Most of
the people who play games agree that they are able to let us explore
new and interesting worlds in ways that books or movies simply
cannot, something I have discussed myself on several occasions.
However, when we talk about this ability, the same word tends to crop
up over and over again: This word is “immersion.” All gamers have
at least a rough idea of what it is, but very rarely do we discuss
the idea in any sort of meaningful way. This is my attempt to try and
remedy that. My intention is to try to figure out how developers can
increase the immersion of players in their games. First, let us
define “immersion” for the purposes of this article. If we can
nail down a definition, then it will be easier to have an informed
discussion about it because we will all be one the same page.
Immersion is the truest form of a willing
suspension of disbelief. It is when the player
feels like that he/she is an active participant of the video game
despite knowing that he/she is not actually in the game. When someone
is truly “immersed” in a game, they tend to think of the people
and places depicted not as models and textures put together in a game
engine with working physics and number-driven systems. Instead, they
think of them as people who are in a world and doing what they do
with a delibrate and driven purpose. Designers and developers usually
strive to achieve this feeling of “immersion” for the end user.
There are a number of tips and strategies that they use to make this
happen.
One of
the simplest thing people a developer can do to facilitate immersion
is to maintain an internal logic and consistency in the setting,
characters, and plotline. Please note that this is not a call for
realism in games (I have already
discussed that). It is simply saying that there
should be a rationale behind every thing that is going on. The world
must have its own rules and systems that it adheres to. As a general
rule, if the world in question uses magic/technology and it adheres
to a specific system, then it must never deviate from that system
without some sort of contingencies set in place. For this example,
let us say that we are talking about a fantasy world with magic that
has a built in system of equivilent exchange (where every good thing
that happens due to magic must be tempered with an equivilant
negative side-effect and vice-versa). If in this world, a sorcerer
successfully revived his dead wife free and clear with no downsides,
then the player would (rightfully) call foul. Something that
incongruous would need either adequate foreshadowing that alludes to
the possibility of someone doing this (a skilled and powerful
sorcerer can explain how that could theoretically happen sometime
before the scene), hang
a lampshade on it during the scene (someone
points out in the middle of the resurrection that it should not be
possible), or provide an explanation after the fact showing that the
sorcerer technically did follow the rules and actually did sacrifice
something dear to him in an equivilant exchange. These are all tools
a skilled writer can use to explain away things incongruous to their
internal systems and logic.
It is
also worth noting that an designer does not need to worry about never
breaking logic even once. It is bound to happen eventually. What they
have to worry about is not breaking internal logic too often and not
doing it with major plot events. Players can generally forgive a few
minor errors and even justify them in their minds. However, take
advantage of this fact too often, and the players will begin to lose
immersion. This theshold at which the immersion is broken and
disbelief is no longer suspended varies wildly from person to person.
Therefore, a writer should be extremely careful when making major
breaks with continuity. This internal logic also extends into
characters and their motivations, so a writer needs to keep in mind
what a character's personality and goals are when determining what
the character should do in the plot. If game developers want to
maintain the feeling of immersion, they need to define a rationale
behind how the world works and maintain it to the best of their
abilities. We accept that real world logic does not always apply. The
problem arises when a world's own logic no longer applies to itself.
While
the previous tip can be applied to any form of media in general, this
next tip applies to games in particular. It is a very good idea to
synergize story and gameplay as much as possible and avoid Gameplay
and Story Segregation. One of the more
immersion breaking things a game can do is give the player a
situation that he/she could ordinarily overcome using conventional
gameplay only for them to circumvent it somehow. One of most
well-known examples of this in action is the death of Aeris/Aerith in
Final
Fantasy VII. In Final Fantasy VII, player
characters are killed in battle quite often (depending on the
player's skill, obviously). To revive these characters, there is an
item called a Pheonix Down which revives them so that they can keep
fighting. However, when Sephiroth kills Aeris in a cutscene,
there is no ability to revive her with similar means. Her death is
required for the plot to advance. They never once lampshade, subvert,
or acknowledge the possibility of using items or healing spells,
which is weird because Final Fantasy has done permanent-death for a
player character before. In the
fifth game in the franchise, the player's party
is being attacked by the villain, ExDeath. To save the others, one of
the party uses his crystal to gain powers well beyond what humans are
capable of. He fights ExDeath and holds his own despite the fact that
his HP is at 0 and he should be dead. After the fight, the others try
to heal and revive him with common spells and items the player is
quite likely to have. They find that he exhausted his power so
throughly that he was beyond healing. He was a dead man. Furthermore,
unlike Final Fantasy VII where Aeris dies and the player potentially
loses a party member he/she trained at the expense of others, the
designers of Final Fantasy V had the dead party member transfer his
skills to his daughter, meaning that the player is not inconvienced
by the plot's insistence of killing off a party member.
Some
people reading this might view this as an extension of my previous
point about willing suspension of disbelief and internal logic. To
that I say, I am glad you are paying attention, because you are
correct. The problem is that many games simply do not take that into
account. Developers have an irritating tendency to treat the plotline
and setting of a game as separate to the gameplay when that is simply
not the case. Gameplay is a natural extension to the events at hand.
It informs the player as to how the world they are now exploring
works. If those mechanics are incongruous with the story or the
setting, it makes the world look disjointed and players will be more
likely to see the cracks.
Another
thing that games can do to increase the likelihood of player
immersion is to avoid something I learned about from Chris Franklin,
also known as Campster,
of Errant
Signal fame (which you should be watching):
“ludonarrative dissonance.” In layman's terms, ludonarrative
dissonance is when themes and morals present in the game's storyline
are directly contradicted by the gameplay. This is not like the
previous point, where internal logic is broken. When this concept is
invoked, the game's world can, not necessarily will, still be
following its own rules, but it fails at upholding the underlying
moral message throughout. It can even be presenting two opposing
messages, one in the story and one in the gameplay, knowingly or not.
This is often a problem in modern miltary-themed first person
shooters. Many of them love to try to be serious commentaries on the
harsh realities and reprecussions of war. However, at the same time,
they appear to revel in the bloodshed and slaughter of hundreds of
people that the player must defeat in order to advance. These two
facts are in stark contrast with each other. Developers cannot talk
about loss when directing the player to kill thousands of people, no
matter how “evil” they are portrayed. The theme of the story is
undercut by the morality presented in the gameplay where killing all
the enemies is presented as a “good” action because they are
terrorists and/or in the way of the player's objective. Though it
does not affect everyone, this kind of contradiction can be extremely
jarring to some people, breaking their immersion and even their
enjoyment of the game.
The last
piece of advice I have for developers seeking to facilate immersion
in games is to simply make games that play well. There is a lot to be
said for a game that is fun to play. When a player enjoys a game and
is having an engrossing and entertaining experience, they are much
less likely to analyze the plot and look for plot holes and logical
fallicies/inconsistencies. On the other hand, if the game is boring
and uniteresting to play, then the player will more often than not
examine the story of the game in greater detail since that will be
the only thing keeping their attention. It is not always possible to
plug every plot hole or account for every inconsistency, so the best
solution is sometimes to just distract players with good gameplay (as
loathe as I am to admit it). If it is of high enough quality, then we
are more than able to forgive a few mistakes or missteps.
Immersion
is a difficult thing to achieve. It requires so many interlocking
systems and conditions to come together in complete synergy.
Furthermore, it also depends on the player and his/her mindset, which
is inherently fickle. It is not possible for a developer to create a
game that is 100% immersive for everyone. All they can do is
facilitate immersion by creating as coherent and interesting a game
as possible. Focus on building and maintaining an internal logic with
both the story and the gameplay and how they tie into each other.
While this seems like a tall order, it is much simpler than one might
think. All it requires is going in and thinking about the story.
Writers should ask themselves if there is another, easier and more
sensible way for events to unfold and ask other people on staff and
with a critical eye to take a moment and look it over. Many series
have loremasters and dedicated wikis for that serve this very
purpose. There really is no excuse for not doing something so
incredibly simple.
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