Against "immersion" (Destiny)

by INSANEdrive, ಥ_ಥ | f(ಠ‿↼)z | ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Monday, March 31, 2014, 19:17 (3889 days ago) @ electricpirate

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.

Such a stifling observation! My word. It implys its own madness. I'm this || close to a facepalm over here!

Part of me wants to give the benefit of the doubt and presume that you weren't being careful with your words and the absolute nature of your post is not what you intended.

I am ignoring that part of me.

While you may be speaking of just the terms of video games, your subject is essentially an attack on all forms of media, by basically saying that immersion should not be the goal, when in reality its all it really is. The immersion is part of the understanding of..."whatever", be it the character, the location/world, the atmosphere, the interface... The story. That's part the fun.

In-fact such a thing goes beyond consuming the media, its true in creating it as well. Weather its method acting for films, world building for books, and all the facets games absorb to become created - it all has to do with immersion.