sub plots and such that we see in RPG's. TP was particulary immersive from me, I just couldnt stop playing.

The other route to immersion for me lies in much simpler games, mainly schumps and fighters that I can just zone out on. I found I was much better at Geometry wars when I relaxed and didnt think to hard about what I was doing, just let it flow and get in the zone.

[Luke]

I'll take some heat for this, but I get immersed even in Missile Command. I thought most of played games notonly because they are very entertaining, but also to relax and "zone out" a little.

I know I'm in the minority here when it comes to loving sports games, but when I play Madden, it does feel like I'm the quarterback. On defense, I am the rolb. Same with NHL games, the game responds like I'm playing the game.

Also, like Hobie stated, the little attentions to tiny details really equal more than the sum of their parts. I played a little Twilight Princess last night, and at one point in the game, I just stared off into the sky, appreciating the environment of Hyrule. The clouds moving at a natural pace, birds flying over head, sometimes a butterfly hovers above the camera view. I love that stuff.