Have you ever been knee-deep in the guts of a fallen boss you just defeated a moment ago and wondered:
“What is the ultimate goal of a video game?”
I can safely say I haven’t. I was too busy trying to come down from the adrenaline rush of finally kicking some badass boss booty after my 11th failed attempt that day!
However, it is an important question. Is it for everyone to like the game? Is it to use the most cutting edge of technologies to make the game? Or maybe it’s to create the most insanely difficult boss battle? (re: my 11 failed attempts).
For me it’s immersion.
Immersion is defined as: “to involve oneself deeply in a particular activity”. This definition is one reason why I think it’s the answer to our pressing question.
How many of you, my dear current and soon to be subscribers, have lost yourself playing a game? Where you say “I’ll only play for 30mins” and before you have even realised it, it’s 3 hours past your bedtime and your dear mother is banging on your door telling you to go to bed and to stop yelling “PWNED!”. Thankfully I’m a good catholic boy and I never yelled but you get the idea.
Immersion can be achieved in many ways. One of the most effective in my opinion is character attachment. If you the player can easily relate or identify with the characters in the game it allows you to really dive in to the world the game has created.
My favourite games have been the ones where I felt responsible for the characters. In these games I became a vital part of the team. The choices that I made on quests or how I spoke to characters really mattered to me as it felt as if I myself, was the main character in the game. I know that in games that’s a common concept, where you the player play as the main protagonist/antagonist, but in my opinion it can go on a deeper level where you truly feel as if this was your “second life”.
This is power of immersion.
When a player is immersed in a game they can empathize with what the characters are going through, whether it be a joyous or sad occasion. Even if you have never experienced that situation or feeling before, because you are so engrossed in the game you really do put yourself in their shoes as if you were going through it yourself.
When designing a game it’s important for the developers and story designers to keep this in mind as it allows the player to really put themselves into the game.
If they can create a game that allows this immersion then I can safely say that they have achieved their goal for creating a game.
Psychologists have been studying the idea of immersion in different forms of media for quite some time but they call it “presence”. The closest form of presence that relates to gamers and immersion is called “spatial presence” according to this article by Jamie Madigan.
He gives a nice definition of when spatial presence exists in daily life, it occurs when:
“media contents are perceived as ‘real’ in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment”
this can summarized as the feeling that a player is ‘in’ the game when he or she is playing it.
In closing, the goal of a game is not about creating the most unique or ground breaking piece of art. It’s about being able to transport the player into the world you created and allowing them to make it their world. It’s about presenting them with characters to interact with but giving them the opportunity to form their own opinions on these characters. It’s about telling them your story but letting it become their own.
Stay Sassy Subscribers! 🙂
Diary Of A Programmer 