How Game Gimmicks Break Immersion

The Moving Pixels blog has brief discussion of how gimmicky game mechanics often break a player's sense of immersion, making it painfully obvious that he's simply jumping through carefully planned hoops set up by the developers. The author takes an example from Singularity, which has a weapon that can time-shift objects between a pristine, functional state and a broken, decayed state. Quoting: "The core issue with this time control device is that it's just not grand and sweeping enough. It doesn't feel like it's part of a world gone mad. Instead it's just a gameplay tool. You can only use it on certain things in certain places. You can 'un-decay' this chalkboard but not that desk. You can dissolve that piece of cover but not most of the walls in the game. The ultimate failure of such cheap tricks is that they make the game world less immersive rather than more compelling. The world gets divided into those few things that I can time shift, that different set of things I can levitate, and that majority of things that I can't interact with at all. ... I'm painfully aware that all that I'm really doing is pushing the right button at the right place and time. Sure, that's what many games are when you get down to it, but part of the artistry of game design comes from trying to hide this fact."

Comments

Minigames

[koreaman]

This is the biggest problem I have with cheesy minigames. Really? I have to "hack a computer" by redirecting pipes so water can flow through them? (Or whatever the hell it is you're doing in Bioshock... this is the best way I can explain it). That shit was fun when it came with my Games for Windows 95 pack, but it's a bit out of place in a modern immersive shooter.

Re:Minigames

[Abrisene]

I agree with you in the principle of the thing, that people playing games don't usually like being reminded that they're not the avatar (in games that have avatars), and I can see where you're coming from when you say that gamers have twisted the definition of immersion, but I think you're mixing up the cause of loss for the definition. The real issue is one of consistency. It's the same thing as the concept of the fourth wall in theatre and film; games of most genres need to maintain a certain internal consistency or in many cases the enjoyment and level of engagement with the media is reduced. When gamers talk about immersion, they're not talking about how consistent or inconsistent the game world is, they're talking about the feeling that it evokes.

Re:Minigames

[GrumblyStuff]

You left out the best part of SS2!

The hacking 'minigame' wasn't much of anything. The first System Shock did hacking sooo much better but I'll come back to that.

In SS2, you can pick up a portable gaming system that is a parody of Gameboys. It was called Gamepig and most of the games were simple ones you've all played before but had pig related names and artwork. However... there was one game called Overworld Zero. It played like an old school action RPG, running around a randomly-generated looping area, killing monsters and leveling up.

As stupid as it sounds, it's the best game-within-a-game I've ever played.

And as for hacking in the first System Shock, it was soooo much better. You broke open panels and fiddled with wiring until you found the right combo or messed with... I don't even know how to describe it. You had connected nodes (similar to SS2 hacking) but the changes weren't permanent. You clicked one to allow power through but that could change connecting nodes to the opposite setting. Depending on the puzzle difficulty (the game had customizable settings for combat, mission, puzzle, and cyberspace difficulties), they could be really frustrating.

Re:Minigames

[hairyfeet]

I guess it shows you can't please everybody, because I enjoyed the hacking game in Bioshock, in Bioshock 2? not so much. But in Bioshock 1 I liked hacking all the devices in a level and then setting cyclone traps to turn the place into a giant trap. But it wasn't like you couldn't simply skip it, either by using one of the plentiful hacking tools or simply buying off the machine.

What kills the immersion for me is when the laws of reality are horribly broken with no real explanation. For example if I have a fricking rocket launcher I shouldn't need to find a key or way around a stupid wooden door! Or if I shoot a guy dead in the face (I'm looking at YOU, EA and MoH series) then they should fricking die or at least be horribly wounded! You would think with all the talk about physics in games they could fix these problems, but all I've seen is ever increasing eye candy and bling at the expense of a world that at least follows its own logic.

So I would say while the minigames in Bioshock could break your groove if you came across one at the wrong moment sans hack tools, at least they fit within the game. Even Ryan complains about hackers being parasites and robbing his machines. But when you base weapons or real world items like RPGs, and give them huge areas of effect and destructive power, at least make the rest of the world consistent. Nothing blows the realism quicker for me than "magic doors" or guys that supposedly can take more rounds than the Terminator without even a limp.

Re:Minigames

[Ephemeriis]

You can immerse yourself in a marathon session of Pac-Man or chess or be immersed in a stack of paperwork. Immersion just means being deeply involved with something mentally.

Yep. And if you're deeply involved in a stack of paperwork, and every few minutes somebody runs by screaming at the top of their lungs, you're likely to become distracted enough that you're no longer immersed in that paperwork.

This is the argument that's being made, and I think it is a valid one.

Good games have a certain flow to them. You can settle in and just kind of ride the thing out. You get your mind into the right state and you almost forget the world around you. You are, in short, immersed.

This can be true of Pac Man, or Peggle, or a shooter, or whatever. They suck you in, monopolize your attention, and you become immersed in them.

And then some games, for whatever reason, break up that steady flow of gameplay with something jarring and different. Suddenly there's a button-mashing rhythm game in the middle of your shooter... Or some kind of half-assed racing game in the middle of your RPG... Or some kind of memory test in the middle of Pac Man... Or whatever. And it's a different enough though process that it jars you out of your immersion.

And, speaking for myself - I hate that.

so true

[mogness]

Ya, the article is kind of bickering, but how many games have you played that offered so-called "fully interactive environments" that just aren't fully interactive? It's always a let-down.
Also, gotta love the "cheap shots." I mean, I just killed about a hundred soldiers and got shot a thousand times, but one guy walks up behind me and cracks me on the head to knock me out so next I have to start in a jail cell with no weapons. And these "guards" that are holding me? Bitch please, I could melee all of them in about 30 seconds and not feel a thing. But instead you have to play along and "steal" the key because otherwise... GAME OVER!

Portal (spoiler)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly why Portal was so awesome. Although it was a FPS, it behaved like any old 2D puzzler. It started out the same way for 15 levels: Light walls you put a portal on, dark walls you don't put a portal on. I began to see the game abstractly, like looking at a Minesweeper board. Then you go behind the wall and find the surprise. "The cake is a lie" was a funny internet meme for a year, but before that it was kind of disturbing to see for the first time. More games should challenge your expections, I hope the sequel lives up to it.

Re:Portal (spoiler)

[Anpheus]

I felt like I better knew the character of GLaDOS from four or five hours of gameplay with Portal and sparse dialog than I know the characters of most movies.

The gameplay mechanic being insidiously clever and fun helped too.

Re:Portal (spoiler)

[delinear]

The fire part was one of the best scenes I've ever encountered in a game - you always knew it (or something like it) was coming, but when it happened you really felt like the rules of the game had completely changed, suddenly you're not being hand held through a simple puzzle, you're dropped into a situation where you have to use what you've learned and instantly react or die, and the character of GLaDOS played such a massive part in building the atmosphere leading up to that.

WTF? Why can't I use the Phoenix Down on Aeirith?

[Weedhopper]

I always hated this part of RPGs.

The messenger/last survivor of the massacre with his last gasp, says a bunch of nonsensical stuff, right before he dies. WTF? There's two fucking clerics in the party that can cast Heal in the middle of a battle. And now that the dude's dead, why can't my guys cast Raise Dead on him? Total crap.

Planescape Torment is one of the few that get this mechanic even close to right.

Re:Listen up, Peter Pan...

[sortius_nod]

I'll bite...

You can't throw a gimmick in that's not part of the game mechanics. To me, a game mechanic is no different to a real life mechanic. If it happens on A, it should happen on B, C, D, through Z. To restrict the player to using the gimmick a set times is just as bad as these stupid quick time events. "Press X to do something without skill", yeh, that's full immersion.

A game that breaks it's own rule set is a game that's not fun. The device in Singularity is supposed to be some sort of "I win!" button... at least that's what they were teasing for months before release. If you can't figure out how to limit it's use (via ammo or power levels) in a logical manner, why even put it in game?

Re:Scribblenauts!

[ushering05401]

You can largely solve that problem by implementing realistic time-scales and offering players benefit to out of play aging.

It doesn't work in MMORPGs, but a DM can easily have you travel uneventfully for weeks or months between realms and have you return to the gaming table after a layoff to a character that has been gaining languages or other useful skills at the expense of an aging hit.

The out of play aging is great because a good DM can allow players to create their own interim story and choose from a palette of minor but useful skills that will help during the new campaign. A good group can spend a couple evenings 'back rolling' their stories with each other; and when the actual gaming begins everyone is already in the right headstate.

Anyhow, the cumulative effect of travel time and out of game aging is a character that needs to begin looking at replacing valuable eq slots with anti-age eq around the same time that the game starts to break... If the eq is balanced of course.

Quick Time Events

[cOldhandle]

For me, quick time events are the worst offenders of all that have ruined many modern games for me (Resident Evil 4/5, God of War series, Uncharted, etc.) . Interrupt the game, destroy the atmosphere by displaying console-specific button prompts, and then force the player to play some lame simon-says game resurrected from the dark era of "interactive movie" games on the mega-cd. Yeah, that's a great idea...

Re:Portal

[grumbel]

Valve is really serious about play testing their games to death, which sadly however also removes what makes games interesting, as instead of giving you something interesting to discover, the games are so smooth and through fully tested that you have close to zero chance to discover anything the developer didn't intend.

Valve games for me are like amusement park rides, sure they are fun and all, but at the end of the day you are riding on rails, seeing a well crafted show, not an actual interactive world.