It seems like 3/4 of the posts around here are someone saying "let's do this or that for immersion". I'm amazed at how often that word comes up here, although my perception may be skewed and it may just be a handful of people who tend to post a lot.
At any rate, it appears people are thinking the game can be made in such a way that they forget they are playing a game while playing it. Am I right or am I not understanding this. I have played quite a fair number of games in my life and cannot recall a time I ever was "immersed" to the point of forgetting I was playing a game.
The thought of "immersion" never entered into my mind as a reason for me to support this game (it still isn't a reason, obviously).
Do people really have memories of playing EQ or FF11 and forgetting they are playing a game or am I not understanding this whole "immersion" thing.
I'm asking because I see people lobbying for game mechanics that make things tedious or inconvenient for the sake of "immersion", and I'd like to think I'm open to others' ideas (although Occam's razor = good, tedium and inconvenience without a real good reason for tedium and inconvenience = bad).
So if anyone is willing to explain to me exactly what MMO "immersion" is I'd be eager to know.
(BTW, this question was spawned by someone in another thread wanting NPC merchants to not be available during store closed type hours which I find to be an utterly bizarre request, so that's why I'm asking.)
To me, it just means the world is internally consistent. That means NPC dialogue doesn't refer to the real world, the UI doesn't have RL advertisements, that sort of thing.
First person vs. third person also has an impact, imo. Third person creates less of an immersive experience of "being there" but is often tactically unwise in a 3D game. (you are backstabbed for 10x critical damage, ha ha, first person player!)
I have never forgotten I'm playing a game, but I do have memories of exploring areas like Lower Guk in 1999/2000 that no-other game has ever replicated. That has less to do with immersion and more to do with shared risk, I think. Especially in the bad-old-days of naked corpse runs. :|
I am a big proponent of the "right amount" of convenience. Many players present immersion/convenience arguments in black and white when really, the ideal implementation is in the chasm of grey between the intractable positions of black and white.
An excellent example of this is today on TLP servers in EQ, you don't have to retrieve your corpse for loot. You don't have to run back naked from Freeport to Lower Guk and burn an hour+ on corpse retrieval because one person went LD on a bad connection. You simply drag your corpse for a rez to get back some XP or not. Most people I've observed in my recent return to EQ simply accept the death penalty as a consequence of their or the groups mistakes and get back to playing. Less tedium, more fun. They're still penalized and death is to be avoided yet they're just not punished to the point where they want to logout and never play again from a single death. (which is what some people would implement if they had their way)
EDIT: On the topic of NPC merchants sleeping. No, just no. Shroud has this and it's horrible. Do it like Ember does. They sleep, but you can wake them up. Add in a slight CHA modifier check for prices based on a grouchy merchant, and that's fine, from my perspective.
Immersion will mean different things to diferent people. To me it is simply something in game that is totally out of place, something that takes away from the overall concept/fantasy of the game.
While we may not be sucked into a virtual reality type existance, we are often taken in and join with the world around our characters. I have many times caught myself leaning into my monitor to look around a blind corner, or my favorite for being immersed is jumping off a high cliff, and my stomach really reacts for a second.
What many don't want is that sudden kick, like walking through a small village, you see a blacksmith, some kids playing with sticks, a farmer repairing his tools, then all of a sudden you see a neon tavern sign, or a baby dragon tied up to a hitching post like a horse, or a player runs by with a purple fuzzy bunny following along. :P
vjek said:I have never forgotten I'm playing a game, but I do have memories of exploring areas like Lower Guk in 1999/2000 that no-other game has ever replicated. That has less to do with immersion and more to do with shared risk, I think. Especially in the bad-old-days of naked corpse runs. :|
Ok, this I do get. I've mentioned before that "game difficulty" (and we can discuss what that means to different people) is one of the big reasons I'm supporting this game. I guess I just never would think to use the term "immersion" for that (which you acknowledge). I like the feeling of knowing the bad guys are stronger than each of us is individually, so we have to figure out how to work together to beat them, even one at a time.
Fairchild said: my personal opinion is that you start playing, look at the clock and its 7pm then the next time it's 2am and you have no idea where the time went. /shrug
This is a great way of explaining it. I think if all the right elements are in place you are able to "escape" from your local surroundings and "immerse" yourself in the game. This is exactly what happens when you look up and 6 hours have gone by.
What defiines the right elements? I think that depends on the person.
I can't say I have ever forgotten that I was playing a game, but I do have a ton of in game memories that seem as thou I was in another world.
To me immersion is anything that makes you feel like this "could" be a real world within the context of the intended design, that includes mechanics interactions between player/npc, danger, risk/reward, faction, day/night cycles, etc, etc.
From playing MMO's this long and trying to see the bigger picture beyond just what I want, I think I look at immersion as something I want....to a point. I'm sure alot of us would love a Matrix style neuro hookup that would completely put us into this new world as far as what our brain understands. But, the reality is, we don't have this ability and many do not want to be that tightly connected to the world we play in. So any time we talk mechanics to try and build immersion, we should think how that impacts the community as a whole. It would be very immersive and realistic in general if we had to eat, sleep defficate, spend a huge amount of time walking to and from town to do whatever we need to, but that does not mean I want to spend my valued time doing it. It's all about balance between what valued immersiveness and what is just going to be a headache for the masses. Some headaches are a good thing such as limiting the speed or travil, some type of death penalty, but others just are not really worth it imho....pick your battles, or you end up fighting alone.
I think immersion can be explained more easily and universally by examples and counterexamples. However, if I had to respond in a single statement it would be that immersion isn't when you forget you're playing a game, it's when you stop consciously thinking about the real world.
Examples:
You are playing a FPS and during the height of tension when you are the last player standing and peaking around a corner. It would probably not occur to you in that moment that you actually have to pee really really bad. That's being immersed in the experience.
You are watching a cutscene of an NPC receiving a lost artifact that you have reclaimed from a pack of vicious ogres. You worked really hard on this quest and are hanging on the moment to see the emotional and grateful response. You probably wouldn't think "oh, I should check my twitter feed right now, cus this is boring". That's another form of immersion.
Counterexamples:
Imagine you are playing a lord of the rings game and an npc ranger clad in all pink fur runs along and says "Sauron will return and bring us all kittens!". At the point where you lean back in your chair, think "ummmm, what the heck?" and shake your head... that is when immersion is broken.
You are playing your favorite MMO and your party is nearing the end of a hard fought dungeon crawl with the named mob you want to kill in sight. You're clearing the last trash pack when inexplicably your groupmates start dying one by one. It turns out your healer has crashed out of the game and now you need to restart. Immersion is once again broken.
You can come up with an infinite number of ways to break immersion and no matter how well a game is developed your immersion will sometimes be broken, but when a developer is able to create a series of internally consistent experiences then you have a chance to get sucked into the wonder of it all.
Fairchild said:Sometimes I do wonder if everyone is on the same page or has the same idea what Immersion is, my personal opinion is that you start playing, look at the clock and its 7pm then the next time it's 2am and you have no idea where the time went. /shrug
That's probably the most accurate, literal description of what true immersion is. I can get immersed in the app game Marvel Puzzle Quest and find myself lost for two hours not realizing it. In essence, immersion is how long your enjoyment of something keeps you occupied and entertained.
But I find that others equate immersion with imagination, but they're not really synonyms. That explains why some people think its "immersion-breaking" that (as an example from EQ1) an NPC stands outside his house in one spot 24/7 to act as a vendor. If a person sees that NPC, gets annoyed by it, but still plays for three more hours not realizing that amount of time has passed, then it really hasn't broken that person's immersion. It's just spoiled a bit of their in-character idea of what the game should be.
However, the power of each individual's imagination can work far greater than any mechanic put in a game. If I approach that NPC I mentioned before at in-game midnight, I can pretend that he had been asleep but heard me coming and came outside to his post. Or I knocked on the door and he came outside. Anything can be explained away (even a PC naming himself PKer001) if your imagination is strong enough. It's exactly like playing a pen-and-paper role-playing game. Nobody gets upset because you don't actually travel into a dungeon, or you don't have real swords or shields in your hand, or you don't have actual trolls and goblins in your living room. The greater your imagination, the more real the story becomes.
Glad and interested that challenge was mentioned.
I do think that the level of challenge has a direct impact on immersion in a game. In a game so trivial you can set your cat to sprawl over your warm keyboard to finish the dungeon boss fight while you check what's on TV, watch a YouTube video and play 'which armpit smells worse - left or right?' ... immersion is almost non-existent.
It sort of follows, therefore, that challenge enough to have you leaning forwards and focused is immersive. Or, at least, a component of what makes it so!
PS
No cats were harmed in the playing of 'Cat Buckeroo' during WoW boss fights. Probably.
If you have not played 'Cat Buckeroo', you have not lived! Go google it now! Go on!!
I never played XI and forgot it wasnt a game. It was great fun to be sure. And there are plenety of games that I got "lost" in and forgot about the time. But I could attribute that to the game being fun and interesting more so than immersive. I dont think a certain level of immersion is bad thing, but in my opinion it should never be at the expense of sound game mechanics.
For me personally:
Mechanics > Social > Immersion > Graphics/Sound.
And of course I prefer the Nintendo way of development. Make it Fun first and build everything else around that. If in that process, you can manage to get those other four areas to be really great then that is awesome. Just as making something extremely social accomplishes nothing if you break the game mechanically. Like allowing any size zerg to take on any content and then bypass the intended challege of the content. But as you said above making something "immersive" for the sake of bing immersive is in my opinion a terrible design decision if it accomplishes nothing but tedium. On the other hand if it ties into the game in such a way that is fun and interesting then great lets do that.
Immersion is taken by everyone differently. I need music, storyline, game depth and the desire to play the game. That goes into the game itself. How does it look and feel? Is movement smooth? Is combat smooth? Is crafting and system robust enough to keep me interested and engaged. Questing and group play all have to be features that are rewarding emotionally get you involved. Does the game follow the lore?
If the game is designed well all the above will fit into the immersion category. I think for me the number one thing is a sound and music. That needs to be spot on. Game depth next and that is a huge ask but if it isn’t there I will step away. To many games are hollow and have just enough to keep people baited in the hope the content will get better. In some case the DLC and shady developer practices break this and then the game.
I think the main thing is to look at a game like a good book or movie. For me the book option falls into play. I like to build my characters and follow the Lore of a game. Most of the time this falls flat for me. The character development and interactions with other players is a huge factor here. Its what you as the player see it and feel it.
Ox
I use this word probably more than anyone on these forums... My definition is:
When you are playing a game so intently that you literally get the sensation you are existing inside that world. It is usually an perfect blend of music, sounds, artistic graphics effects that combine with your emotions and senses to lock you into the gaming situation.
So in a basic sense, immersion is measured by how far the game can suck you inside it's world and how long it can keep you there, forgetting you are actually sitting in a chair starring at a PC screen.
Immersion is simply the suspension of one's disbelief. Like some of the above examples, it leads to you becoming drawn in and forgetting about the real world and the passage of time. This could happen while reading a good book or binge watching a good tv series.
To achieve maximum immersion, you want to avoid confronting players with things outside of reality or the reality created by the world. This could be references to real life. That could be interacting with a dialog to transport yourself anywhere rather than interact with the world, players or forms of magic that are understood to exist in said world.
One of the things that makes a world seem more real are those which require a little extra time. Having to buy an item to cast a teleportation spell. Having to repair or sharpen your weapons after a hours of battle. Having to eat and drink for your character to maintain their strength, mental resolve or stamina. Having to wait on a boat, train or zeppelin. A serious penalty for dying. Those little nuances or time requirement remind the player that, just like real life, there are positive and negative consequences to your decisions so choose well, and plan accordingly.
When those "inconveniences" are removed and your decisions have no weight, most people will find the game less compelling and "immersive".
Have you ever been sneaking thru a dark dungeon (in-game) and you almost wet yourself when your dog barked? That's immersion.
Have you ever caught yourself leaning to the side in your desk chair and felt stupid when you realized it and knew it wasnt going to help you peak around the corner into a room in-game? That's immersion.
Have you ever had that irrational panicked feeling when you realized your character might not make it back to the water's surface for air before it drowned? That's immersion.
Have you ever, consciously or not, altered your behavior in-game based on the alignment of the character you're playing? That's immersion.
The point is that you become so enthralled by the game experience that the line between playing and living within it almost gets blurred. It's much more possible in a game that enables you to interact with the environment in as close to you would in reality, given the interface barrier of mouse/keyboard that we are forced to utilized. It's essentially impossible to give that feeling in a game filled with gimmicky invisible barriers and jarring mechanics that dont feel natural and flowing.
Game immersion is when a game becomes all-encompassing and reality fades to something in the background.
Environment immersion is when the actual mechanics of the game fade into the background and you don’t notice something as artificial. It can be jarring when you are immersed in a game, but suddenly you notice a game mechanic that screams “artificial”. An example can be something as simple as getting to close to a wall and noticing that it’s made of pixels, when seconds before you were just taking in the scenery and thinking how beautiful it looked.
I want game immersion when I play, so when I look up at the clock I can’t believe that four hours passed. I want environment immersion so I forget that a valley before me is all computer generated. I want npcs to be believable in the way the move and act, so I forget that they are scripted. Basically, I want The Matrix without sticking a USB port (type Z) in my skull.
Immersion definition: "The act of immersing someone or something in a liquid"
Or "Deep mental involvement"
I think in this case we are looking at the second definition as I have yet to go swimming while playing any MMORPG.
Along with this deep mental involvement can often come real emotion. Feyshtey puts it well imo:
Feyshtey said:Have you ever been sneaking thru a dark dungeon (in-game) and you almost wet yourself when your dog barked? That's immersion.
Have you ever caught yourself leaning to the side in your desk chair and felt stupid when you realized it and knew it wasnt going to help you peak around the corner into a room in-game? That's immersion.
Have you ever had that irrational panicked feeling when you realized your character might not make it back to the water's surface for air before it drowned? That's immersion.
Have you ever, consciously or not, altered your behavior in-game based on the alignment of the character you're playing? That's immersion.
What ruins immersion: Anything that reminds you that you really dont need to think about what you are doing. example: game is to easy
Or: Anything that reminds you that is it pointless to try and make sense of what you are doing. examples: anything out of place in the logic of the game world(purple pants), or random bugs in the game that sabotage even the best efforts
My thoughts.
Some things to think about. I'll ponder it, but by the many definitions/examples given I'm not sure I've ever been "immersed" in a game. If I've ever had an experience where I was unaware of the real world around me I can't think of it at the moment.
Maybe I'm not capable of hyper-focusing so much on one thing. I can't think of times when I am only thinking about one thing. It may not be in my nature.
I do find it interesting that old EQ fails a lot of the tests people have given for what is immersive, and that's my favorite game of all time. It did have great music, which at least a couple people mentioned, so it did pass that test.
The people lobbying for things like merchants leaving during night have this unrealistic, romantic memory of original EQ(or whatever their first MMO was). The only thing I can recommend to these people is to just go play on P99(not just a few levels but seriously) and it will knock the nostalgia right out of you.
It boggles my mind some of the crap people are trying to get implemented. For example, I am currently playing EQ on a progression server and we just hit Luclin. The EC tunnel was where we sold before Luclin, and it was cool.....for about a week. When Luclin hit every one in my guild didnt know how we lived without the bazaar.
I can't imagine anyone wanting to run around to different towns looking for tradeskill supplies or other crap you need for years on end(just one of the suggestions ive seen on forums)
beautifully said:The people lobbying for things like merchants leaving during night have this unrealistic, romantic memory of original EQ(or whatever their first MMO was). The only thing I can recommend to these people is to just go play on P99(not just a few levels but seriously) and it will knock the nostalgia right out of you.
It boggles my mind some of the crap people are trying to get implemented. For example, I am currently playing EQ on a progression server and we just hit Luclin. The EC tunnel was where we sold before Luclin, and it was cool.....for about a week. When Luclin hit every one in my guild didnt know how we lived without the bazaar.
I can't imagine anyone wanting to run around to different towns looking for tradeskill supplies or other crap you need for years on end(just one of the suggestions ive seen on forums)
Actually, those things are largely the reason I still play p99. If I want everything streamlined I'd go play one of the MMOs created since EQ.
Its my sincere hope for such nuance that I pledged for Pantheon.
Its a great question! but i do think I think it is also fairly straight forward one and i feel like you probably know the answer... but maybe you are taking it all a little bit too literally to accept the answer you may have already come to in your mind, although on the flip side of that maybe people seeking the perfect immersion are also taking it too literally in that their expectations have gone beyond the realm of possibility... a good comparative example outside of gaming that i am sure we have all encountered at some stage in our lives would be...
if you're reading a book and you are getting very much into it and time is passing by and before you know it you have read a ton of pages and its late at night and you dont know where they time went but you know you should go to bed but you keep reading anyways, except now the first few paragraphs takes a little bit of time to get back into that deep feeling of connection with the book you had only moments ago.. well that right there is an example of being immersed and then in turn immersion being broken by time itself which will eventaully break the immersion we live every day... life :p
Still using books but a more relevant example to gaming would be if you were reading a book (lets say a fiction novel which is a fairly serious story not using humour) and loving it and it was drawing you in but every 10 pages a character kept seemingly breaking character or referencing the real world outside of the book you may also find this immersion breaking, however this is where we all can differ, some may see that character as a fresh break from the intensity of the feeling the book creates, some may see that character as a terrible addition that completely kills the mood every time he/she is included in the story. I think this is an ok example of how some people see things in games as immersion breaking, they are deeply involved in a section of a game, or maybe they are RPing their character with serious intent in a world they are spending a lot of time in and all of a sudden they see somthing they feel doesnt belong or that they feel is counter intuative to the story or the atmosphere they are immersed in.
So to your example about shop keepers, some people love the feeling of an open world that feels like it is living whether they play or not, it is on its own time not theirs and they are just a small fragment of it (like the real world) they vote to have merchants who are also living in a realistic time frame because to them it adds flavour to the feeling that the world is constant and persistant and turning up at a merchants shop and not being able to interact with him/her because it is midnight is how they would expect real life to be so it is also how they would like to see their life play out in game. There is nothing wrong with them voting for this to be a feature, just like there is nothing wrong with someone voting against it to be a feature. I think its important we respect what other people want and argue our points based on reasons for/against features / mechanics not argue on whether people do or do not feel somthing.
Immersion is litterally a "deep involvement" . Or less litteraly a "role play" or "emotional investment" . I don't believe that you really don't know what it means .
You play a role of a Dwarf but obviously you are not a Dwarf . It is at the moment when the separation between you and the Dwarf starts to be blurred because your mind is more focused on the Dwarf than on yourself that you are immersed in the game . The birth of the RPGs and the success of D&D is an example which shows how powerful the immersion driver is .
The whole movie industry is also based on immersion and identification . People like to identify with or hate movie characters - some would identify with Rob Stark and some with Tywin Lannister but when the movie is good there is always a process of identification/hate that has been triggered .
A movie where nobody identifies with nothing and nobody cares about what's happening, is a always dramatic failure .
This process is absolutely general in litterature, cinematography and indeed games .
And like litterature or cinematography some games are more immersive than others . Not all games are immersive or need to be - chess or whacka mole are not immersive yet people play them too .
However a non immersive RPG would be a sort of self-contradiction . Btw Tolkien has written a luminous text about "sub creation" - what he defined as "sub creation" can also be called "immersion" and I can only warmly recommend to read that text .
The practical difficulty being of course that one can name easily several necessary condition to achieve immersion (I remind again that immersion = deep involvement and/or identification) but there doesn't really exist a sufficient condition e.g a "recipe for immersion" .
The most important of the necessary conditions is internal consistence . An example of non consistence : your character is supposed to worship God Thrak + your characters goes on a raid to kill God Thrak . Worshiping and killing being obviously contradictory you cannot believe in such a world . And the lack of belief destroys immersion .
Then there is the interaction of your character with his environment .
An evil necromancer sitting in the middle of a marketplace and killing guards (which are precisely supposed to protect the citizens from evil necromancers) and merchants without being stopped by the town's population is totally inconsistent and breaks immersion for all other players .
Then there is music and sound effects . Here the relation is quite mysterious and difficult to define . But the sounds and music that were there for example in Kithicore dramatically enhanced the feeling that your character was in a mysterious and dangerous place .
At a personnal level I hate it with passion when people say things like "This toon sucks with only 123 DPS, I'll log in another ." While such a comment may be factually correct, it completely destroys my involvement in my elven enchanter having a personality and history (he is not just a "toon") and going on adventure with other adventurers he met . Clearly this person has immersion 0 what is his right but he destroys others' immersion without being conscient of doing so .
Other posters gave more examples above but as the quest for immersion is infinite while a software is finite, there will always be a limit somewhere where the developpers will have to stop and sacrify (minor) immersion factors to playability or budgetary considerations .
Have you ever played a game and see your character take fall from a tall height?
I feel a tug in my stomach everytime.
Maybe it comes from me dying in the Legend of Zelda as a kid all the time, or any other game.
No matter how old I get, my character falling scares the living socks off of me.
That is immersion in my experience.
The fact that you are emotionally invested in your character and the world around it. I have never played a game and thought, oh this is a game. I don't even focus on the fact that it is a fantasy world. I think of it more as how can I help this character get to where they need to go. Or if it is a character I get to make from scratch, what would I do in this situation?
In terms of immersion for this game, I think it does refer to how realistic the world seems to the players, NPCs, Wild-life, graphics, lore, races, classes, clothes, crafting, exploration, mini-games, socialization. All these things are just a few example of how the world interacts with the player. I want to see a world that interacts with me as a player, but I also want to see how I affect the world. Things being static, like an NPC saying the same line over and over again, never changing. Is kinda lame. But seeing an NPC change their words based on time of day or weather would be cool.
Have you ever been so engrossed in a game that time literally flies by? I would say that you are having fun then! Maybe that is immersion to you?
beautifully said:The people lobbying for things like merchants leaving during night have this unrealistic, romantic memory of original EQ(or whatever their first MMO was). The only thing I can recommend to these people is to just go play on P99(not just a few levels but seriously) and it will knock the nostalgia right out of you.
It boggles my mind some of the crap people are trying to get implemented. For example, I am currently playing EQ on a progression server and we just hit Luclin. The EC tunnel was where we sold before Luclin, and it was cool.....for about a week. When Luclin hit every one in my guild didnt know how we lived without the bazaar.
I can't imagine anyone wanting to run around to different towns looking for tradeskill supplies or other crap you need for years on end(just one of the suggestions ive seen on forums)
I do play on P99 regularly. I love it.