Immersion is something you see thrown around on the board from time to time. Most of the time I see it, people are talking about how this ruins immersion, or that ruins immersion. That got me thinking what actually does make immersion? What is it, and why is it important to us.
To me immersion is simply a way to determine how much I am getting into a game. When I can play for a few hours and not really notice how much time has flown by, I consider the game immersive. there are a few things that I think doesn't ruin this, that many people do.
Loading screens: game worlds that aren't seamless don't bother me, at no point in my game playing career have I ever been so into a game that I snapped out of it and said "Oh my God, i forgot this was a video game. The presence of a loading screen is just a technological medium to change zones, and it doesn't bother me. Now for purposes of immersion, I just want to be able to notice where I am on the globe, games like EQ2 allow you to know that easily, especially after the Halas reborn update. A game like AoC, at least back when I played it, didn't really do a good job of letting you know where you were on the globe, you just found people with carts who were going to diffeerent zones.
Graphics: Once again, never seen graphics so good it made me forget I was playing a video game, and within reason, they are not important. I do however have some requirments since I am paying for a monthly service with MMO's, for instance, Asherons Call, which is probably a spectacular game in terms of gameplay, I just don't enjoy looking at it enough to fork over 13 bucks a month. 5...maybe, something else that gets me on that subject is I thought AC was owned by turbine, and if so why have they not made that game F2P yet? I would play it for free, but anyways, thats another subject.
Character creation: My ability to be unique is not that important to me for one reason, you can't make completely unique hair, maybe a shade no one else has but there are always preset hair styles, and since all I ever really see is the back of my avatars head, I'm not too concerned about the face, as long as it just isn't butt ugly, (except for orcs in WAR)
Anyways, thats that, agree or disagree, I'd like to hear your opinions on what is/isn't important.
Music:
What about music in our games? To me, having the music on reduces my immersion and so I always turn the music volume to zero in any MMORPG I play. But I bet there are people who are exactly the opposite and find that music helps immersion.
Sat Jun 05 2010 4:59PM ReportThe difference between you and those who define immersion differently is that you seperate games from real life and play them for fun. The individuals who complain how this and that ruins immersion want a game to simulate real life for reasons I'll leave to the readers of my post to figure out for themselves.
To them, MMORPGs aren't games in the traditional sense of Sonic the Hedgehog and Call of Duty but miniture virtual worlds in which they can lead a (no pun intended) second life and feel as if their actions have some influence within that world.
Sat Jun 05 2010 11:27PM ReportI am probably one of those people less interested in a game and more interested in a virtual world, but loading screens and graphics don't hurt my sense of immersion at all. I am willing to accept whatever world is put in front of me and run with it.
The only thing that ruins my immersion is other players, people who feel that they must comment on what gear I don't have at my level, and how I am " doing it wrong" if I don't care about the most efficient way to level. People who can't mind their own business ruin my immersion. :P
Sun Jun 06 2010 4:03PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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