On immersion
Immersion is one of those buzzwords that we, as gamers, hear all too frequently. Immersive graphics, immersive sound, immersive storytelling! Everyone is talking about it. You will rarely see pre-release marketing materials for a game that don’t mention the word at least once. It’s easy for us to get annoyed at the constant repetition of a term that we may feel is not that important. Immersion, however, is becoming increasingly relevant today because it’s changing, and it’s changing for the better.
Whether we realize it or not, we want games to be immersive. When you fire up an RPG, you want to feel like you’re the character you’re playing. You want to be a part of the game, you want to experience it. We become entranced by these games because we want to feel it. We desire to experience something we cannot do in reality on our own.
In the early days, video games were about collecting things and earning a high score. There wasn’t much more to them. Today, our hobby has changed vastly. Video games are now a storytelling medium, on par with works in film and literature. Immersive elements are used to pull the player into the game and to better tell the story. Though not always successful, technology has come to a point where it lends to the suspension of disbelief in video game worlds and, to the hope of developers worldwide, increases the immersion of these games.
It’s all about the graphics, right?
Graphics got all fancy in the early 2000s. With the help of hardware-accelerated rendering and impressive new capabilities with DirectX, we were finally on a road to see photo-realistic video games. Developers thought that good graphics would automatically lead to gamer immersion. Though the notion isn’t necessarily incorrect, developers hedged their bets too soon. The technology of real-time computer graphics wasn’t good enough yet, and it just led to many games creeping into the uncanny valley.
It's difficult to be immersed in a game world when this is as convincing as it looks.
The uncanny valley presents numerous issues that can prevent a player from believing in the game world they’re interacting with. When a player witnesses something in-game that seems odd or off to them, it breaks them out of the illusion. This can be a static object like a small crate not moving when a large object barrels into it, or a character walking through a solid object, or water not reacting properly when something drops into it. These issues have been a thorn in the side of developers hoping to engross players in their game and storytelling. Fortunately, the tide is finally turning. Technology is nearing a point at which true immersion can be achieved with in-game visuals and other important techniques such as advanced physics calculations.
Graphically, photo realism is here. A quick glance at Battlefield 3 with the highest settings enabled on the PC and it becomes clear that real-time graphics have achieved incredible things. BF3 is one of the first games that has made me actually stop playing to consider the fact that what I’m looking at is not real. It’s that good.
Beyond the graphics, though, Battlefield 3 employs many other things that make the war believable. The game offers some of the finest sound design ever experienced in a video game, with Hollywood-caliber effects. The game’s animation engine is astounding, merging photo realistic character models with natural, human movements (a shortcoming in nearly every game that attempts to look photo real). Petty effects like solar flare, dirt, and sparks look completely convincing. When you’re neck deep in the urban combat of Battlefield 3, you understand very quickly that this is the reality of warfare. This is the closest you will ever come to brutal modern fighting without actually enlisting in the military. You find yourself completely immersed in the game before you know it, because every element is believable.
Photo realistic visuals combined with intense camaraderie make Battlefield 3 very immersive
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has also taken the immersion bar to a new level, but in different ways than Battlefield 3. Skyrim is a fantasy game, featuring dragons, magic, zombies, and tons of other things that don’t exist in our world. Gamers playing Skyrim are still fully immersed in that game world despite the lack of connection to reality. The graphics are certainly good, with weather effects realistic enough to chill players to the bone. Skyrim finds its immersion in other things, though. Storytelling that is compelling and interesting, a giant world that gives the player total freedom, the ability to partake in mundane tasks such as leathermaking and mining, and dynamic events that feel organic such as dragon attacks, hired hits, and attacks by wildlife.
Both Battlefield 3 and Skyrim offer bold new looks at immersion, breaking all of the conventions that we knew before. Though remarkably different games, both titles present worlds so rich and believable that players are sucked into it, making their false reality seem completely believable.
Virtual campfire storytelling
An interesting side effect of these new levels of video game believability is the ability to make each gamer’s experience individual and unique. Things that happen to me in Skyrim will probably never happen in the same way to other players. Combat engagements experienced in Battlefield 3 will never play out the same way twice. This leads each player to have a very personalized experience, and that leads to campfire storytelling.
Breathtaking environments makes the fantasy setting of Skyrim completely believable
This new level of immersion has enticed members of online communities such as ours to share stories of their experiences in both Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. Unlike previous titles that claimed to suck you into their game worlds, Skyrim and Battlefield 3 are the first major examples of titles that our community members are eagerly sharing stories about. There are stories of intense fights, cooperation and teamwork, conquests of giant beasts, and everything in between. When you glance at the experiences that other players are having, you realize just how unique your own play through can be.
Fitzkrieg tells a harrowing tale of a demon bear that went up against a legion of soldiers:
In that time I managed to hop a short rock and ended up in the camp of the Rift guards I passed earlier. The twenty or so guards rushed out to fight the bear. The monster mauled one of the archers before he could draw his weapon. Then, as the swordsmen gathered around it, he killed another five—each swipe killing a man. The archers opened up on it, riddling it with arrows. It finally died after killing another two guards and having 88 arrows sticking out of it.
That was the tale of the unholy bear.
Gargoyle gives us an unfortunate tale about a late night hunt:
Late in the night in the first village, I thought I saw a wolf prowling through town. I crouched all-stealthy like and put an arrow through its head from a block away.
Upon closer investigation, it was a dog. The next morning, a young boy was standing over it, saying something like “How could this happen?!” Oops.
Meantime, Jokke is a dragon slayer, but that doesn’t mean anything when confronting a goat:
Okay, so I’m in Winterhold talking to the guy that will ride you to any major city. I told him where I wanted to go, and he told me to get in the back when suddenly I hear the familiar sound of a dragon nearby. I tell him that I’ll be right back, and quickly locate the dragon. I’m quite used to slaying these things now, so the battle is over fairly quickly. I absorb the power and feeling all high and mighty I start my stroll back to the “taxi”. I’m quite low on health at this point, but I figure time heals all wounds, and there are no more hostiles around. Just as I’m about to climb onto the cart, this goat comes charging out of nowhere, and plants its horns in my butt. I’m dangerously close to death, and start sprinting away from the obviously crazed goat. I eventually lose the goat, and jog back to the cart. I imagine the look the driver must have had on his face when I kill a dragon with a few well placed chops of my axe, but am bested by an ordinary goat…
On the Battlefield 3 side of the fence, the experiences tell a much different story. Icrontic members have been working together in squads on our public server. Here, members are working together to prevail in combat, and the stories are of camaraderie and intense struggle together.
NiGHTS tells of a terrifying struggle with three other community members as they’re zeroed in by mortar fire:
Two mortars had since gone up and zeroed in on the white minivan we were hiding behind. Canti was yelling not to spawn on him, but at that point we’d all already deployed. Cannon was yelling into the mic, but I had no idea what he was saying—we were getting hit with mortar rounds, RPGs, and small arms fire all at once. I revive Pig, turn the corner, pop a few suppressing rounds off in the hopes I hit something or buy some time to dive into the river, revive Cannon, repeat. It was absolute chaos …the sound was deafening. A friendly LAV went up in flames to the right of us, spewing smoke into the air. The orange glow of shoulder mounted rockets were quickly moving through the cloud, as well as tracer rounds and the occasional grenade. I’d crossed the street, hoping to make a break for it, when Canti went down. As I turned to revive, a mortar exploded behind me and I was tossed forward, helpless, only able to reach my hand out towards my dying friend.
Pigflipper explains how having Canti as a spotter helped lead them to victory:
With Canti spotting, me dropping mortars like they were going out of style and the other two pushing forward, we managed to get a 4 cap (all points controlled) and push the other team FAR back in their base. Canti was 0-0 with over 2k points, I was 15-0 with almost 4k points. One of the best runs I’ve had in the game and by far the most fun.
Canti: “Tank incoming down right side, moving fast”
Me: “What, the one I just disabled with my mortar?”
Canti: “Yup, next target, bunch of infantry moving in behind the point…”
Finally, CannonFodder explains how having a tight squad of four in constant communication helped remove a serious threat when they were all pinned down by sniper fire:
Bobby joined us about 6 games in, and we had some epic squad battles at Seine Crossing. Canti was doing his Recon thing, and Piggy and I were fighting a tank that just wouldn’t die. Bobby shows up and is all “what’s up tank?” and suddenly we’re rolling the other team. Bobby wasn’t done there though, about 3 minutes later we’re being held down on a bridge by a couple of snipers. I don’t know how the hell he got over there, but next thing I know Bobby is yelling over vent “Take that knife kill! oh, DOUBLE knife kill! No more snipers!”
What does this all mean?
The fact that we’re witnessing such an influx of enthusiastic game experience storytelling stands as a testament that developers are finally achieving true immersion. Players are being sucked into these game worlds and having truly unique experiences. What I do and see in a game will be completely different than the many other people playing the same title. This excites us as gamers, and it produces a growing desire to share stories, much as we do in real life about our own experiences as we grow.
Video game technology still has a long ways to go before we close in on the hallowed one to one realism of virtual worlds, but until that actually happens, we can rest easy in the fact that we are close enough that we can escape to virtual worlds and experience something completely unique. For those moments of chaos and wonder, we have managed to live a separate life. With that, we are able to return with stories of our conquests that we can share with eager ears, just as a Bard might in a tavern in Skyrim, or a soldier who’s seen too much might when he returns home and visits a pub. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer.
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