Immersion: An Imperfect Model
So, I want my game to be immersive.
Much like PvP and player-led before it, “immersion” has become one of those words, increasing dilute of meaning. We can all (apparently) agree that is deeply desireable not just in our live roleplay games but also in the media consume.
So after much navel-gazing and talking other people about how they achieve immersion in games, I’ve tried to break down the concept into different ways a player can achieve immersion. Whilst I’ve found this a very helpful model, especially when it comes to thinking about the compromises one needs to make to realise a game, it’s certainly not the only one.
The External
The simple way to think about external immersion is that it’s about what looks good in photos of the game.
The visual aesthetic is simple enough and it is what most people colloquially think of when talking about an immersive game. It mean being the possession good world design and a consistent execution thereof. There is always the danger that some people have different associations and different thresholds of what looks reasonable next to one another.
Many classic fantasy settings will possess nations that run from “grubby peasant” to “ethereal high elves” to “pseudo stone age mystics” to “late renaissance finery.” The spanning of multiple time periods and genres can come across as discordant, especially as most historical cultures wore what they wore not simply by choice but by the limitations of manufacture. On the other hand, a lot of people familiar with the fantasy genre are well acclimatised to patchwork settings that have stitched together cultures from diverse time periods.
In terms of a lot of visual medium, be it a video game or a film or even LRP, it all comes down to painting an IC veneer on everything visible. The Hide All Coke Cans approach.
However, there is still notable disagreement as to what is better. For example, if I desire a timepiece at a live roleplay game, would it be better to have a pocket watch or a hidden modern watch? The former can be good as despite it being not within period, it still isn’t overtly modern, so at a glance, it should be less visually jarring for other players. The latter, on the other hand, is clearly not of the period and would allow for no one to think I am diluting the setting by trying to drag in something from a different era.
If we are talking, say, a video game, we can ask if it’s better to put an IC veneer over your HUD display or try to have it be visible as infrequently and as small as possible. Say, the stained glass inspired interface of Crusader Kings II compared to the minimalistic HUD mods for any of the Elder Scrolls games (example). They are offering very different sort of games and, in a way, different sorts of engagement. But it shows again how immersion even in visual aesthetics isn’t a simple matter.
Tactile interaction is perhaps more applicable to larp and video games than other medium, but it’s the ability to handle a prop and have every aspect of that prop be, well, interactive[1].
Say, there is a box that is locked. Do I have to get a key? Can I, say, remove the hinges and open the box that way? If there’s a cart with wheels, can I move it? If there’s a ward drawn across the path, can I walk around it? If there is a physical trap with a tripwire, can I disarm it or just avoid it? There is this room of props, can I steal one? Tactile interaction is about having the things in the world be tactile and solidly satisfying to interact with, but also that those interactions be intuitive. In video games, this is to have doors actually open and, well, be doors.
Needless to say, visual aesehtics can sometimes be at odds with tactile interaction as I might not want my lovely, expensive props to be destroyed.
The Internal
Granted, it all immersion is internal, so this category is a little arbitrary when put under further interrogation but this is meant to be dealing with less tangible elements of immersion. It is the mental, all the bits that go on inside the brain, the “getting into character.”
If the external is about creating the illusion that the player is really there, in that fantastical world, then the internal is about how the player can better become that character.
For the most part, players can agree that external immersion is objectively good and the means of achieving it are fairly universally recognised[2]. The problem is, of course, that internal immersion is even more subjective. Many enjoy live rolpeplay as a hobby without ever experiencing character bleed or wholly in-character decision making moments, thinking instead as themselves piloting a character.
Consistency and coherence is what makes the world believable. Beyond the visual, the world needs to react in a way that is consistent to my expectations as that sort of reenforcement is what creates reality. Plot twists and deceptive NPCs can shake the verisimilitude, of the gameworld, for example, as it is very hard to selectively introduce doubt into the minds of the players. The result is, generally, that they will doubt the world as much as they begin to doubt their sources of information.
There is an old saying, three men make a tiger. That is to say that a rumour repeated thrice (seemingly from different sources) will be believed. Thus creating new truth. It’s that.
Coherence isn’t necessarily about monotony so much as having a thematic hook that grips the imagination. A setting doesn’t need to be consistent in all ways, but having a thread that holds it together will make it understood[3]. A strong thematic coherence can make me overlook (or at least forgive) the more granular inconsistencies.
Character agency may seem unintuitive. After all, one isn’t always feeling particularly empowered in the real world. Perhaps a better way of putting it is the phrase currently in vogue in video game circles “choice and consequence”. And consequence doesn’t so much mean the idea that there is a different ending, but that there is weight and impact to one’s actions. That if one behaved differently, things might just have turned out differently. This feeling of consequence is what allows one to feel grounded in the world because that is when the world feels real, that one feels like one is part of that world.
And finally, context, which is perhapes even less tangible than the rest. But it’s about the mental parameters that I draw up in my mind when I go in character. Knowing the things my character knows and feeling the things my character feels. It’s about the certainty with which I can occupy the brainspace of my character.
Imagine you are playing a farmer, yet you come into the game knowing nothing about what has happened on your farm in the past year. This information, however, is available but I need to extract it from an NPC. Now, think on that exchange where you know they are saying things that you feel you should already know. That dissonance there is the lack of the internal immersion I’m trying to describe.
Compromises
With the broad framework more or less outlines, I can now talk about the actual point of this model: I propose that immersion shouldn’t be seen as a spectrum of games being unimmersive one end and immersive the other, but as a series of compromises.
Imagine a game without lammies[4], for example. Without eyesore of the little bits of laminated paper, the gameworld is much more visually appealling, but it also means that there is no good way of communicating what something is and what it does mechanically. It has thus prioriting the external over the internal of knowing what something does and its significance.
To take another example: having a vegetable seller in the marketplace can greatly add to the external immersion of a game, but not being able to interact with them in negative ways, such as threatening them or stealing/ruining their stock can take away from a character’s immersion as they are hit with the question of but why can’t I?
I don’t point this out because the compromise is a bad one, but I would like to make that choice knowingly and thus be able to seek to mitigate the problems in the immersion I am sacrificing, but more importantly ensure that which I’ve chosen be able to shine. If I’ve already sacrificed external immersion in one way, perhaps it is best to do so consistently.
Yes, I’m advocating minmaxing.
[1] When it comes to interactivity, this flows into the problem in larp where, all to often, interacting with something involves finding a ref and asking them. Having to a ref talk through how I am interacting with an item (“well, the box is magically sealed, so you can’t just take off the hinges”) can really put a damper on immersion.
[2] Even if not always articulated that way. And as the previous section pointed out, some of that consensus seems misplaced.
[3] I always think of Maelstrom when it comes to a thematic core. It draws from diverse time periods but having the thematic link of discovering new worlds. All the cultures are at the point where historically they are said to have come in contact with the Americas (with some exceptions, the Kamakurans are from the era they discovered the West) and thus it reenforces the sense of cultural shock form exploration. New Worlds are being discovered both literally in terms of land (exploring new map squares every downtime!) and in terms of the skills and magics.
[4] Little bits of laminated paper that are attached to props.
