Against "immersion" (Destiny)

by electricpirate , Monday, March 31, 2014, 11:24 (3889 days ago)

With the recent VR swings, and sways, and ups and downs, I think we're trending in a direction where we are pursuing this idea of "immersion" as an ultimate goal. Now, I generally hate the term Immersion, because many people just use it as an adjective when they can't quite explain why the like or dislike something, especially games. If pressed, I get the impression that most players who are into First person and other experiences, would agree with the game designer François Dominic Laramée,

“All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the player’s mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality.”

As we get closer to viable VR systems, it seems like this is what people want. They want this feeling of presence, like they are actually in this game. When people talk about games you hear about how the UI "Breaks Immersion" or the way a piece of bad AI "Broke immersion" as a negative. Thinking in this way is a mistake though, because the pursuit of immersion is a bad idea, that makes games worse.

In short, "immersion" is bullshit.

To start with, watch Frank Lantz's great rand from GDC 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JzNt1bSk_U

So why is this, why is the strive for immersion harmful? Because it obscures what video games are and what they are capable of. Video games communicate in symbols, that gun in Halo? It's not so much the simulation of a gun, but it's a set of symbols we interpret to function like our understanding of a gun. That's a crucial difference, because in that difference we experience a huge part of the game. It comes from the guns having impossible properties, (ie: hitscan, zero recoil, etc), it comes from how we understand them (IE, learning how the spread pattern of the AR works, or the burst of a BR pulls up).

That's not to say that I'm not interested or excited for VR (though less so since I actually tried an Occulus), the sensations created by 3D movement, and the fidelity of looking where you want are powerful design tools. But I don't expect it to "Put me there" I don't expect to believe I'm in this place. I'll always know that I put on this thing, and started this game, and agreed to this experience. That knowledge is part of games, and what it means to play.

There is one way to use the term that's valuable I think. Immersion as a term for pushing away all thought of the outside world is a valuable frame of thought. In that way, you don't need this idea of a world or a story that is believable, you don't need perfect visuals, you just need an engrossing rule set. Tetris can be immersive in this way, but never in the first way.

Bringing it around to Destiny, thinking this way helps me explain what looks right and wrong in the game. I think Bungie is doing some smart things with these third person shots, and the ability to see what you customized. I think it puts the idea of the story. If I want to remove other thoughts, why have this cutscene driven story at all? Why not leave it to the enviromental storytelling that we see in the old russia video?