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PC Gamer Editorial - "less story is more immersive&quot

Topher

Cipher
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
1,860
ChristofferC said:
The problem with discussing immersion is that everybody seems to have their own vague definition of it.

I don't even think of it as immersion. If a character is trapped in a haunted house and tasked with escaping the game would not benefit by adding a bunch of side-tasks related to getting cats out of trees or helping the butler complete his duties. If your goal is to escape then make the players tasks revolve around escaping, if your goal is to save the galaxy/vault then the same concept applies. In Wing Commander your goal is to deal with the war not to rescue every kidnap victim you come across and as such there are no kidnapped victims to save or petty dispute to settle (unless crew related, which makes sense). It's just good consistent design to keep the player working on whatever big goal you've placed before them.

Some games succeed in putting the MQ on the back-burner like Morrowind and it succeed because it was paced in a way that made it seem natural and appropriate to quest around the world. Compare that with the MQ in Oblivion or Mass Effect. In Fallout 1 you had a maguffin(SP?) to find but you had a visible time limit and as such you felt like you had some time (not unlimited) to go questing (it even felt natural sometimes as you would be working for people in hopes of finding out more about the Waterchip). Time management became a mechanic in itself for first time players.

It all in how you present the world and story. Epic tales of impeding doom require a more focused approach in both pacing and narrative. Both approaches(Morrowind and Oblivion) are valid but Oblivion fails because it wan't to have it's cake and eat it too.
 

Zomg

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 21, 2005
Messages
6,984
It's almost as if some retard decided to use a metaphor for being submerged in a liquid as an article of specific criticism
 

PorkaMorka

Arcane
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
5,090
According to merriam webster, immersion just means absorbing involvement.

And that's a pretty good word actually, as games can probably excel in this aspect to a greater extent than other media.

The most obvious example of immersive games would be MMORPGs and similar games, because the combination of addiction based gameplay structures and social interaction can mean that people become more involved in the game than in their own real life... the ultimate in immersion if you will.

However, in the single player context, it's not necessarily such a bad thing.

But almost by definition, what causes someone to become absorbingly involved in a game is subjective, outside of purely addiction based games you will simply be much more likely to become immersed in games that you enjoy.

So I don't see how talking about immersion in the single player context is particularly useful, as it will vary so heavily from person to person.

For example I find that generic settings actually are more immersive relative to most original settings. (I'm quite willing to imagine an orc, but I really don't want to sully my imagination imagining an awful Avernum Cat person).

Similarly,beyond a certain point, excessive plot is much more likely to be an impediment to immersion for me, rather than a boon. I don't need a reason for my guys to be slaying their enemies, slaying your enemies is its own reward. But give me a BAD motivation for my characters (as so many games do) and that is quite an irritant.

Low detail graphics are another bonus to immersion for me, as they spark the imagination, while modern graphics dictate everything to your imagination.

And the most important thing is a robust game system, which avoids seemingly wrong results, combined with consistently challenging scenarios/encounters.

But I can certainly see how others would be immersed by shiny graphics and bad fiction (not being sarcastic).
 

Archibald

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
7,869
Bioware cocksucker detected. Same "ideas" were used in ME2 and now in DA2, less is better. Instead of trying to fix things which he mentioned about ME bioware just removed them. When DA2 comes out he`ll use same arguments to write his 10+best+game+ever review for it.
 

Achilles

Arcane
Joined
Sep 5, 2009
Messages
3,425
Ah, now that I' ve had the chance to read the full article, I think I can agree with the basic idea behind it. The fact that many quests in RPGs are beneath your character's status in the game world is certainly annoying: "Hello Dragon Knight, oh great hero of Rivellon, you living god you! Btw my neighbour borrowed my rake and still hasn't returned it, could you go and get it back for me? Kthxbye".

However, as Archibald already pointed out, cutting the amount of content is not the solution. If you really want to improve your game and you're not just looking for excuses, there are a couple of simple solutions:

1) Design better, more appropriate quests (ffs)! Don't cut out the extra content, improve it. Get rid of the trivial quests and add better ones, or if you have a party give the player the option to send someone else to do it.

2) Give the player the ability to delegate. Taking Mass Effect as an example, as the leader of you should be able to assign specific duties to the crew. Let them take care of the little things if you wish according to your guidelines ("Jackson our rifles suck, find better equipment"), or take matters into your own hands if you prefer the hands-on approach. Those lazy fuckers are just sitting around being all emo or waiting to be fucked by you, why not make them actually useful?

tl;dr: When some content doesn't work in a game, you try to improve it instead of cutting it out entirely.
 
In My Safe Space
Joined
Dec 11, 2009
Messages
21,899
Codex 2012
Topher said:
Awor Szurkrarz said:
Topher said:
I though it couldn't be an RPG because laptop guy doesn't have any stats
Many cRPGs are party based without a BG-style main character.

Topher said:
because it's too combat based..
It has no more combat than other cRPGs, even extremely storyfag ones. It just has good combat.

I didn't mean to imply that I didn't think it was an RPG. I was just mentioning some of the reasons I have seen given as to why it wasn't an RPG, in support of the Codex is for "storyfags" hypothesis. I couldn't care less if it is or isn't an RPG, I just care that it's good.
I thought that "JA2 RPG or not" debate on the Codex has ended with a consensus that it is a RPG.
 
Joined
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Messages
6,207
Location
The island of misfit mascots
Article is a bit :retarded: but you could easily make that point in a better way. The point isn't to have less story, it's to make use of the medium - so get rid of the Dragon-Age-style 'gameplay, gameplay, gameplay (where gameplay = killtrash mobs) then HEY SOME STORY, then back to gameplay' crap.

Not everyone's favourite game, I know, but the intro to Bioshock does game-storytelling brilliantly. Most companies would give you a cutscene talking about the history of Rapture, what it is, what Objectivism is, that they couldn't stamp out religion and so bibles funded the black market, and so on. Instead you get an illusion of freedom - yes it's railroaded, but it 'feels' sufficiently free not to annoy you, then you get to hear from Mr Ryan directly what kind of a huy he is, you wander around the lobby and learn what Rapture is and how it relates to Objectivism, you see all the monsters wearing new years eve outfits and hence you're told without any cutscene that something 'big' happened on that particular date, you see stacks of bibles in the smugglers' storage, letting you know that it was religion that put the first hole into rapture, without having some cutscene tell you any of it. The rest of the game was a letdown, but it knew how to use environment instead of cutscenes.

Another example - and again, I know many folks think this level is overrated, I'm just using it because everyone here is familiar with it: the haunted house in Bloodlines. You don't need any fucking cutscene or audio tape telling you what happened. You go through the place and experience it - ok, there's shit being thrown at me, the boss was lying about it not being able to hurt me, oh hang on that woman actually points to useful stuff, what's that? 'he's coming' I'd better get ready to run then...Sure there were a couple of journal entries, but they were more background than the events themselves, and weren't vital for knowing what was going on. I can't help but suspect the team behind Dragon Age would have filled every detail up with notes and audio-tapes, a lengthy dialogue with both ghosts telling their life stories, and a few cutscenes to boot.

If 'less story' means 'less cutscenes, more use of the specific advantages of gaming as a story-telling medium', then I'm all for it.
 

DraQ

Arcane
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Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Topher said:
If a character is trapped in a haunted house and tasked with escaping the game would not benefit by adding a bunch of side-tasks related to getting cats out of trees or helping the butler complete his duties. If your goal is to escape then make the players tasks revolve around escaping, if your goal is to save the galaxy/vault then the same concept applies. In Wing Commander your goal is to deal with the war not to rescue every kidnap victim you come across and as such there are no kidnapped victims to save or petty dispute to settle (unless crew related, which makes sense). It's just good consistent design to keep the player working on whatever big goal you've placed before them.

Some games succeed in putting the MQ on the back-burner like Morrowind and it succeed because it was paced in a way that made it seem natural and appropriate to quest around the world. Compare that with the MQ in Oblivion or Mass Effect. In Fallout 1 you had a maguffin(SP?) to find but you had a visible time limit and as such you felt like you had some time (not unlimited) to go questing (it even felt natural sometimes as you would be working for people in hopes of finding out more about the Waterchip). Time management became a mechanic in itself for first time players.

It all in how you present the world and story. Epic tales of impeding doom require a more focused approach in both pacing and narrative. Both approaches(Morrowind and Oblivion) are valid but Oblivion fails because it wan't to have it's cake and eat it too.
This.

There is nothing wrong in keeping player's options in character, when that's possible, but sometimes the game essentially imposes no predefined role on you (see Morrowind), and actively encourages you to carve yourself some niche.

It's not about options, nor about complexity, nor about story - branching or otherwise, nor about sidequests. It's about consistent design and trying to reclaim your cookie after eating it, which usually results in turd or a puddle of vomit, neither of which are particularly appetizing.

By all means, spare me your kittens in the trees when I'm urgently saving the world, but don't babble about it using confusing language where you refer to ill-fitting sidequests and gameplay elements as 'narrative' and to making sense as 'immersion'.
 

Raghar

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,503
It's the same for books, short stories are more immersive, have better graduation and are able to get straight at the story. On the other hand not everything can be described as a short literal work.
In addition properly designed computer games are more often about what they will not allow, than how many features they will implement, or how long are they.

However his talk about role was completelly off. Players are not playing a role, they are playing game, or using interactive art.
 

epikitscheesy

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Messages
146
immersion is NOT under-defined when it comes to RP

Greetings, RPG Codex!
According to the title, this topic seemed of the type that would always get me registering and firin away in any forum.
Unfortunately, because of the misleading title and the overall wishy-washy nature of editorial columns, the whole subject of the thread stayed equally vague throughout the discussion.

Anyway, some thoughts:
1. Are "immersion", "immersiveness" really that under-defined?
Not from my rpgamer's pov! When it comes to rp, these terms should really be understood as immersion into the role of a character , as opposed to immersion into f.e. Tetris.

2. the title extracts only the part that's fit to nettle our venerable story fags. The author really proclaims more of a generalized "focussed/limited gameplay=more immersion"-thesis.
And imo, that really works with most of the linear action-adventure/classical crpg type of games.
It DOESN'T work with non-/multilinear open-world-gameplay as in some modern crpgs and classical pnp rp.
Because these crpgs define themselves/gain immersiveness through
-functional diversity
-open world design
-extensive story lines

That's right, I don't see a conceptional conflict here.
Elaborated:
F.e., Piranha Bytes' games feature a working melange of those points, while being VERY focussed in the overall game-design
Why, how?
- They are a tinny tiny team of 20 men designing ow-rpgs. So they are forced to insane effiency in the development process.
This, and excellence, is imo achieved through a clear hierarchy:


idea/concept of game
dictates
spectrum of features
dictates
level of elaboration of it all


The outcome:
- story and open-world elements intertwine, because they result from the same concept
- motivation to play through the story results from gameplay and game world, and vice versa
- game world is generally more believable and homogeneous. IMMERSIVE!

Thus, "less story = more immersive" is worthless crap.
However I agree with Paul Taylor that a focussed initial game concept is far more important than lists of features and elaboration of these!


Thus, Mass Effect as a negative example fails to immerse me NOT because of its diversity in gameplay and the extensive storyline, but because of its inconsistent overall game-design:
apart from the storyline, there is too little ACTIVE freedom to do things that matter/ deeply affect the further gameplay/story,
but too much PASSIVE freedom from real decisions with consequences. The quest system renders every mission string equally unimportant/urgent. So the "nonlinearity" of this game is kind of fake.
As if corresponding to Taylors thesis, Bioware realised that and made ME II more linear. So now, it IS actually more immersive as shooter, but not as an RPG.


kind regards
 

rinkuhero

Novice
Joined
Nov 16, 2010
Messages
7
Location
United States of America
ChristofferC said:
The problem with discussing immersion is that everybody seems to have their own vague definition of it.

yeah, i agree with this. when you talk about terms like immersion and even story, different people have different understandings of those terms, so communication is difficult.

(for instance, he believes wing commander 1 had little story; i played through that game and felt it had a lot of story. there was a ton of text, a lot of cutscenes, there was a huge amount of story by space shooter standards. so i don't understand how he can say that wing commander doesn't have much story.)

another issue is: why is it better to sacrifice story for immersion? i mean, is good immersion *better* than a good story? according to who? some people might prefer a game with a high story and low immersion, and vice versa. there's no reason to make one or the other.

basically i think people should make, and play, the type of games they like. not care about what the market prefers, or what is better or whatever.
 

epikitscheesy

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Messages
146
rinkuhero said:
another issue is: why is it better to sacrifice story for immersion?
epikitscheesy said:
Thus, "less story = more immersive" is worthless crap.
However I agree with Paul Taylor that a focussed initial game concept is far more important than lists of features and elaboration of these!
In short: there is no need for that sacrifice anyway!
Be so kind to comment on my post :P
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
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Location
New Vegas
For the record the "less story is more immersive" thing was the title of the editorial, I didn't pull that quote out of my ass for the thread title.
 

Smiffy

Novice
Joined
Nov 18, 2010
Messages
83
The propability that at some point of the story of a story-driven game the player finds whatever point of the story somewhat lacking and thusly loses feeling of immersion rises with the amount of story a game has and with its dependancy on it. To avoid this the gameplay, the game's story and the player's disposition to the whole ordeal need always to be in-tune. Only if that is the case suspension of disbelief and thusly immersion can be maintained. That's what i think anyway.

Also it might be so that 12-year-olds are more able to handle it if gameplay and story are flawed since due to their lack of experience and responsibilities their disposition is much more forgiving than that of 30-year-olds, whose pull on real life is much stronger. They need a stronger dose in other words.
 

epikitscheesy

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 17, 2010
Messages
146
StrangeCase said:
ChristofferC said:
The problem with discussing immersion is that everybody seems to have their own vague definition of it.

And "RPG". And "C&C".
Not.
Pleease, however generalised or interpreted, these terms are still TERMINOLOGICALLY DEFINED. Plus, in a discussion, everybody can be bothered to use other terms correspondingly, to narrow themselves down to rather general truths in their respective fields.
"In RP, immersion into the role of a character is essential."
Wasn't so hard after all!

Of course, you can apply radical constructivism on everything, but man, I wanna be RIGHT! On everything!

For the record the "less story is more immersive" thing was the title of the editorial, I didn't pull that quote out of my ass for the thread title.
k, noticed.
 

deus101

Never LET ME into a tattoo parlor!
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Messages
2,059
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2
Re: immersion is NOT under-defined when it comes to RP

epikitscheesy said:
Anyway, some thoughts:
1. Are "immersion", "immersiveness" really that under-defined?
Not from my rpgamer's pov! When it comes to rp, these terms should really be understood as immersion into the role of a character , as opposed to immersion into f.e. Tetris.

Well...yes larping can be a valid goal.
But do not forget the munchkins, remember the G in RPG, the challenge factor as provided by the various gameplay mechanics most also be immersive.

That is, how much fun and engaging is it to deal with the limitation your character got?

I'm just speaking out loud because it seems we are on the same page, however you're a bit vague on what you would define as a good story, i would say a good RPG provides not a story but a series of events that combined makes a story.

In that quantity not quality is the better choices, to many fags at gamasutra wants stories to be LOTR EPIC, action movie epic and thus lead down to the path of overexposure of NPC's with voice acting and cinematics.
Which completely drowns the "Narrative motivates player" method.
 

StrangeCase

Educated
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Messages
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A trite metaphor near you
epikitscheesy said:
StrangeCase said:
ChristofferC said:
The problem with discussing immersion is that everybody seems to have their own vague definition of it.

And "RPG". And "C&C".
Not.
Pleease, however generalised or interpreted, these terms are still TERMINOLOGICALLY DEFINED.

As what? Ask twenty different Codexers what the definition of an RPG is, you'll likely get twenty different answers. For C&C, yeah people understand the basic concept, but when discussing implementation, it's the same situation. It trips up discussions around here all the time.

Plus, in a discussion, everybody can be bothered to use other terms correspondingly, to narrow themselves down to rather general truths in their respective fields.
"In RP, immersion into the role of a character is essential."
Wasn't so hard after all!

Terrific. Wanna know what most Codexers [pretend to] think about RP? :D

Of course, you can apply radical constructivism on everything, but man, I wanna be RIGHT! On everything!

Not sure what you're trying to say here.
 

Rhalle

Magister
Joined
Nov 25, 2008
Messages
2,192
bhlaab said:
I agree that games with less awful exposition are better.

Biowrare games are exposition. Everyone is always telling you their history in one way or another. Hell, that's the goal of many quests.

Wandering psychotherapist and amateur historian-- typical Bioware player character.
 

silvade

Novice
Joined
Nov 19, 2010
Messages
13
"less story is more immersive"

The sentence is quite right. Bear in mind that I did not read the whole article, just the headline.

Take real life for example, when we find out some new mystery in our little planet or the universe we feel the want of researching and uncovering this secret and eventually we get enthralled by it, seeking the answer and explanation for it. The fun and immersion is about discovering a bit more everytime. But when we, for instance, go to school to study a new subject, our teachers throw loads of information and reading material so we can understand it, I don't know about you guys, but me and some folks, that I know, get bored of it quickly, and it becomes annoying and tiresome to study it... blah blah blah.

Now in the RPG, if at the begging of the game, you supply the player with lots of background and information about the lore, story, etc. The immersion will wear off fast and the ride won't be much enjoyable.
But if you take out the cutscenes, take out the texts about character and NPCs and any other mean of telling the lore in the first hours of gameplay, in other words, throwing the player in a world that he knows NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING about, he will feel this want of searching for knowledge and discovering the secrets of this virtual realm. Eventually, like I said, he will get immersed.

The answer for immersion, is the game's pacing... let the player slowly find out by himself the answers for his questions about this place he now "lives". The developers could, for instance, make NPC dialogue a less informative, not all NPCs in games should be willing to chat with you, about the history of the gods and that ruin over there or that dude who fought dragons. Just like in real life, you don't go around asking questions to people in the streets and they will answer it nicely like if they were your best nerd friend that helps you with your homework.
A smart person, or player, would seek to answer his own doubts by trying to figure out by himself and not let the others help you.

The player will want to read a book, so he can understand a bit more of that subject, and then he travel to somewhere to learn more, he will start to venture ruins where he heard people in the streets talking that there was a secret treasure. I don't know, the possibilities of immersing the player are endless.
Don't throw hundreds of walls of texts in the beggining of the game or a cutscene with a bunch of flashbacks and dialogue about what's happening in the world and what already happened. Let the player figure out. ALSO this will create different ideas in each different person, each player will understand the world in his own way. Just like in real life, where one thinks god created the universe and another thinks the universe wasn't created, it always exists or some who believes the Big Band created everything.

All of this helps creating immersion.
So, does the Codex understands what I want to say?
You don't need to have little story, you just need to balance how the story is told so that the gamer won't feel like he knows everything. Let him formulate his own ideas and thoughts, solve puzzles and riddles that will slowly reveal a bit more about the virtual environment.
(Excuse me if my english is bad, it's not my native language, I tried the best)
 

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