Immersion

[coyotecraft]

Something that keeps me up at night. I know I play rpgs for immersion; that's a the mark of a good game, and it's easy to tell if a game has it or not. For the longest time I thought of immersion (of story) as suspending disbelief. Is it plausible? Is it consistent? Does it make me wonder?
So how do you do immersion?

By accident, I read a game article that said "Tetris is an immersive game" because the player is tracking the blocks with their eyes and planning their placement. So I thought, maybe that's what a good rpg is? Being presented with characters, places, and conflicts that you have to sort and keep track of. A bad rpg might be using too simple concepts with clearly defined problems and solutions and end up with nothing for the player to do or think about.

 

[Xhukari]

Though I haven't read the article, the gist you gave does seem to highlight something to me; different kinds of immersion? Perhaps you have story-based, world-based and mechanic-based immersion?

Returning to Tetris, some players immerse themselves in that game so much, it can effect them short-term, even when away from the game; they start to see a lot of things as if they were blocks with the intention of stacking. Though I forget what the fancy name for this is.

Plus I would say immersion can be pretty subjective; people respond to different stimuli in different ways. For instance, horror games for me I am very divided. Amnesia-esque horror games bore me. I know I'm not suppose to fight the monster, so it just becomes a puzzle piece to me. However games like the earlier Resident Evils were great for this; inducing the panic and fear of knowing I am suppose to tackle this monster or boss, but lacking the ammo and health items to do so. Nemesis is great for this aspect, as he chases you from room to room, loading screen to loading screen.

If you look at Bethesda games; their story-immersion is terrible. The plot of the games aren't so great. But what is, is their world-immersion. Being able to see something off in the distance and go to it, one-off quests or small quest lines with interesting and memorable characters.

 

[coyotecraft]

"Engaging" might be a better word when talking about player interest.
I guess I think of immersion more as the model of the universe your brain constructs from reading a book. Or playing a game. The more believable it is, the more immersive it becomes. There's plenty to talk about when it comes to game environments and level design.

But I've seen a lot of jrpgs that don't have environments. They just have backgrounds and menus. It's purely dialogue, which makes it difficult to convey information to the player without doing the whole Maid & Butler routine of "As you know..."
The thing I was getting at with my first post is, perhaps if you present the player with a lot of information in a certain way they'll be busy sorting it all out in their head and not notice how unrealistic the conversation itself is.

 

[Hybrida]

Nothing complicated. Just use lots and lots of details I guess. Backed the details. Lot's of detailed eye candy is the real trick. Don't force too much information on the players. Always leave it optional unless it's really important.

As an expert at creating an entire fictional universes, just make sure everything works. Allowing the player to interact with the universe:

Player reads Character 'A' is scared of Bees. That character freaks out on the Bee planet (Honey 4).

Player listens to the local news (in game). Hears about a battle in sector 47. Travels there to see it as it happens.

A game called 'FreeLancer' had great immersion. Players could read in game notes and listen to news reports to learn more about that universe...

Creating that feel as if the player is there and interacting with that universe. Again it's just mostly details that helps immersion. At least I think so.

I hope that was helpful. I dunno.

 

[coyotecraft]

Something I heard in a writingexcuses.com podcast is, depth is better than breadth.
It's a mistake to add more characters, more magic systems, more places, instead of digging deeper into what you already have.

I can see how that's true in jrpgs with towns or fantasy races. You got to present more than a surface concept. You need history and culture. It might not be related to plot but if the world is in danger we need to see whats at stake of disappearing.