What Happened to Immersive Sims?
Among the most high-profile PC gaming releases of 2016 was none other than Dishonored 2, by Arkane Studios. Despite the flawed technical state of its launch, it was praised for its replayability, level design, and open-ended gameplay which gave players tremendous creative control over how to complete objectives.
In these aspects, it follows a history of very rare, fairly complex, and almost universally-acclaimed games called immersive sims. Why did this genre, which includes common “best game of all time” contenders like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Thief, fall by the wayside? And why are there so few of these games even today, in spite of their acclaim and commercial success?
What is an Immersive Sim?
Although the name itself is fairly ambiguous — plenty of games are designed to immerse players in their setting, or simulate components of reality — the genre is actually defined by a fairly narrow set of traits:
- Persistent gameplay systems, which players can leverage to accomplish goals in creative ways not necessarily intended by the developers.
- Open-ended level design and unpredictable AI, leading to emergent gameplay and ensuring that each playthrough will be different.
- A structure of linear progression, whereby gameplay occurs within a well-defined, overarching story and clear objective.
These traits produce a gameplay experience that is virtually unparalleled in terms of player agency and engagement, without compromising on compelling plot or character development. By stripping away arbitrary restrictions on player choice, and arming players with a variety of tools — typically special abilities or items — with which to pursue open-ended goals, developers can dissolve the boundaries between players and their in-game avatars, while keeping them within a focused story structure that maintains tension and purpose.
While each immersive sim varies in emphasizing some of these traits over others, some common threads do emerge. For the sake of immersion, all use a first-person perspective, with minimalistic UIs and “blank-slate” avatars allowing players to more easily self-insert into that world. For the sake of simulation, all contain elements of shooters, role-playing games, platformers, and stealth games, often represented by the different tools and progression options available to players.
The payoff for synthesizing these gameplay elements into a satisfying, cohesive experience can be phenomenal, especially in terms of critical and player response.
That being the case, why have game developers largely shied away from crafting these gems?
Immersive Sims are Too Hard
The very elements of player agency that make these games so compelling also make them incredibly challenging to design. Developers of immersive sims must not only design multiple approaches to each objective, but also make each choice feel meaningful and rewarding enough to justify its inclusion, lest players feel “railroaded” into one optimal path and lose all sense of immersion.
It is a challenge that can sometimes transcend the development process. The marketing for Dishonored, in which you play a bodyguard-turned-assassin with supernatural powers, emphasized how these powers could be used and combined in creative ways to kill enemies. Meanwhile, the game punishes you for killing, placing you on the path to the horrific “high chaos” ending if it deems your body count excessive. This sort of dissonance that can feel betraying, if players approach the game with the wrong expectations.
Immersive sims must also meet the standards of their predecessors. Past games have set the bar high, not only in offering meaningful choices but also in connecting their disparate components into experiences greater than the sum of their parts.
In the classic Deus Ex, seemingly minor gameplay actions at the input level could open or close entire paths at the progression level, and these paths in turn could have significant ramifications at the narrative level; these levels of gameplay remain tightly linked, from the very first mission all the way to the conclusion. Meanwhile, Bioshock was designed to be enjoyed both as a power-fantasy shooter — one that plays tricks with the player’s perception of agency and power — and as a sociopolitical commentary on extremism.
That being said, the difficulty of designing good immersive sims is actually not the fundamental problem.
Immersive Sims are Too Specific
Plenty of incredibly talented game developers have never touched this genre. Even developers behind some of the most well-regarded immersive sims of the past few decades have only returned to the genre once or twice, if at all.
The fundamental problem of immersive sims is that, ironically, their scope is too narrow.
All immersive sims can effectively be summed up as “action-adventure games that are first person, with anonymous characters possessing extraordinary abilities, that follow rich stories.”
While there may be plenty of room for differentiation in terms of setting and plot, core gameplay features are fairly similar across all of them. It is hardly surprising that security cameras, for instance, have become a common staple of the genre, along with hacking mini-games of various kinds, as obstacles that can deter players from strategies deemed “too easy”. Nor is it surprising that virtually every immersive sim gives players a set of supernatural powers, upgradeable via some rare in-game commodity, each corresponding to a particular gameplay approach.
Randy Smith, who worked on three of the Thief games in the late 90s and early 2000s, put it simply:
“The way we’ve done immersive sims in the past has very much been focused on Sci-fi and Fantasy story-lead adventures. So we’re taking something that’s a sub-genre already and then on top of that, we’re adding a whole load of other rules…And we end up applying so many rules to sub-genre, it’s a little bit stuck doing the thing it does.”
For gamers who enjoy fantasy and sci-fi action-adventure games, that operate with this consistent set of rules, that’s fine. More of the same can’t hurt! But for developers, who want to break new ground and likely have more game ideas stewing in their heads than they could possibly create in a lifetime, that’s very limiting.
Immersive sims were not even designed as a new genre to begin with. Deus Ex came about as a response to what developer Ion Storm felt was, at the time, an overly restrictive view toward how much agency players could handle. According to veteran developer Jordan Thomas, the game was meant to allow an unprecedented scope of interactivity, and in the process become this sort of “anti-genre” that could support so many gameplay styles at once.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before other games followed in that tradition, and someone collected these new games into a genre of their own. The rest is history.
The Legacy of the Immersive Sim
So, if the developers of classics like Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Thief did not go on to produce dozens of other immersive sims, and the larger gamedev community did not embrace the genre wholeheartedly, what difference did these games actually make?
Quite a lot, actually. You just won’t find those effects in immersive sims.
The genre was a shining example of how allowing players to choose their own goals, and giving them the tools to improvise their own solutions, could be incredibly immersive and engaging. These games also validated dynamic, simulative elements like physics engines as ways to make players feel more at home within game settings. As a result, these systems found their way into many other critically-acclaimed games like EVE Online, Half-Life 2, Red Read Redemption, and later entries in the Grand Theft Auto series.
While immersive sims are too narrow in scope to innovate beyond a certain point, their impact is being felt in other genres, which are embracing the features that made immersive sims so special.
So here’s a call to action: if you want more games incorporating these features, vote with your wallet. Support games that use immersive and simulative features to maximum effect, and demand more of these features from developers in “traditional” genres.
To be clear, this is not a postmortem for the immersive sim genre. Recent installments like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored 2 have proven there is still demand for immersive sims to this day. Indeed, their rarity should be celebrated, as a sign that there is still a special sauce to this style of game, something that requires hard work and talent to pull off.
Most importantly, it’s a sign that when the next immersive sim shows up on store shelves, like its predecessors, it’ll be something truly exceptional.
Marcello Miranda is a tech entrepreneur and writer for Virtual Reality Pop and The Cube. Follow him on Medium and Twitter, and hit that ♥ if you enjoyed this content!
