Immersion

          Immersion can be defined as the state in which the mind is completely enveloped in an experience. Take for example reading. When you read a good book, you aren’t just looking at the words on the pages; you are observing the actions of the characters and the events surrounding them. You feel as if you are in their reality and nothing else is real. It is only when something pulls you out such as an outside force do you realize it was only a book. You can even break immersion within the experience if something doesn’t seem right. This happens occasionally in good immersion inducing experiences and all the time in awful immersion inducing experiences. Why are some books boring? Because they don’t immerse you very well. But this sensation isn’t limited to just books. You can find it in all types of media.

            Until recently, we didn’t see games as an immersive medium. We’re still having trouble deciding if they can be called art or not, but that’s another article. As for games, the ability to not only imagine you are part of the world, but actually controlling the aspects of certain characters and events makes it all the more engaging. Let’s take Shadow of the Colossus as an example of an immersive game. You play as a young man seeking to revive his dead girlfriend and to do so, you must slay sixteen absurdly large creatures known as Colossi. Simple premise that anybody could make a game out of. But how did the developers at Team Ico get this to work so well? 

            Here’s what they did: they first imagined what fighting something of such a large scale would be like. In comparison, your character is basically a tiny ant to the behemoths. He’s so small he has to literally climb all over their bodies just to attack a weak spot! Not only that, the environments are all large scale and take you a long time to traverse. The movements of the Colossi appear slow, but pack an earth-shaking punch when they connect. All of this makes the game magnificent. 

            Now picture the game as a side-scrolling beat’em up on the 3DS where the Colossi you fight are tall enough to fit on both screens and your character is still small, but not ant sized. Doesn’t seem as epic, does it? The main reason would likely be in order to see everything from a 2D perspective, the player has to be visible at all times and the camera angle would need to be fixed. It’s hard to look up at who you are fighting. The developers made the game 3D for several reasons, including having a camera that lets the players truly appreciate the grand scale of these creatures.

            The thing about immersion is that it can be broken pretty easily. You don’t even have to consciously register it because your brain already does that. Wonder why that amazing looking film was only “pretty good” even though you can’t recall everything that happened? Because so many things went wrong such as plot holes, terrible acting, sound effects not matching up or sounding very familiar (i.e. the “Wilhelm Scream”), and not so subtle breaking of the fourth wall. Games do this often, usually in the form of mechanics. 

            True, the most important aspect of your game would be the mechanics, but if the plot has to be forced in order to work with the mechanics, you’re doing it wrong. Something minor such as a “Lives” system likely won’t break immersion, but if the explanation for being able to teleport to certain locations is explained as just “something you can do,” convenient mechanic, but how does it work in with the story!? It needs an explanation to work. It’s kind of like in Lord of the Rings where they spend three movies walking to Mount Doom when Gandalf could have just summoned those giant birds to carry them to their destination in the first place. 

            Also, being really obvious with explanations can break immersion. I’m going to compare Megaman X to pretty much any game with a tutorial system that stops everything you’re doing just to inform you of what this one button does. Megaman X has no helpful tips or advice, but you can just push a few buttons and find out what each one does. You don’t need a Youtube tutorial telling you how to play. You get attacked and lose some health. One can assume that you can make mistakes, but you have to avoid getting hit too often. As for other games (I dunno, Yoshi’s Story?) with tutorials that stop all gameplay, that gets annoying. Yes, that game is a kid’s game and the developers likely concluded that children can’t play and read at the same time, it infuriated me to no end. Players can learn through trial and error. That’s how we get so good. It’s like learning Photoshop; you don’t truly get how it works until you play with everything and mess things up horribly enough to maybe require some outside tech support.

            Immersion can be broken easily, but when it stays stable and we sink in, the experience lasts forever and we never forget it. Keep in mind that if you should make your own game or book or whatever, watch for anything that can break immersion and try to think with a bit of imagination. Sounds a little cheesy, but that’s what makes these things so wonderful. They spark our imaginations. If we can’t see your world, describe it and we can fill in the rest. If we can see your world, show us your creation and let us describe it to ourselves and to others.