-The Immersion Limiters-
Immersion, as Yahtzee explained far more eloquently than I could, is an incredibly important part of gaming and game design. Making your game immersive can rescue a mediocre game from obscurity, and a lack of immersion can ruin the experience of an otherwise excellent one. But there are several annoying limiting factors to perfectly immersive game design, in which the players are truly sucked in by the game world and can let themselves believe (if only for a few minutes) that they really are defending Dukis, or saving the Mushroom Kingdom, or being trapped by an evil computer with only a companion cube and special gun for company. For the benefit of any potential or actual game designers reading this who would like to make their game more immersive, I have here listed six major blockers of immersion and a few clever ways people have found to overcome or sneak past them. You're welcome.
-The Anger Limit-
The most brutal of immersion-breakers is when the game irritates you enough to snap you out of your little trance through sheer frustration. Making you want to throw your controller at the screen and screech at it has the little-noticed side effect of making you remember that you are holding a controller and looking at a screen. Likewise, getting players lost and forcing them to either restart the level or look for hints online takes them out of the game. But it can be simpler than that; any point at which a challenge or feature becomes an irritation will take players out of the game, if only momentarily. Before trying to suck players in, it is imperative that you make sure you do nothing to push them out. Here's how.
? Make all really tricky or hard-to-figure-out parts of your game optional or interchangeable. That way, no-one will get stuck on that one level they just can't do for too long and will instead be able to go on to another.
? Make ALL cutscenes skippable. That way, anyone playing purely for the challenge and experience instead of the story or jokes will be able to do so, and people who are playing the game through a second time won't be bored to death by hearing the same thing again. Make sure that they are re-watchable later, though, in case they're skipped by accident or actually have important information in them.
? If a player is clearly lost or confused, then have one of the characters in the game explain their next move. Wandering around the wrong part of a building for five minutes looking for zombies is not fun.
? When the player fails, make sure it is their fault, not that of the cheating AI, bad controls or random chance.
-The Graphics Limit-
Formerly pretty much THE limiting factor of immersion in videogames, this is less of a problem now, as games like Bioshock spell a new era of photorealistic game graphics. And most gamers have never cared that much for eye candy anyway, preferring a good story and fun gameplay. Nevertheless, looking (reasonably) good is a significant part of letting us get immersed in the game, so if you don't have access to Bioshock-level graphics then you should probably take a look at the tips below.
? Set your adventure in a world which is far simpler and/or more iconic than our own. So long as it obeys consistent rules and has interesting characters, it can still make the player involved. In fact, a minimalist/cyberpunk aesthetic, properly pulled off, can be even more awesome in some ways than the most well-animated gritty steampunk/war/whatever game. Notable Users: Super Paper Mario, Immortal Defense, Darwinia, flOw, Boom Blox.
? Remember: Quality over Quantity. Make a few very good, very pretty objects/enemies/whatever, and then come up with a believable reason to repeat them over and over. This can be a lot of help when coding manpower is a low but you want to maintain an atmosphere. Notable Users: Portal.
? I know I do not speak for all gamers in this regard, but I honestly don't care about how dark the forest is, or how shiny the spaceship is, or how sterile the Enrichment Center is. What I do care about is the emotional effect on me and my avatar. Therefore, good scripting, choice of music and voice acting can make up for almost any set of graphical weaknesses or blunders. Plus, there's just something direct about a human voice (or inhuman, if the plot demands) that is far more effective and personal than anything you decide to put on my screen; and I find that the right music can help set an atmosphere far more easily and completely than the environment my character finds themselves in. Notable Users: Immortal Defense, Sacrifice, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.
-The Tutorial Limit-
Gamers usually aren't patient enough to read manuals, and it's usually more effective to get us to learn by doing things anyway. Thus, part of any game will have to explain how the gameplay works, which button does what, what the different blocks are for, etc. The problem here is that it snaps us out of our immersive trances when the protagonist's wise mentor starts mentioning the X button and timed hits. Plus, it?s particularly jarring when your character is supposed to start off as an elite super-soldier but all his friends still feel the need to remind him about how to fire his gun and hit things with a crowbar.
? Understand that we can endure tutorials, to a limited extent. Gamers have evolved thick mental anti-tutorial armour out of necessity, so you do have a limited gap there. Just make sure that they're all confined within the first hour. If we spend ten hours on a game, and nine of them are an utterly immersive experience, I will forgive the hour that it spends trampling on my suspension of disbelief. Notable users: Prince of Persia, Immortal Defense.
? Make the first half of the game effectively be one big tutorial. I admit that I have no idea how this is supposed to help, but the only games I know that had the courage and/or insanity to try this were Portal and Psychonauts, and they turned out pretty good immersion-wise.
? Do what everyone else does: just superimpose words on the screen at appropriate times. This is really a cop-out, but it doesn?t hurt immersion as much as you'd think, especially if they're all confined within the first hour or so as per the first point. Notable users: Psychonauts, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter . . . pretty much everyone, really.
-The Intelligence Limit-
The development of realistic, intelligent, human AI in games seems to have hit a stumbling block in all but the most advanced of PC titles. There's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself. Bad AI from allies makes escort missions and team missions a pain in the butt, and having the helpless waif you're protecting get stuck behind a wall ruins immersion faster than you can say ?pwned?. There's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself. And it's simply impossible to maintain suspension of disbelief when your enemies are so predictable in their attacks. All in all, this facet of gaming seems to be in a pretty sorry state, especially considering that there's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself.
? If you can't get human enough AI, explain this problem away by making the character the AI belongs to either a robot/group of robots or a computer program. Notable users: Portal, Ratchet: Gladiator.
? Alternately, you can explain away the stupid and crazy things your AI does by making the characters it dictates the actions of stupid and/or crazy. Insanity is also a good excuse (possibly the only one) for the stilted and repetitive babblings that almost invariably come out of your enemy during boss battles. Of course, the best idea is a crazy computer, as Portal proves quite wonderfully. Notable users: Portal, Immortal Defense, Spiderman 1, Ratchet: Gladiator, Bully.
-The Interface Limit-
Now we're getting subtle. Gamers do not have their immersive experiences ruined by non-game-explained interfaces for the most part (unless your game has loading screens that take ridiculous amounts of time to do their job, in which case, shame on you). However, getting rid of or customising interfaces appropriately can go a long way towards sucking your player in just that little bit more.
? Eliminate health bars. They aren't the most immersion-dampening interface of all time, but they're by far the easiest to get rid of. You can have your character?s vision turn redder or become more blurred as more damage is dealt to them, and have it return to normal as they do. You can pick up how hurt they are by physical signs like slightly slower walking, more blood on their clothes or their flying sidekick changing colour. Or you can simply trust that people will, after the first few levels, remember that their avatar will take five hits before dying, and subconsciously keep count. Notable users: Portal, Ico, flOw, the Crash Bandicoot series, the Spyro series, most modern FPSes.
? Get rid of menus and inventory screens. Instead of the normal options at the introductory screen of a game you can walk the main character around a small room with symbols for the typical choices of ?load?, ?new game?, ?quit? etc. For example, in a game about a writer, you could make them select their journal to load the current game, a fresh piece of paper to start a new one, or the door out of the room to make them quit. Likewise, you can get rid of inventory screens by just having the character cycle through their items manually (assuming you have few enough items in your game). Notable users: Grim Fandango, Psychonauts.
? Replace the mini-map with a companion who leads the way or tells you where to go, a beam of light sent down by your avatar?s deity to illuminate their target, a special sense of direction, etc. Notable users: Mirror?s Edge, Sacrifice (The latter does this but refuses to relinquish the minimap for gameplay reasons. Oh well.)
? At least give some sort of reason for the interfaces. Super-senses, a special helmet that displays the HUD, magical abilities . . . just give me some token excuse for why my character would know that information. Notable users: Spiderman 1, Sacrifice, Uplink.
? If you can't get rid of interfaces (or won't because doing so would compromise the all-important gameplay), at least make them thematically appropriate. Use your imagination. For example, in Psychonauts, you don't have the standard health bar, but instead some tiny, iconic brains which lose cranial fluid as the main character loses health. If they fit in well enough with the game, they will be easier to ignore. Notable users: Pretty much everyone. This is one thing the industry seems to have really gotten the hang of. Take a bow, guys.
-The Ultimate Limit-
Even if you follow all this advice, you're eventually going to hit the biggest block of all: that your players are just pushing buttons and watching a screen. There are, actually, ways around this block as well, and more are being developed. Just make sure you're able to pull it off.
? Make more hacker games. The invention of this genre was such genius that I can't believe that it hasn?t caught on yet. The idea is that you, the Dorito-crunching player facing the monitor, play through as a Dorito-crunching computer genius facing a monitor connected to a Hollywood-style superpowered machine that can let you crash the London power grid on a whim. The immersion is complete and only ends when you want it to; and with the sheer thrill of demonic power that such games have the potential to give, you aren't going to want it to until real life starts calling. The toilet break you take while your system is busy bypassing the President's security system? That was awesome-hacker-you taking a toilet break. Plus, you automatically bypass the Tutorial Limit here; awesome-hacker-you presses the X button to delete his enemies' hard drives, just like you do. Notable users: Uplink, Darwinia (kind of), System Shock (which doesn?t really count because your avatar, not you, is actually the hacker). And that, as far as I know, is it. Wake up, games industry! One of these games, made with today's software and a big enough budget, would be the next Portal. Get on it!
? Translate body movement into onscreen action. I know that the only games console that does this properly is the Wii. I also know that it is more or less useless at anything but point-and-click shooter-style stuff. But it?s GOOD at that, and is useful as a gateway technology if nothing else. Make people move their arms to play, and you?ve both got them immersed and kept their eyes un-glazed enough for them to remember to enjoy themselves. Notable users: Most Wii games, Guitar Hero and its descendants.
? Use Cave technology. Special rooms exist that monitor the user's position within them and adjust themselves to give the impression of objects existing within them or outside them. These systems are incredibly expensive, and apparently are also useful for research, so don?t expect them to be used properly for games any time soon. A little lower down the line is the way one man (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/) glued two LEDs to a hat and programmed his Wii so that it recognised where his head was, then made it adjust itself to give the impression of being a window into another world. Imagine what this kind of technology could do with some big money and sufficient processing power behind it. You would be able to dodge incoming shots by moving on your own two feet, hide behind the couch, and then strafe out to land a few replying laser blasts. Notable users: A bunch of universities who understandably prefer to use their Caves to cure cancer than to play Doom, and one Youtube user with a genius IQ and time on his hands. Check back in a decade or two.
? Make games that let you control the onscreen action with your mind. No, really. There is a machine which lets quadriplegics play Pong with their minds by monitoring electricity in their brains. This is still fairly crude, but the creators and users have high hopes of it. Or, for a similar effect, have it monitor heartbeat and other bodily signals. Notable users: a group called Braingate who are focusing on bionic limb control over gaming, a few random hippies who make games based on the novelty of altering moods to play games over actual good gameplay. Again, check back in a decade or two.
--------------------------------------
well guys what did you thnik? Be kind this is my first artical.
Immersion, as Yahtzee explained far more eloquently than I could, is an incredibly important part of gaming and game design. Making your game immersive can rescue a mediocre game from obscurity, and a lack of immersion can ruin the experience of an otherwise excellent one. But there are several annoying limiting factors to perfectly immersive game design, in which the players are truly sucked in by the game world and can let themselves believe (if only for a few minutes) that they really are defending Dukis, or saving the Mushroom Kingdom, or being trapped by an evil computer with only a companion cube and special gun for company. For the benefit of any potential or actual game designers reading this who would like to make their game more immersive, I have here listed six major blockers of immersion and a few clever ways people have found to overcome or sneak past them. You're welcome.
-The Anger Limit-
The most brutal of immersion-breakers is when the game irritates you enough to snap you out of your little trance through sheer frustration. Making you want to throw your controller at the screen and screech at it has the little-noticed side effect of making you remember that you are holding a controller and looking at a screen. Likewise, getting players lost and forcing them to either restart the level or look for hints online takes them out of the game. But it can be simpler than that; any point at which a challenge or feature becomes an irritation will take players out of the game, if only momentarily. Before trying to suck players in, it is imperative that you make sure you do nothing to push them out. Here's how.
? Make all really tricky or hard-to-figure-out parts of your game optional or interchangeable. That way, no-one will get stuck on that one level they just can't do for too long and will instead be able to go on to another.
? Make ALL cutscenes skippable. That way, anyone playing purely for the challenge and experience instead of the story or jokes will be able to do so, and people who are playing the game through a second time won't be bored to death by hearing the same thing again. Make sure that they are re-watchable later, though, in case they're skipped by accident or actually have important information in them.
? If a player is clearly lost or confused, then have one of the characters in the game explain their next move. Wandering around the wrong part of a building for five minutes looking for zombies is not fun.
? When the player fails, make sure it is their fault, not that of the cheating AI, bad controls or random chance.
-The Graphics Limit-
Formerly pretty much THE limiting factor of immersion in videogames, this is less of a problem now, as games like Bioshock spell a new era of photorealistic game graphics. And most gamers have never cared that much for eye candy anyway, preferring a good story and fun gameplay. Nevertheless, looking (reasonably) good is a significant part of letting us get immersed in the game, so if you don't have access to Bioshock-level graphics then you should probably take a look at the tips below.
? Set your adventure in a world which is far simpler and/or more iconic than our own. So long as it obeys consistent rules and has interesting characters, it can still make the player involved. In fact, a minimalist/cyberpunk aesthetic, properly pulled off, can be even more awesome in some ways than the most well-animated gritty steampunk/war/whatever game. Notable Users: Super Paper Mario, Immortal Defense, Darwinia, flOw, Boom Blox.
? Remember: Quality over Quantity. Make a few very good, very pretty objects/enemies/whatever, and then come up with a believable reason to repeat them over and over. This can be a lot of help when coding manpower is a low but you want to maintain an atmosphere. Notable Users: Portal.
? I know I do not speak for all gamers in this regard, but I honestly don't care about how dark the forest is, or how shiny the spaceship is, or how sterile the Enrichment Center is. What I do care about is the emotional effect on me and my avatar. Therefore, good scripting, choice of music and voice acting can make up for almost any set of graphical weaknesses or blunders. Plus, there's just something direct about a human voice (or inhuman, if the plot demands) that is far more effective and personal than anything you decide to put on my screen; and I find that the right music can help set an atmosphere far more easily and completely than the environment my character finds themselves in. Notable Users: Immortal Defense, Sacrifice, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.
-The Tutorial Limit-
Gamers usually aren't patient enough to read manuals, and it's usually more effective to get us to learn by doing things anyway. Thus, part of any game will have to explain how the gameplay works, which button does what, what the different blocks are for, etc. The problem here is that it snaps us out of our immersive trances when the protagonist's wise mentor starts mentioning the X button and timed hits. Plus, it?s particularly jarring when your character is supposed to start off as an elite super-soldier but all his friends still feel the need to remind him about how to fire his gun and hit things with a crowbar.
? Understand that we can endure tutorials, to a limited extent. Gamers have evolved thick mental anti-tutorial armour out of necessity, so you do have a limited gap there. Just make sure that they're all confined within the first hour. If we spend ten hours on a game, and nine of them are an utterly immersive experience, I will forgive the hour that it spends trampling on my suspension of disbelief. Notable users: Prince of Persia, Immortal Defense.
? Make the first half of the game effectively be one big tutorial. I admit that I have no idea how this is supposed to help, but the only games I know that had the courage and/or insanity to try this were Portal and Psychonauts, and they turned out pretty good immersion-wise.
? Do what everyone else does: just superimpose words on the screen at appropriate times. This is really a cop-out, but it doesn?t hurt immersion as much as you'd think, especially if they're all confined within the first hour or so as per the first point. Notable users: Psychonauts, Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter . . . pretty much everyone, really.
-The Intelligence Limit-
The development of realistic, intelligent, human AI in games seems to have hit a stumbling block in all but the most advanced of PC titles. There's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself. Bad AI from allies makes escort missions and team missions a pain in the butt, and having the helpless waif you're protecting get stuck behind a wall ruins immersion faster than you can say ?pwned?. There's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself. And it's simply impossible to maintain suspension of disbelief when your enemies are so predictable in their attacks. All in all, this facet of gaming seems to be in a pretty sorry state, especially considering that there's also limited dialog, which often ends up repeating itself.
? If you can't get human enough AI, explain this problem away by making the character the AI belongs to either a robot/group of robots or a computer program. Notable users: Portal, Ratchet: Gladiator.
? Alternately, you can explain away the stupid and crazy things your AI does by making the characters it dictates the actions of stupid and/or crazy. Insanity is also a good excuse (possibly the only one) for the stilted and repetitive babblings that almost invariably come out of your enemy during boss battles. Of course, the best idea is a crazy computer, as Portal proves quite wonderfully. Notable users: Portal, Immortal Defense, Spiderman 1, Ratchet: Gladiator, Bully.
-The Interface Limit-
Now we're getting subtle. Gamers do not have their immersive experiences ruined by non-game-explained interfaces for the most part (unless your game has loading screens that take ridiculous amounts of time to do their job, in which case, shame on you). However, getting rid of or customising interfaces appropriately can go a long way towards sucking your player in just that little bit more.
? Eliminate health bars. They aren't the most immersion-dampening interface of all time, but they're by far the easiest to get rid of. You can have your character?s vision turn redder or become more blurred as more damage is dealt to them, and have it return to normal as they do. You can pick up how hurt they are by physical signs like slightly slower walking, more blood on their clothes or their flying sidekick changing colour. Or you can simply trust that people will, after the first few levels, remember that their avatar will take five hits before dying, and subconsciously keep count. Notable users: Portal, Ico, flOw, the Crash Bandicoot series, the Spyro series, most modern FPSes.
? Get rid of menus and inventory screens. Instead of the normal options at the introductory screen of a game you can walk the main character around a small room with symbols for the typical choices of ?load?, ?new game?, ?quit? etc. For example, in a game about a writer, you could make them select their journal to load the current game, a fresh piece of paper to start a new one, or the door out of the room to make them quit. Likewise, you can get rid of inventory screens by just having the character cycle through their items manually (assuming you have few enough items in your game). Notable users: Grim Fandango, Psychonauts.
? Replace the mini-map with a companion who leads the way or tells you where to go, a beam of light sent down by your avatar?s deity to illuminate their target, a special sense of direction, etc. Notable users: Mirror?s Edge, Sacrifice (The latter does this but refuses to relinquish the minimap for gameplay reasons. Oh well.)
? At least give some sort of reason for the interfaces. Super-senses, a special helmet that displays the HUD, magical abilities . . . just give me some token excuse for why my character would know that information. Notable users: Spiderman 1, Sacrifice, Uplink.
? If you can't get rid of interfaces (or won't because doing so would compromise the all-important gameplay), at least make them thematically appropriate. Use your imagination. For example, in Psychonauts, you don't have the standard health bar, but instead some tiny, iconic brains which lose cranial fluid as the main character loses health. If they fit in well enough with the game, they will be easier to ignore. Notable users: Pretty much everyone. This is one thing the industry seems to have really gotten the hang of. Take a bow, guys.
-The Ultimate Limit-
Even if you follow all this advice, you're eventually going to hit the biggest block of all: that your players are just pushing buttons and watching a screen. There are, actually, ways around this block as well, and more are being developed. Just make sure you're able to pull it off.
? Make more hacker games. The invention of this genre was such genius that I can't believe that it hasn?t caught on yet. The idea is that you, the Dorito-crunching player facing the monitor, play through as a Dorito-crunching computer genius facing a monitor connected to a Hollywood-style superpowered machine that can let you crash the London power grid on a whim. The immersion is complete and only ends when you want it to; and with the sheer thrill of demonic power that such games have the potential to give, you aren't going to want it to until real life starts calling. The toilet break you take while your system is busy bypassing the President's security system? That was awesome-hacker-you taking a toilet break. Plus, you automatically bypass the Tutorial Limit here; awesome-hacker-you presses the X button to delete his enemies' hard drives, just like you do. Notable users: Uplink, Darwinia (kind of), System Shock (which doesn?t really count because your avatar, not you, is actually the hacker). And that, as far as I know, is it. Wake up, games industry! One of these games, made with today's software and a big enough budget, would be the next Portal. Get on it!
? Translate body movement into onscreen action. I know that the only games console that does this properly is the Wii. I also know that it is more or less useless at anything but point-and-click shooter-style stuff. But it?s GOOD at that, and is useful as a gateway technology if nothing else. Make people move their arms to play, and you?ve both got them immersed and kept their eyes un-glazed enough for them to remember to enjoy themselves. Notable users: Most Wii games, Guitar Hero and its descendants.
? Use Cave technology. Special rooms exist that monitor the user's position within them and adjust themselves to give the impression of objects existing within them or outside them. These systems are incredibly expensive, and apparently are also useful for research, so don?t expect them to be used properly for games any time soon. A little lower down the line is the way one man (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/) glued two LEDs to a hat and programmed his Wii so that it recognised where his head was, then made it adjust itself to give the impression of being a window into another world. Imagine what this kind of technology could do with some big money and sufficient processing power behind it. You would be able to dodge incoming shots by moving on your own two feet, hide behind the couch, and then strafe out to land a few replying laser blasts. Notable users: A bunch of universities who understandably prefer to use their Caves to cure cancer than to play Doom, and one Youtube user with a genius IQ and time on his hands. Check back in a decade or two.
? Make games that let you control the onscreen action with your mind. No, really. There is a machine which lets quadriplegics play Pong with their minds by monitoring electricity in their brains. This is still fairly crude, but the creators and users have high hopes of it. Or, for a similar effect, have it monitor heartbeat and other bodily signals. Notable users: a group called Braingate who are focusing on bionic limb control over gaming, a few random hippies who make games based on the novelty of altering moods to play games over actual good gameplay. Again, check back in a decade or two.
--------------------------------------
well guys what did you thnik? Be kind this is my first artical.
