IMMERSION VS. GAME MECHANICS

This is basically the opposite of how I feel. Immersion is only useful to the extent that it doesn't get in the way of gameplay. Making the player feel like the game makes sense is important, but in the end, if the game isn't fun, nothing else matters.

You can generally figure out a way to explain any gameplay mechanic anyway. Especially in fantasy or sci-fi, which is 95% of video games.

I don't exactly agree with the first part of that quote. I guess what players look for in a game depends from person to person, and they're all valid reasons. Also it is possible for gameplay to 'succed' without immersion... But I wholeheartedly agree with the second part of the quote, and I think the key word is "support". Ideally, all game elements should 'support' each other.

Now, if a developer feels appropriate to give one element more weight than the other I guess that's valid too. I just hope this comes from a full conscious decision and not just some excuse to avoid work. It is typical that you hear things like "games don't need fancy graphics" or "games don't need to have stories" etc. But they typically come from people with a myopic point of view. People who can't do those things for shit, and that's just their way to pat themselves on the back for not learning how to do them. xD /rant

At what point is gameplay detrimental to immersion? I guess that would be when there's no consistency between what you can do in one and the other. For example, when you can bring back characters from the brink of death at any time in battle, but when a character needs to die for plot reasons, no amount of Phoenix downs or Life spells are going to change that; that's kind of cheap. It's no big deal, but if the players notice stuff like that it means you're not being careful enough when laying the rules of your world.

I consider gameplay more important than immersion, but immersion is still not unimportant. You can make small gameplay sacrifices for large immersion gains, but if you make huge gameplay sacrifices, you're doing something wrong.

That said, usually when there's a gamplay vs something else conflict that harms immersion it's a totally unnecessary conflict. Example, the heroes surrender to soldiers who they could have beaten had the game entered combat mode. In this case, you can have maybe five times as many soldiers appear than what the player usually fights in combat and that way make surrendering more logical. If the player isn't convinced that 20 soldiers is to much even though she/he normally only fights 4 of them at a time, chance is you made combat to easy.

The tetris example pretty much applies to what I said.

Mind that Immersion doesn't necessarily mean "I totally believe I'm in this world, omg it's so real", because immersion is something that's lost the minute the very thing occurs to you; you can't be aware of immersion and be immersed at the same time.

What I mean is that you can play tetris for six hours and be completely absorbed by it; that IS immersion, when you forget the world around you even exists because you're busy playing this wee game. Even a simple one like tetris.

Honestly, I don't think you can really do anything to "create" immersion. Immersion is automatic, it's already there for the player. All a developer can do is fuck it up with logical inconsistencies, bugs, graphical inconsistencies, grammar/dialogue screw-ups, irritating gaem mechanics etc, thus implying that a developer "trying to create immersion" is really just trying to create a game that's smooth and bug free.
Every flaw and weirdness in the game breaks immersion slightly, but there's never really anything you can do to actually create it, as such.

At least not when you can play retro games like Asteroids and be completely absorbed without stopping and thinking "god damn, when I press X, my guy just rolled over the wall instead of crouched behind it, bloody game..." akin to more modern games that really aim for it and only really make you ever more aware that it's just not quite the same.

Mind you, none of this matters if the game is just smooth and bug-free because it completely lacks any gameplay or mechanics at all~

I try to keep gameplay and immersion together as much as possible, because I dig RPGs with internal logic that makes sense, but there is a line you have to draw, mainly because it wouldn't be much fun if your characters died from receiving one good mortal blow with a sword and had to micromanage their inventory to make sure they weren't carrying too many swords. (though there is an upcoming game, TUG, that purports to do just this and it sounds pretty rad)

I'll always side with gameplay over immersion if there's a conflict; at the end of the day however realistic I want my game to be, the player is looking for something that's fun to play.

There are a few little examples of Mario games adding immersion, and I'd say the game that did it best (while preserving mechanical fun) was Super Mario 64. A lot of the little secrets around the castle were both fun to discover while also adding to the idea that this castle was a huge, mysterious world to be explored - for example, the secret Peach window that takes you to the star race, or how entering the Wet-Dry world painting at a certain height changes the water level, or how if you get sucked out the waterfall in the Metal Cave, you come out the waterfall in the castle's moat. These are all minor examples that also serve mechanical purpose, but they did a good job of making the castle real.

I think the Zelda games did this even more with secrets. A large point of gameplay in Zelda is finding every secret, which serves to make the world feel big and immerse you while also just being a lot of fun. Majora's Mask did this especially well with the people's schedules and the moon falling, but I also thought this scene from Ocarina of Time was a good example:




It's little stuff like this that serves the mechanics while also giving the game a sense of "realism", or at least helping the player suspend disbelief.

Anyway, my two cents! We think of gameplay as being all about the player's choices and mechanical control, but the stuff they can't control is just as important to the experience :)

bahleted