Immersion in video games

[Music Dragon]

Let's discuss what makes video games immersive!

Something I've been thinking about lately is whether video games, in general, are more immersive than movies/books/etc.

On the one hand, I think the interactivity of video games gives them the potential to be more engaging than other media. The horror genre is a great example: I've always maintained that video games excel here, and I think it's because the player is forced to share in the panic and paranoia of the characters on the screen.

On the other hand, I also feel that books, movies and TV shows tend to tell better and more memorable stories than even the best video games. You could chalk that up to the immaturity of the medium, of course; video games have only been around for a short time, whereas literature is as old as civilization. The current technology has limitations, too. But is it more than just that? Some have made the case that interactivity has a negative effect on suspension of disbelief. The idea is that when you're playing a game, you have to pay attention to interfaces and buttons and inventories and on-screen prompts and, well, actually focus on something other than enjoying the story being told; and this distraction makes games less immersive.

So what do you think? Is it harder or easier to make a video game immersive than a book or a movie? More generally, what makes a video game immersive? (What does "immersion" even mean to you?)

 

[M&F]

I find the argument that inventories and controls and whatnot detract from immersion rather poor; some of the games that get the most praise for being immersive also have complex control schemes and intrusive inventory windows that you have to stop the game to access and so on forth. These might actually increase the immersion in some cases -- most of the time, you're just going through the motions when navigating these things, and that means you're putting your subconscious into the game as much as you're putting your conscious mind into, which isn't something you can really do with other media beyond turning the pages on a book or needing to adjust the vollume on the TV from time to time.

That said, whether a given videogame is or isn't more immersive than other media -- I wouldn't say it's a fair comparison. Not all videogames focus on immersion. The ones do, however, do often surpess other media in that regard.

In my opinion, the only thing that holds videogames back from telling stories that surpass even the classics of other media, in immersion or in other aspects, is precisely the issues behind the scenes. The immaturity of the industry, yes, and not only agewise but also culturally, but even beyond that, there's the simple fact that creating a videogame, specially a good videogame, tends to be an endeavor that requires tremendous funding, large teams of specialized people, and so on forth. A single writer with a vision can just pick up the pen (or the laptop or what have you) and get writing -- creating a videogame is significantly more complex, and that's even before you get into the thorny external aspects such as making a profit or dealing with the culture. And that's not to say that writing a great epic of literature is an easy task, but creating a great epic of videogame, at this point, has all of that difficulty and more.

 

[Murkrow]

I sort of want to play horror games but as of yet I've never lived alone so I won't want to worry people in my house by screaming out of nowhere. But I can definitely see how horror games, are likely much better than other mediums when it comes to some subgenres of horror.

Another thing games provide is passive storytelling, if that's the word for it. There can be things in the environment that tell a story or build the world. In fact to some extent it's to be expected wheras in TV/Movies things like that are more of a bonus put in the background, and isn't as effective since it can raise questions like "it's convenient that the characters are standing in the perfect position for that poster in the background to be visible between them!" of course effective filmmakers actually do do it well, but you know what I mean. Interactive mediums are much less restrictive in that sense.

One thing I think about sometimes is that games could really be conisdered a superset of all other mediums. Games can contain music, videos, text, etc. so I would say that anything that can be done effectively in one medium can probably be done well in games too, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't be done terribly either :P


Anyway I'm not sure what I would consider immersion. I can think of two different types. One is the obvious kind of getting lost in the world, which really relies on huge open worlds, good graphics, and there not being noticable bugs that make it obvious that it isn't real.
Then there's the other kind which is that of making you feel the emotions the player character is meant to be feeling. That's the kind horror games go for. Although I would personally call those games "effective" rather than "immersive"

So yeah it depends whether you're trying to immerse yourself in the world, or the character. I don't think I can think of any games that manage to do both.

EDIT:

I find the argument that inventories and controls and whatnot detract from immersion rather poor

Some games try to make the menus and HUD part of the universe, which ideally wouldn't detract from the immersion. But then you have Deus Ex Human Revolution which says the HUD is on the player's sunglasses... but then the entire game is tinged yellow and intractable objects are outlined for your convenience, which *did* detract from the immersion imo.

A single writer with a vision can just pick up the pen (or the laptop or what have you) and get writing -- creating a videogame is significantly more complex, and that's even before you get into the thorny external aspects such as making a profit or dealing with the culture. And that's not to say that writing a great epic of literature is an easy task, but creating a great epic of videogame, at this point, has all of that difficulty and more.

Indie games still have the potential to have that one person's vision thing going on!
Speaking of Deus Ex, the original was a masterpiece and it's probably largely because of Warren Spector's work on the game.

Although keep in mind that being a collaborative thing isn't a bad thing. The original Star Warses had lots of people deciding what worked and what didn't. Then they decided to give George Lucas way more control over the prequels and then...

 

[Superbird]

Somewhat often, actually, I come up with an interesting idea for a story, and then I ask myself what medium that story would be best told in.

I think that's issue number one. Some stories are told better when the audience gets to decide the pace at which they progress through the experience, and how much they want to think about each stage. Those lend themselves well to books, and not as well to movies (which is why many film adaptions of books seem to end up inferior). Other stories have a very specific plot wherein pacing is important, and that's where movies and TV shows shine. Sometimes, the stories that are best for film are also ones where there are a lot of ideas that would be hard to express in words.

The thing video games have over other entertainment mediums is interactivity. The audience always interacts with the game and makes decisions about what they do and don't want to see. There are stories I've thought of where choices would have to be made, or where the world in which the story takes place is very important and a non-interactive medium just wouldn't give it enough attention. Some games are perfect for the medium - Xenoblade, for instance, has a world so detailed that it would be impossible to show all of it to the audience in a non-interactive medium - and others might work as real novels (999, for example, is basically a choose-your-own-adventure book, which works much better in the form of a visual novel) but not as well (I will throw out Phoenix Wright as an example - it could be written as a mystery series, yes, but a central part of the experience there is that the audience feels as if they managed to figure everything out, which greatly increases the immersion by putting the audience into the story rather than having them watch from the outside).

Apart from story, the other main thing that contributes to immersion is the game's atmosphere. Persona 3 comes to my mind as the master of setting up this atmosphere - everything, from the visual environments to the music to the character designs (even both the male and female protagonists) to the use of color and saturation to even the design of the UI, contributes to the atmosphere of the game, which draws the audience in. In particular, music is a huge aspect in constructing an aesthetic, one that I feel isn't focused on enough - if the background music fits the setting, it greatly increases the immersion the game is capable of providing (also true of movies). Another great example of a great atmosphere, I think, would be Danganronpa and its sequel (perhaps coincidentally, these and the aforementioned Persona 3 provoke a similar atmosphere to each other).

Whether it's harder to make a book, movie, or video game immersive depends on the story you're telling and the way in which it would be best told, I think. There's no one correct answer.