Immersion in Games: Are You Into It?

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Immersion in Games: Are You Into It?

First it was the subjectivity of beauty in games. Now Yahtzee riffs on what it means to be immersed in a game.

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[Xman490]

"Even the [Amazing Spider-Man 2] video game had its supporters, although that might have had more to do with the comfortable padding of brain distance."

I feel this needs some explanation. On one front, it's a new open-world game on the Wii U that isn't 10 years old and isn't a Lego game. In fact, the first time I heard about it was from Nintendo's YouTube channel. And thus, people on Miiverse praise it.
Also, the game's developers had a gameplay preview that screamed, "Guys, we swear it's good this time. Spidey has different moves and everything!"

But now it's out, and it's wank, and we Wii U gamers without strong PCs or new consoles might as well just wait for Watch_Dogs to satiate our sandbox desires. I got fingers crossed for it working well.

 

[Catasros]

"Suddenly it's not Lord Carstairs aggressively seducing Dolly the parlor maid and her faithful sheepdog, now it's just two actors in costume on a sound stage with a very perplexed border collie."

This made my day.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Regarding the argument on the first page, Yahtzee is falling into the same trap many people use when defending their subjective opinions - not realizing there is a difference between saying "I like this thing" and "This is a quality thing."

Some people are arrogant as to think that they ONLY like quality things, but this is not the case. You can like something that is bad. It's ok. It doesn't mean you're an idiot, and it also doesn't make the thing you like good.

For example, I like Cross Edge. However, I would never suggest that it's a good game. It's a terribly designed game.

Similarly, I despise Halo and everything it stands for, but I admit it is a well designed quality game.

And so on and so forth with everything subjective in the world. YES, your opinion about the quality of something can be wrong. Just having an opinion doesn't make it as valid as other more informed opinions.

 

[duwenbasden]

>YES, your opinion about the quality of something can be wrong.

To a point, but not always. Quality of a game is subjective, since you cannot measure with the scientific method and have enough data to support it.

 

[Micalas]

I think the best part of this article was the picture of messed up Jesus painting labled "bad immersion Jesus."

 

[Thanatos2k]

>YES, your opinion about the quality of something can be wrong.

To a point, but not always. Quality of a game is subjective, since you cannot measure with the scientific method and have enough data to support it.

Objective quality does exist. Yahtzee made some points about it in this very article. A TV show with a boom mic floating into the frame is not high quality, regardless of whether you like the show or not.

There are shared standards of quality that we as a collective consciousness have decided is "good" or "bad" in any given medium.

 

[Falterfire]

Regarding the argument on the first page, Yahtzee is falling into the same trap many people use when defending their subjective opinions - not realizing there is a difference between saying "I like this thing" and "This is a quality thing."

Some people are arrogant as to think that they ONLY like quality things, but this is not the case. You can like something that is bad. It's ok. It doesn't mean you're an idiot, and it also doesn't make the thing you like good.

Well, in order to separate things that are good from things which are bad but enjoyable, you first have to nail down what 'quality' means. If we're comparing adhesives we can just figure out which one holds more weight. If we're comparing printers we can look at how fast they print, the precision of printing, and so on.

How do you propose to objectively measure the quality of games?

 

[Thanatos2k]

Regarding the argument on the first page, Yahtzee is falling into the same trap many people use when defending their subjective opinions - not realizing there is a difference between saying "I like this thing" and "This is a quality thing."

Some people are arrogant as to think that they ONLY like quality things, but this is not the case. You can like something that is bad. It's ok. It doesn't mean you're an idiot, and it also doesn't make the thing you like good.

Well, in order to separate things that are good from things which are bad but enjoyable, you first have to nail down what 'quality' means. If we're comparing adhesives we can just figure out which one holds more weight. If we're comparing printers we can look at how fast they print, the precision of printing, and so on.

How do you propose to objectively measure the quality of games?

Again, we have shared metrics of quality in games, even if they are not entirely concrete. We know what good and bad writing is, we know what good and bad pacing is, we know what good and bad graphics are, we know what good or bad voice acting is, we know a good or bad save system (See: Shadowrun Returns), and so on. We even know what makes a good or bad tutorial.

Some stuff is more subjective than others (What makes a good battle system in an RPG?) but many things are not.

 

[ConjurerOfChaos]

Regarding the argument on the first page, Yahtzee is falling into the same trap many people use when defending their subjective opinions - not realizing there is a difference between saying "I like this thing" and "This is a quality thing."

Some people are arrogant as to think that they ONLY like quality things, but this is not the case. You can like something that is bad. It's ok. It doesn't mean you're an idiot, and it also doesn't make the thing you like good.

Well, in order to separate things that are good from things which are bad but enjoyable, you first have to nail down what 'quality' means. If we're comparing adhesives we can just figure out which one holds more weight. If we're comparing printers we can look at how fast they print, the precision of printing, and so on.

How do you propose to objectively measure the quality of games?

Again, we have shared metrics of quality in games, even if they are not entirely concrete. We know what good and bad writing is, we know what good and bad pacing is, we know what good and bad graphics are, we know what good or bad voice acting is, we know a good or bad save system (See: Shadowrun Returns), and so on. We even know what makes a good or bad tutorial.

Some stuff is more subjective than others (What makes a good battle system in an RPG?) but many things are not.

Then again, there are things where the 'context' is important; in fact, I'd say 'context' is most important, or rather 'cohesion', i.e. how all the different aspects of the game (or piece of art in general) work together to create an experience (whether it's the one the producers wanted or not).
To use your example of save systems: being able to save whenever I want, as often and in as many slots as I want, and then continuing exactly where I left off might seem, in theory, the best possible way.
But in a shooting game, disallowing that in favor of save points creates far more tension (which is why Half-Life 2 didn't quite 'click' with me; if I took to much damage, I could just reload and try again).
Or in a game with multiple branching paths, only allowing for one, continuous save instead of 50 save spots gives each decision much more weight.

The same goes for pacing, because not only the genre of the game, but also the story demand a certain kind of pacing, so when assessing the pacing of the game one would need to consider both these aspects before passing judgement; just saying 'I know a good pacing when I see one' is not really going to help.

When dealing with art, everything is more or less subjective; there are things that one perceives as 'objective factors', but given the right context / interpretation, those things that break or bend the rules might end up the most interesting.
Showing 'the works', destroying immersion on purpose, for example, is a stylistic device used by Brecht to make the audience aware that they were indeed just watching two actors and a sheep dog; he did this to make the audience reflect on what they saw before them.

The most important thing is to know that there are no 'right' or 'wrong' opinions; there are simply opinions and in between conflicting opinions may lay the truth.
The important thing is not WHAT your opinion is - or indeed how 'subjective' it may seem - but how it is presented.
Saying 'I did (not) like this' is not helpful.
Saying 'I did not like this because it didn't follow the standard formula for save points' allows for discussion.
Saying 'I did like this because the bad voice acting evoked a feeling of loneliness because I was the only sane character in the game, an experience that filled me with existential dread' is highly subjective, but well presented.

 

[Covarr]

With the obvious exception of the lead actors, every person involved in a created work is doing their job perfectly well if you never think about them or know that they're there.

I feel like the line is a bit blurrier than that. In Men in Black 3, Josh Brolin's performance as young K was so spot-on that my mind instantly accepted him as the same character, without actively noticing that he wasn't Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, even lead actors can be never thought about. On the flip side of the coin, some filmmakers like to get particularly artistic with their cinematography. Breaking Bad, The Empire Strikes Bakc, Pulp Fiction, and Beauty and the Beast all had some extremely memorable shots; the camerawork really did stand out in those films... but that doesn't mean they weren't doing their job right.

I don't think that what matters is necessarily that the audience doesn't think about certain aspects of a film/game/work of art, but that whatever the audience notices is intentional; it's okay if a boom mic pops into frame as long as it's on purpose and for a good reason [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/7588-Man-of-Steal]. Much like a good magic trick illusion, the goal above all else is to control the audience's attention. That's where suspension of disbelief comes from. Frankly, you can do whatever you want, and as long as you can make sure your audience is looking the right way, where they're looking is the only part that has to be well-crafted. That's why enemies spawn behind walls or off-camera. That's how games like Antichamber and The Stanley Parable are even possible.

P.S. Thanks

 

[duwenbasden]

>There are shared standards of quality that we as a collective consciousness have decided is "good" or "bad" in any given
>medium.
>we know what good and bad graphics are

What do you mean by "our shared standards of quality"? How do we collectively judge "good" graphics from "bad" graphics? polygon count? texture res? the appearance of 8 bit sprites/graphics novel/photo-realistic/ASCII? what about brown vs colourful vs monochrome palette? film grain? the similarity between a RL photo and the CGI? organic vs artificial?


and what if it is done deliberately eg. a voice actor is phoning it in in a scene where something absurd happens? Is it a "good" performance because the VA's acting complements the scene, or is it a terrible performance because our collective metrics said so?

>A TV show with a boom mic floating into the frame is not high quality.

What if the said TV show is a satire, where the boom mic floating into the frame is followed immediately by the director yelling "cut" and chastising the boom operator?


Yes, you can relatively judge something as objectively as possible; you can say some metrics of quality is objectively measured, but you will never get to a point where there is an absolute objective measurement of quality.

 

[Thanatos2k]

Then again, there are things where the 'context' is important; in fact, I'd say 'context' is most important, or rather 'cohesion', i.e. how all the different aspects of the game (or piece of art in general) work together to create an experience (whether it's the one the producers wanted or not).
To use your example of save systems: being able to save whenever I want, as often and in as many slots as I want, and then continuing exactly where I left off might seem, in theory, the best possible way.
But in a shooting game, disallowing that in favor of save points creates far more tension (which is why Half-Life 2 didn't quite 'click' with me; if I took to much damage, I could just reload and try again).
Or in a game with multiple branching paths, only allowing for one, continuous save instead of 50 save spots gives each decision much more weight.

Well, sure. Context is important, I thought that was assumed. Though context doesn't always save something. Something can still be bad despite the context being intentional - you can intend for your save system to not allow people to take back their choices and still mess it up objectively. The Souls games save system for example is a great example of them intentionally preventing you from save/loading your way to success and it working perfectly. Half Life allows you to quicksave/quickload everywhere and that works perfectly at its intended purpose as well (and lets the player choose how shamelessly they abuse it).

The same goes for pacing, because not only the genre of the game, but also the story demand a certain kind of pacing, so when assessing the pacing of the game one would need to consider both these aspects before passing judgement; just saying 'I know a good pacing when I see one' is not really going to help.

To be fair, pacing is more of a "I know bad pacing when I see it" thing than the opposite. You don't notice good pacing. You definitely notice bad pacing.

When dealing with art, everything is more or less subjective; there are things that one perceives as 'objective factors', but given the right context / interpretation, those things that break or bend the rules might end up the most interesting.
Showing 'the works', destroying immersion on purpose, for example, is a stylistic device used by Brecht to make the audience aware that they were indeed just watching two actors and a sheep dog; he did this to make the audience reflect on what they saw before them.

Well, you have specific qualifiers for each subsection you're looking at. In gaming we call them "genres" and what works for one definitely won't always work for another. There's standards of quality for Racing games, Fighting games, Shooters, etc...

You can counter that there's an infinitely fragmenting amount of sub genres that make such statements useless, but I don't think they're useless.

Additionally, this is not to say there are never exceptions to the rules.

The most important thing is to know that there are no 'right' or 'wrong' opinions; there are simply opinions and in between conflicting opinions may lay the truth.
The important thing is not WHAT your opinion is - or indeed how 'subjective' it may seem - but how it is presented.
Saying 'I did (not) like this' is not helpful.
Saying 'I did not like this because it didn't follow the standard formula for save points' allows for discussion.
Saying 'I did like this because the bad voice acting evoked a feeling of loneliness because I was the only sane character in the game, an experience that filled me with existential dread' is highly subjective, but well presented.

The more you explain your opinion, the less subjective it becomes.

 

[mrdude2010]

Riffing off of what some commenters are saying, I think we need to redefine "opinion" as something you can have a subjective view of. I hear/see way too many news sources giving voices to people because "everyone has an opinion" while not realizing that things like homeopathy are not only provably wrong, but actively dangerous when promoted as somehow equal to the real world. You can't give legitimacy to things that are definitely bullshit.

 

[Thanatos2k]

>There are shared standards of quality that we as a collective consciousness have decided is "good" or "bad" in any given
>medium.
>we know what good and bad graphics are

What do you mean by "our shared standards of quality"? How do we collectively judge "good" graphics from "bad" graphics? polygon count? texture res? the appearance of 8 bit sprites/graphics novel/photo-realistic/ASCII? what about brown vs colourful vs monochrome palette? film grain? the similarity between a RL photo and the CGI? organic vs artificial?

Intentional or not, artistic or not, graphics still look good or bad to us, and there are definitely reasons why that happens. Play a game with an inverted color palette filter on your TV/monitor and boggle at how worse things usually look. This isn't a coincidence.

You can intentionally make your graphics bad for whatever reason, maybe even a specific reason you're trying to evoke through your game, but they still look good or bad. There is huge leeway for graphical styles that one person may like and another will not (cell shading anyone?) but there are still technical things you can do right or wrong.

and what if it is done deliberately eg. a voice actor is phoning it in in a scene where something absurd happens? Is it a "good" performance because the VA's acting complements the scene, or is it a terrible performance because our collective metrics said so?

>A TV show with a boom mic floating into the frame is not high quality.

What if the said TV show is a satire, where the boom mic floating into the frame is followed immediately by the director yelling "cut" and chastising the boom operator?

Many of the rules change significantly once comedy is involved. And there are indeed a whole new set of rules for what makes good comedy or not.

 

[Zombie Badger]

>There are shared standards of quality that we as a collective consciousness have decided is "good" or "bad" in any given
>medium.
>we know what good and bad graphics are

What do you mean by "our shared standards of quality"? How do we collectively judge "good" graphics from "bad" graphics? polygon count? texture res? the appearance of 8 bit sprites/graphics novel/photo-realistic/ASCII? what about brown vs colourful vs monochrome palette? film grain? the similarity between a RL photo and the CGI? organic vs artificial?


and what if it is done deliberately eg. a voice actor is phoning it in in a scene where something absurd happens? Is it a "good" performance because the VA's acting complements the scene, or is it a terrible performance because our collective metrics said so?

Graphics are judged by whether they are aesthetically appealing and whether they succeed in creating the effect they are going for, whether that effect is good or bad.

 

[Zombie Badger]

It's not just the effects breaking down before our eyes that affects our immersion, it's also whether we are feeling the mechanics used to move the experience along. In games this often takes the form of the feel that the game is railroading you to where it wants to be, with Call of Duty and Medal of Honor: Warfighter (ahahahaha) being prime examples. Narratively this can also be a problem if the plot devices are too obvious, so we are taken out of the story by our waiting for them to happen rather than being surprised when they do. I had that problem with The Last of Us, where I spent several cutscenes just yelling "Give her the gun already so we can get to the bit where she saves your life and the two of you become closer as a result!"

 

[theyellowmeteor]

I dunno, saying that immersion is paramount to the quality of something seems to me a little douche-y, considering Yahtzee's aiding examples. I mean, what if you didn't notice the boom mic, and you were watching that show repeatedly, and later had someone show you the boom mic in the scene you have already watched several times. Does knowing that you can see a boom mic invalidate the emotional investment you have previously put in the series? Do you have contradictory feelings that are a pain to reconcile?

Video games and movies are artificial constructions, and we know it. We also know that mistakes can and are being made, and some of them are overlooked during editing. Having issues with a visible boom mic, or the ass of a film crew walking into a corner of the frame, or a minor glitch in a video game, is like being upset that someone told you Santa Claus doesn't exist, way after you've found it out and have gotten over it.

 

[Evonisia]

I don't feel like immersion is jeopardised by glitches in gameplay. I can still get absorbed into Halo's (monolithic) universe even if the Grunt I just shot zips off into space because it got stuck between two rocks. We go into games and expect there to be errors or stuff which doesn't seem right. To me an interface or HUD (unless it's explained like in Dead Space) is something the character wouldn't see, but it doesn't get in the way of my immersion.

 

[Darth_Payn]

That last sentence of the column, that is gold right there!