Immersion in Games

[KoolHndLuke]

 It's simply defined as deep mental involvement, But it actually encompasses so much more! Namely, our emotions when it is good, intensely when it is really good and it seems more like an experience than a game and It becomes a prominent work of art for us to study repeatedly, cherish for the rest of our lives and laud to/for any that would listen. I quite fucking literally have lost jobs/relationships because of games that I could not make myself stop playing! Is it a sickness? A psychological addiction? Perhaps. I really don't care tbh. 

 

Recently, I have been delighted with one such game because it is so enticing as to make me thoroughly enjoy the intricate webs it weaves, the imaginative setting, the characters and factions involved, and the search for answers to complex questions that lead to even my stubborn self reexamining some of my beliefs/convictions and maybe see things a little differently.

 

This, I think, is why we play games.

 

However... we don't always share these discoveries, tell our friends, shout it to the rooftops. Why? I couldn't say for sure. Perhaps we fear being confronted about our passions, or having flaws- both in us and in our favorite games- pointed out to us or just plain being embarrassed by others with all the grace of fucking boulders crashing down a mountainside, lol.

 

Then it is time... and this is the thread to talk passionately about your game(s) that you have enjoyed immersing yourself in so much! Fear not, for we are LL... and we are first and foremost.... Gamers, just like you. There is no fucking shaming here. 

 

So.... what games have you been so immersed. impressed by, or are completely fucking mind blowing for you? 

 

Since... I said there is no shaming here... and I couldn't fucking care less what any naysayers thinks, the particular game that I'm playing right now and completely enjoying is PoE II: Deadfire.

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by KoolHndLuke

[Alessia Wellington]

I've still yet to find a game that I could get lost in.

 

Since I mostly play FPS games, more than a few matches/rounds at a time aren't happening anyways. Unless it's a busy weekend, but even then can't I play for more than three hours per session.

[Grey Cloud]

Total War 2 and Attila TW. Given my interest in ancient history I can spend forever just sat there gawping at the map and thinking. Technically that's not immersion in the game but it works for me.

 

PoE II: Deadfire. I enjoyed both of the PoE games.

[donttouchmethere]

So many...

The games don't even need to excel in something like graphics, they just need to have a certain something. The right combo of light, music and how things are done ingame, story (if any).

 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl + survival mods + more intense blowout mod + a lot of fixes and various addons.

It was scary, hard to survive, always on the lookout to hide somewhere from the blowout, find a safe place to rest, the howling of monsters somewhere in the distance, hoarding of food, ammo and medicine, the odd anomalies which changed place after a blowout, the campfires with Guitar music, the story, the changing weather, the dark nights, the painful screams of everything caught in the open while a blowout happened, the good feeling to find anything that helped (guns, ammo, canned food, a still working gun, a hiding spot for the night), the changing mood from day/night/rain/storms/color effects from the blowout, the good feeling to be relatively safety in a towns or a city, the need to use a flashlight in dark undergrounds, all those mutants, the wildlife that wasn't only player centered (creatures hunting, NPC factions fighting each other), the unique characters, the voices in the reactor building taken from an English BBC Chernobyl documentary ("the power surge" still echoes in my head).

It has it all and I now can understand preppers a lot better.

Somehow it also was a prediction how Ukrainians feel, live and die now.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited July 8, 2023 by donttouchmethere

[Wolfstorm321]

I hate the word "immersion". I know what it means, but cabbage players changed its meaning, so now I associate it with cabbagery. Same for "lore-friendly", I read someone using this term and the first thing I think is about raping the lore. 

 

That being said, I finished Black Flag weeks ago and I had a lot of real immersion on it, as I played for many hours into the night. For me, a immersive experience is when you don't see the hours passing. It have nothing to do with playing as a farmer or a hunter, which is pure boredom and actually not immersive. A game as simple as a sidescroller will be immersive if you don't see time passing. 

[KoolHndLuke]

12 hours ago, Alessia Wellington said:

I've still yet to find a game that I could get lost in.

Maybe it's just me, but I've really gotten into some titles in the past where I just couldn't stop playing them. Wouldn't sleep hardly and barely ate anything I was so enthralled, lol.

 

11 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

Technically that's not immersion in the game but it works for me.

If the game makes you think, then it's immersion to me. If it makes you feel, then it's pretty damn good immersion (I mean other than just hating everything about it).

 

11 hours ago, donttouchmethere said:

games don't even need to excel in something like graphics, they just need to have a certain something. The right combo of light, music and how things are done ingame, story (if any).

Completely agree. Otherwise those simple little puzzle games wouldn't be popular at all.

 

11 hours ago, Wolfstorm321 said:

"lore-friendly", I read someone using this term and the first thing I think is about raping the lore

I've never been a fan of lore traditionalist that are adamant about stifling everyone's imagination. As modders, we try to stick with the lore I think, but it isn't written in stone anywhere saying we absolutely have to. 

[worik]

12 hours ago, donttouchmethere said:

The games don't even need to excel in something like graphics, they just need to have a certain something.

☝️ This!

Though the "certain something" is hard to grab and name.

 

E.g. back in the 90's I was literally addicted to the underwater scenes of Terror from the deep. Scared to hell and struggling to save the world. ?

It had everything to make me hold my breath, duck in my chair, get sweaty hands on the mouse, not wanting to get any of my Aquanauts hurt.

And it still gives me a thrill nowadays (We bought it again on Steam during C19 ?)

Edited July 9, 2023 by worik

[worik]

I might want to add some major elements for my "immersion"

• fascination: It's the thing that keeps me thrilled and into the plot or into the scene
• plausibility: it all makes sense to me
• plot: there has to be something, explaining the "why", the "what now" and the "what next"
• motivation: I must get into the protagonists motivation or have the choice to play out my own (vanilla Skyrim ist very powerful on that end, vanilla FO4 much less)
• absence of disturbances: CTDs, bugs, RL ringing phone,  RL family talking to me when I have dived into it, RL  need to go to the toilet when the protagonist doesn't

 

And some elements that don't matter for my "immersion"

• not necessarily first person POV: even when the game breaks the 4th wall it can still be immersive for me
• not necessarily GFX, SFX, voice acting, and such: Even a simple book can be immersive, meaning a text adventure is fine with me

 

Technical gimmicks can help with the upper bullet point, though they are not sufficient by themself.

E.g. FO4 gained a lot immersion for me, when I added the Vivid Weathers mod. Although by itself it is pointless, in combination with other things, it's a very valuable puzzle piece.

Edited July 9, 2023 by worik
typos

[donttouchmethere]

37 minutes ago, worik said:

E.g. back in the 90's I was literally addicted to the underwater scenes of Terror from the deep.

THANKS! hahaha

I was totally addicted to that too. If my girlfriend stayed overnight I sometimes sneaked to the PC early in the morning to continue saving the world (at some point she caught me and I'm sure she rather would have caught me watching some porn than killing some odd crab creatures).

 

XCOM defense was the entry drug, but TFTD was much more time intensive (those ships had too many rooms to check >.<)

[worik]

12 minutes ago, donttouchmethere said:

If my girlfriend stayed overnight I sometimes sneaked to the PC early in the morning to continue saving the world (at some point she caught me and I'm sure she rather would have caught me watching some porn than killing some odd crab creatures).

? We made the mistake to play together .. and were far too much scared to do anything meaningful after.

(Except holding each other tight and keeping awake, so no alien could mindcontrol us. Although... ? speaking of it ...  that wasn't that baaaad anyway.)

 

Friends had a WG and played that game, too. Even at a party, at least one always sneaked away to play, then another, and suddenly the party was divided between a crowd around that game) and "others". (can't tell how many there were left, I was "crowd")

[Guest]

I am a Skyrim Freak!

Being retired, I have lots of time to kill and it takes my mind off of the Boredom train.

I keep playing it over and over, taking a break when I get burnt out, then going at it again. Currently using the Legacy of the Dragonborn mod.

The word "immersion" is a tricky one, I use lots of clothing mods as I want the women looking good, I read "that's not Immersive or that breaks the immersion.  

I ask you, what is "immersive" about swimming in water that would kill you in a minute or two, among a few other things.

I am reminded of Floki tied to the post during the onset of winter with Ragnar watching from the porch, wrapped in furs, Floki was shivering a bit but the people in the show Vikings were portrayed as a very cold resistant race of people just like my Nord Beauties.

[KoolHndLuke]

Kool, some more games for me to completely absorb in. 

 

Skyrim is weird as far as immersion goes. The base game was decent when it came out and I played the hell out of it for years without mods. Then I got a decent pc and started getting into the mods. The awesome thing about mods for Skyrim is that we (almost) can turn Skyrim into whatever we want. Plenty of very well imagined mods made with new ones getting better and better. It's amazing to think how far this game has come in over a decade.

 

But even though I finally got to enjoy the game with mods, I'd played it too long vanilla. So I don't think I ever got that really "immersive" feel for it like some other games.

[steelpanther24]

I still play XCom: UFO Defense (the one before Terror from the Deep) and much like the others, there are so many.   However one that had me praying for a mission to be successful is Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space as it showed just how many risks we took to win the space race.   Since there were no auto saves, and the manual saves would set you back to the beginning of the "turn",  I would close my eyes and just listen for the "Chute is out.  It open and everything is going well. Over" (indicating that the space capsule has successfully returned to earth and did not burn up in the atmosphere....or skip off the atmosphere.....or blow up on launch or about a hundred other things that could have resulted in a dead astronaut). 

 

Another game is Ultimate General: Civil War, where I look at the bodies where the stupid Confederates made several charges against a harden position, thinking to myself what a senseless waste.....sure they were just electrons on a computer screen, but sometimes I felt so guilty about mowing down row after row of simulated young men. 

 

Maybe the worlds we "create" in cyber stay around, ending up much like this:

 

Spoiler