What Does "Immersive" Mean to You?

DeadSpace was also one of the more famous games to use a "diagetic" UI. We saw the ammo count exactly the same as the character -- displayed on the side of the gun. But that only worked since they had a sci-fi gun.

But I feel like everyone today is happy with a limited number of things on the screen -- hotkeys, a minimap and a few more. Copying dead-space will get you "yeah, you're so immersive, now give me a menu option for a playable game". But too much UI is still a common immersion-breaking complaint, mostly mobile MMO's plastering the screen with junk. When you're playing as a warrior getting revenge on the ogre who kicked your chicken, nothing breaks immersion like reminders it's the Winter Solstice in the real world, offers to spin the Daily Prize Wheel, and being told you can spend $2.50 to get better armour than the ogre drops.

 

As long as the UI does it's job smoothly, than I don't find my immersion being broken. It's just a method of providing information.

Immersion doesn't require a super-literal, visually realistic representation of anything. You can get immersed in a good book, despite the fact that it's just squiggles on paper

 

i just dont like too many things competing for my attention. like, i want one thing to focus on and that's all.

I think a lot of modern games have taken the "juice" thing too far. Makes my eyes hurt so much stuff happening. Maybe my eyes are getting old though - or probably just tired of screens in general.

 

@koirat Summed up what I think best, even when it comes to fairly 'low graphics' games, if everything is done to a nice standard if a game allows me to indulge in a lot of escapism then I call that immersive. Most modern games now I find no matter how detailed they are often end up being very jarring for me and I would argue that when it comes to graphics it becomes worse the more detailed you get.

The reason being is things like physics interaction and animation which a lot of the big developers just toss out in favour of making fancy presentation style graphics. You look out at the vast expanse of a desert or whatever and go "Ooooo" then the moment immediately goes away as the character you moving about gets trapped by some badly placed invisible wall or something like that. They're nothing more than glorified wallpaper screenshots considering the amount of effort that has clearly gone into them from the artist perspective but games are so much more than that.

This is why for example people can still fire up games like ocarina of time and be amazed by it.

 

But that's somewhat circular, right? -- working smoothly is part of the definition of not breaking immersion. An out-of-place control makes you stop feeling as if you're actually handing over 10 rat pelts to a farmer. And smooth depends on expectations, right? 20 years ago(?) a minimap in the upper-right corner would feel weird. What is that thing and why does my character know that stuff? Am I a beastmaster? But now it feels weird not to have one. The first Korean MMO I tried I found unplayable since every female toon was wearing high-heels and so on. I couldn't stop wondering how perverted the developers were long enough to figuring out the game.

But it's a nice game design argument. The best way to make most controls is how everyone else does it, since users expect that. Even if you have a better way, it's not better as long as they automatically try it the standard way.

 

It may be a common complaint, but I do wonder if it's a case of asking for faster horses. In other words, I suspect that it is people complaining about what's obvious to them rather than about the underlying issue or need.

I played a couple of games recently where the immersion was repetitively and harshly broken. Biomutant and Deathloop both have many moments in their first couple of hours where they literally pause the game and make you read instructions. It seemed as if every time I started getting into those games for their opening 90 minutes one of the developers leaned in and pulled me right back out.

"Hey man, did you know we split this game into 4 distinct areas?"

"This game has crafting in it, like every other open world game. Stop running around and click this stuff!"

"That story section just had a clue! Clues are important! If you can't remember all of the clues, this is were you can come to look at them!"

Ugh, stop it! Just let me play!

I could easily frame that complaint as "too much UI", and I expect that many people who don't know much about game design would describe it that way because they don't know any better. But taking that at face value is short sighted. In those examples the UI is much less of an issue than the fact that there's terrible UX design which keeps stopping the darn game.

When a good writer achieves immersion their readers stop noticing the written words and start imagining whatever is being written about. Pen and paper RPGs use pens, paper and spoken word to similar effect. I don't notice the camera cuts, unrealistic editing, etc. in a competently made movie. When I'm playing a good game I also stop noticing my keyboard / mouse / gamepad, the fact that I'm playing on a flat monitor, and so on and so forth. Visible UI elements are no different to any of those things.

So while I completely agree that a badly designed UI is certainly one way to kill a game's immersion, I also believe that UIs get a bad rap for interfering with immersion when, often, the real problem is that either the UI itself or the overall experience is just badly designed.

Biomutant's UI is fine. What really annoyed me was...



... constantly breaking my flow.

So lets not contribute to giving UIs a bad reputation. There's nothing wrong with having UI in a game. The issue is when the UI, or the experience, or the game itself is badly designed. Dead Space didn't just have a diagetic UI, it also had a really well designed user experience overall, and that shouldn't be overlooked.

 

I don't think there's one reason for immersion, it happens when something clicks with you.

The only game that I can say completely immersed me was the Mass Effect trilogy. Skyrim came close. In both cases, for lack of a better word, it was 'atmosphere'. I just wanted to be in the game world. Something about the combination of music, the artwork, the dialogue, the events happening around you just sort of sweeps you away.

It's interesting that neither of these games had really exceptional gameplay - at best it was above average. I guess for me immersion is more about playing something that represents how I feel about myself rather than whether the mechanics are 100% on point.

 

Experienced this while playing the new Doom: Eternal and hated it.

Let me just kill things, why are you pausing the whole thing with the tutorial window nonsense...

 

Having implemented a tutorial with a fundamental goal of never stopping the player, I'm confident that the answer is the huge effort that doing so takes. It added significant complexity to the relevant portions of the game due to how reactive it has to be, and a whole bunch of player testing and refinement to make sure every step doesn't just function, but also achieves its learning outcomes.

And then you get to repeat a bunch of it if any of your game design needs changing.

That said, pause-and-read or pause-and-watch tutorials can work well if the UX and opening portions of the game around them are thought out well. They don't have to be flow-wrecking monstrosities. Indeed, the player wants to know how to play.

 

(Late response, I know. Holidays and all)

Yes, it kind of is. I don't think I did a very good job of explaining myself.

Having a HUD overlay (as opposed to an in-game thingy like Deadspace) doesn't inherently break immersion, despite it arguably being 'less realistic'.

 

I think it is the 'it depends' category. When the point and the meat of the flow is some kind of action (like Doom), UI doesn't matter, you sometimes take a look where you're and that's it. The flow comes from movement and murder on the most gruesome ways possible.
But when it comes to exploration for example, in gorgeous environments (like when you pimp up Skyrim with some next-gen plugins and put your computer outside to not hear the vents), UI can be annoying... like "why this health bar covers up the best pixels of that valley"-kind of things. When the flow comes from the view, it can break immersion.

And then it is also very personal, different people gets distracted by different things, so after all, it depends.

 

I imagine "immersive" as being related to the concept of flow and one's cognitive state. If it induces that in some sense it's immersive.

The MLP talk is funny given Fallout Equestria (haven't read it, but heard about it many years ago)