Immersion in Games: Are You Into It?

[ScrabbitRabbit]

It's a documented psychological phenomenon that the more something is praised to you beforehand, the less you'll think of it when you experience it yourself.

I've had hype-backlash before and the reaction is usually "it's not as good as everyone says" not "this is actually horrendous." On top of that, I'd heard a ton of praise for things like Planescape: Torment, 1984, SMT: Nocturne and Jacob's Ladder before watching/reading/playing them and these are some of my favourite pieces of media, ever. They each received far, far more praise from both my peers and (in the case of 1984 and Jacob's Ladder) from culture in general than Cell did and they're still my two favourite games, favourite book and film respectively. Hype backlash is a thing, certainly, but it's not powerful to reduce something you'd have enjoyed to something you vehemently dislike.

And besides, if pacing and quality of writing were truly objective, then would it still happen?

I could pull out a ton of other examples of disliking the pacing, writing even visuals of things that were highly praised without knowing about said praise beforehand if you like. Most people probably could.

See, while you can certainly say something like "good pacing makes for a better story" and everyone would agree, it's much harder define what good pacing is and come to a consensus. It's the same with writing and, well, most things that go into making media.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

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."

This is something I worked out a few weeks back- while opinions cannot be wrong, not everything we think is an opinion is necessarily an opinion. Saying "I like Michael Bay's Transformers movies" is an opinion and you cannot be wrong about that; no-one can tell you "no you don't like them". But saying "I think Michael Bay's Transformers movies are the best sci-fi films of the last decade" isn't an opinion. It's a belief. And just like the beliefs that the world is flat, people can choose NOT to be homosexual and Scientology has a real basis in fact, it can be proven false. The Michael Bay Transformers films are PROVABLY awful movies from a cinematic and narrative standpoint. But no-one can challenge your right to enjoy them.

Also, while everyone is entitled to their opinion (or as I've already clarified, their own belief) that doesn't mean that everyone's opinions are equally valid.

 

[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."

This is something I worked out a few weeks back- while opinions cannot be wrong, not everything we think is an opinion is necessarily an opinion. Saying "I like Michael Bay's Transformers movies" is an opinion and you cannot be wrong about that; no-one can tell you "no you don't like them". But saying "I think Michael Bay's Transformers movies are the best sci-fi films of the last decade" isn't an opinion. It's a belief. And just like the beliefs that the world is flat, people can choose NOT to be homosexual and Scientology has a real basis in fact, it can be proven false. The Michael Bay Transformers films are PROVABLY awful movies from a cinematic and narrative standpoint. But no-one can challenge your right to enjoy them.

Also, while everyone is entitled to their opinion (or as I've already clarified, their own belief) that doesn't mean that everyone's opinions are equally valid.

Exactly.

 

[Aitamen]

Immersion is one trait that I feel tends to bounce around a lot... FFT is my recurring example for this...

I love it when I can throw myself into any part of the game and get lost in it... Story-immersion is easy, even in the PSX version, I tended to skip the typos with little more than a "huh". The depth made me care. Gameplay immersion is even more intense, because I wanted to know how everything worked. When you first pick it up, it's simplistic, and half the actions are arcane, but everything can be altered, made to work better; that level of reverse-engineering is itself enjoyable.

In-world immersion and in-game immersion are plenty different, and both are things worthy of note. ME1 was a mechanical mess, and ME3 had some horrid lines that felt like they were canned in the early 90s, but ME2 had a decent balance of both. None of them could touch Starflight (GEN), because they shot for more than they could make with what they had.

Pretty easy distinction there.

 

[Funyahns]

I think immersion of a game is the most important aspect. Which is why I think most multi-player games are terrible. Nothing ruins immersion like an idiot bouncing around being annoying, it destroys the atmosphere that a game is trying to create.

 

[Shadow flame master]

Well, if we're going by this definition of immersion, then I have been immersed in pretty much every game I've played.