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Clatius

Immersion

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Immersion as related to RPG gaming.

 

“Immersion is when a player's mind's eye enters into a game world and the player becomes emmotionally attached to the game in some way.†(Me) "Absorbing involvement" (Meriam-Webster) Needless to say, there are many other ways toe define game immersion.

 

Immersion is not only necessary for a successful RPG game but fictional books also. You can become so engrossed in a book that it can stir emotional responses. Laughter, sadness, anger and emotional bonding to a books character are just a few. The same is true of an RPG like WURM. You not only play your avatar. You ARE your avatar. Have you ever been in the wilderness and turn around to be facing a giant spider or a bear or worse? There is a real emotional response. Surprise, fright or fear are all that I have experienced in that situation. There are only a handfull of other RPGs that have elicited that type of response from me. You are not thinking of things from your point of view in the real world. You are thinking of things from the point of your avatar in WURM. That is immersion. WURM in it's present state does a very good job of it. 

 

Without immersion the entire game becomes pointless. There are no thrills. There is no sense of accomplishment. There is no emmotional attachment. In short, there is no enjoyment. WURM has definately been going in the right direction to promote immersion. The art work has been very good drawing players into the game by the realism provided by the artists. The realism provides visual stimulus to draw the game's players into the game world helping to connect to the world they are building.

 

One of the most difficult things for a game designer is to break into the gamer's world. This can be achieved by environmental controls. Clothes, real life animals, furnishings and other trappings that are found in the real world the gamers live in. If a game can sneak into the gamer's world then immersion and suspension of dIsbelief, described below, are more readily achieved making the gamer more connected to the game world.

 

Suspension of disbelief is where the game player ignores the conventions of the real world and accepts the conventions of the game world. Difficult to explain without writing a whole book, it involves the game world resembling the real world enough that the game's players accept those things that cannot happen in the real world.

 

These things are absolutely essential when designing an RPG. Without evoking immersion the game does not take root in the game player's mind. There will be no complete picture and the missing pieces will be fatal to the game's survival. Some people will never reach the level of immersion necessary to go on playing a game. Other's will become so immersed they seem to be perpetually addicted. Reaching the mid point of these two states is probably where most game designers strive to be and it is not easy. 

 

I've seen people avatistically roll their eyes when someone mentions the word immerison. What they don't realize is that it is the most important aspect to the success of any RPG like WURM.

Edited by Clatius

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I've personally never been a fan of getting my story/immersion from games. I just skip cut-scenes/dialog/whatever and enjoy it for just being a game.


Some people play video games for a 'story', i.e. immersion, others play it because it's a game. (Something to learn/beat/compete/complete/gain achievements etc) Then some people play it for both reasons too.


Guess it depends what you want out of it.


 


I never could immerse myself in fantasy/sci-fi, as there aren't really any rules to follow if you're just making it up as you go along.


For example, we have horse and cart but at the same time we can travel through portals into other dimensions. I could immerse myself in historically accurate medieval setting, but not this fantasy setting where anything goes and can explained as 'because its not real'.


 


I agree though, Wurm could be very immersive if it clearly defined itself and pushed for immersion. Right now though, there are too many conflicting ideas in Wurm for it to draw me in on that level. (I've certainly been startled by a number of creatures in the wild before!)


Edited by Kimu

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Wurm is gonna look nifty on the htc vive.


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That would fall under suspension of disbelief Kimu.

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Most players play with more than one character, often at the same time, often while doing other things like web browsing as well - I think this is the best immersion breaker, yet people still play this game and enjoy it.

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Most players play with more than one character, often at the same time, often while doing other things like web browsing as well - I think this is the best immersion breaker, yet people still play this game and enjoy it.

 

This.

 

A timer based game like wurm bores me to near death. The only reason I play it is because it allows me to do other things while doing such, i enjoy seeing progression over time, and at the same time I can play while i work, and in school i could play while i prepared for finals.

 

It also lets me catch up on television.

 

Immersion in wurm succeeding is near impossible because nothing in this game is engaging enough to the experienced player outside of PvP, and even then, that struggles.

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I have no idea what you are all talking about. I'm the King of Independence. Now if only my subjects would show there King a little more respect.

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in wurm immersion its just a word people use to justify changes that dont make any sense.


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Wurm is its own worst enemy when it comes to immersion, and usually people will "roll their eyes" when immersion comes into an argument because exactly this. Wurm is full of immersion breakers, most of them at the very core of the game (like timers for everything).


Sure the combat/explore part of the game has a great deal of immersion and can lead to better scares than many "horror games" out there (ah the joys of exploring Inde in the olden days with fog and olive trees all around you). But that's pretty much it.


If you're crafting you don't feel immersed, cause no medieval crafter had to churn out thousands of items to become a master of his trade.


If you're minning/woodcutting/farming, name an activity you're not immersed, you're watching timers or tv/websites while queuing as many actions as your Mind Logic and your stamina allow.


 


If you're traveling between servers, then boom everything disappears, where's your immersion now. Not to mention most boat rides is the player looking at a sail or a mast. Etc, Etc, Etc.


Wurm has about as much immersion as a piece of styrofoam (which floats, so doesn't get immersed, for those that don't get it).


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If you are in a sail boat going from say, San Diego to Hawaii what do you see? A mast, a sail and water.


 


If you are making a plank with a saw does it happen immediately or does it take time?


 


If you are a master at a craft it isn't because you read a book over night. It's because you spent countless hours at your craft. Even at that not everyone becomes a master.


 


All of this is included in the game. How is that a game breaker? True, it isn't WoW or Evercrack where you gather the components and presto, a sword. 


 


In any event, it appears to me that Rolf attempted to make things take time just as they do in the real world. The real world is chock full of timers. I'm watching one now as I type this. Ah, there. Done.  ;)


Edited by Sarcaticous

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Games do require immersion, to an extent. Look at Civilization - even though it's a top-down strategy game, it puts you in the shoes of a ruler and immerses you in that role. The thing is that you don't need everything to be a real life analog in order to have immersion. In fact, that makes immersion much more difficult when things don't work as expected.


 


The key is to balance immersion with good game controls and great game play.


 


Wurm gets high marks in the adventure and survival aspects of this. The locked first-person perspective, need for food, and the danger of the world outside the safety of your village all makes for great immersion. It falls much shorter in other areas, where compromises had to be made in order to make the game more playable. Examples there would be bulk storage bins, crates, and other things that were added to make the game a little more flexible. They could have made those things more realistic - they could require us to build silos, lumber yards, rock quarries, and so on.


 


For Wurm, it's not a question of immersion, but a question of consistence. Wurm is not consistently immersive, and that alone breaks immersion. I can admit that I have no idea what can be done to fix that. I'm just pointing out the problem in the best way I can.


 


I also knew we could have a healthy debate, Clatius :)


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If you are in a sail boat going from say, San Diego to Hawaii what do you see? A mast, a sail and water.

 

Sailing is one of the more immersive aspects of Wurm, actually. Except I always felt that there should be an actual skill attached to the action. I've never commanded a boat myself in real life, but I've been on a few and I've read enough books and seen enough TV to know that captains of a boat can employ great skill to overcome things such as bad wind and bad weather. That said, weather should also be a greater factor in sailing. We should have rough seas that make it just a tad more dangerous. Perhaps I'll put this on an Ideas thread.

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If you are in a sail boat going from say, San Diego to Hawaii what do you see? A mast, a sail and water.

 

If you are making a plank with a saw does it happen immediately or does it take time?

 

If you are a master at a craft it isn't because you read a book over night. It's because you spent countless hours at your craft. Even at that not everyone becomes a master.

 

All of this is included in the game. How is that a game breaker? True, it isn't WoW or Evercrack where you gather the components and presto, a sword. 

 

In any event, it appears to me that Rolf attempted to make things take time just as they do in the real world. The real world is chock full of timers. I'm watching one now as I type this. Ah, there. Done.  ;)

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Would rock to have 1km sea servers between crossings.... (or 1km more of sea added to each server edge)


 


Would also be fun to see who sacrifices 10k dirt per tile to set up the first deed there lol 


Edited by Mordraug
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Hi Kane,


 


FYI, I've sailed from San Diego to Hawaii. Not alone but still did it. There isn't a lot to see. A sail, a mast and water. Maybe that water got rough a couple of times but that's all there was. Granted, I can't walk the length of the boat in WURM. Would be nice if we could. There are limit's to what a handful of people can do with a game I guess..


 


Also there are no table saws in WURM. Because there is not electricity. In WURM you are put in the era where planks are made by hand. Everything is made by hand. There are a few machines but not many and they are all low tech because there is no electricity nor steam. It's all horse and muscle power. So naturally things take time. Also, I would like to see you cut a plank from a log in 7 seconds with a hand saw. A plank is cut down the log horizontally with the grain, not across the log against the grain. The saw necessary for this has very large teeth to allow them to rip with the grain in a way to keep the wood shavings from getting stuck in the teeth of the saw. To do it by hand is very labor intensive and typically not a one man job. Here's a link. Maybe if you were Superman you could do it in 7 seconds. ;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hAegCaBsMg


 


For fences you would not cut planks like in WURM. You would split logs horizontally with a sledge and wedge. Should have to do that in WURM.


 


I really don't understand what you are saying about masters. It seems you are saying playing a game won't help you become a master craftsman. So that's where I'm confused because I don't see where anyone said it would Could you please explain why you stated that? I was talking about a game and you went off about real life. Paint me confused.  :)


 


And yes, Notch go rich off of Minecraft. Very simple game. Some do really neat stuff with it. Didn't he sell the rights?


Edited by Sarcaticous

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Oh man that video.


 


I feel like I'm willing to accept a certain amount of artifice. Just like a novel or movie is structured using a certain amount of artificiality -- jump cuts and all these funny little signs on pieces of paper -- games have certain conventions. Wurm has timers, which are not revolutionary, but my brain and its imagination know how to fill in the space. What keeps me coming back to Wurm is how open-ended and uncompromising it is, which really opens up, for me, that canvas for imagining and assigning significance to different activities, such as wandering down to the waterfront. Or patrolling around the deed. Or tending crops.


 


Are text adventures un-immersive because you have to type "inv" to find out what you're carrying? Wurm is a fascinating example of how -- when players are dedicated and invest themselves -- a lot of the surface stuff, even the important surface stuff such as having boring timers for actions, is strangely unimportant.


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That is a long plank timer. Must be ftp accounts.


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You use a table saw to cut planks.

 

So the fact that we don't have table saws in a setting that doesn't have table saws is immersion breaking for you? wat.

 

And again, if one wanted to become a real life master craftsman... Well playing a game isn't the way to do it.

And what in the world that has to do with anything?

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For me immersion used to be before boats and horses and going out hunting on Chaos when there was still almost no road system.


 


Navigating by landmarks, getting lost in forests, hunting for my arrows and running out of water then husbanding stamina in case a croc, spider or god forbid, a troll caught my scent. Add in some inevitable fog and I was most definitely "there"


 


Good times.

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The most immersion I've ever got out of a game was my first week in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.


 


1) Close your doors, turn off your lights


2) Sit close to your monitor (the bigger the better)


3) Get them mega headphones on with 360 degrees sound effects


4) Turn the sounds up, breathe deeply and take in that scent of wild flowers and deer dung. 


5) Turn your graphics up to max settings..


 


Finally pull out your bow and arrows, crouch through bushes as the mulch cracks beneath your feet, take an aim at the wandering wolf unaware that the pack are out of view over the small hill....


 


launch that curved arrow and listen to the sound of it whipping through the air, finally landing into your targets head with a satisfactory squelch of a bloody wound... 


 


Feel your heart beat begin to quicken as two other wolves are alerted and peek their head over the hill spotting you..."Ohh SH**" 


 


Launch another arrow with shaky hands, unconvinced as it hits one wolf and wounds it but not fatally.


 


Sheath your bow and start backing out of the bush, turn and run while readying your melee, the sound of your sword unsheathing with a clean *SSSSCCCCIINNN*


 


and by the time you turn around you will be parrying the first attack and launching your sword right through the throat of the final wolf...


 


Finally slump back into your chair... say ...''Oh my.. god..'' fingers trembling.. your first immersive experience. Something that is impossible to achieve on a Java game... 

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Finally slump back into your chair... say ...''Oh my.. god..'' fingers trembling.. your first immersive experience. Something that is impossible to achieve on a Java game...

Two points:

1. Java have almost no impact in displaying graphics - if you had team like the one which made Skyrim, you would be able to create something with the same (or even better) graphics in almost any other language - the only limit is GPU power as you can communicate with GPU only using language-independent set of instructions.

2. There are a lot of immersive games with very weak graphics or even no graphics at all, for example: Stranded 2, Dwarf Fortress.

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Personally, I think if you're talking about immersion, I think (good) visual novels offer the most immersion. (For those unfamiliar with visual novels, think of it as like a "pick your own adventure" sort of game). 


 


Most of the game is usually talking--something not completely unfamiliar for most of us. Most games emphasize character development.  Often time there's no standard "game" mechanics.  No grid based movement, no number crunching for optimal dps, no figuring out the optimal gear load out, ect.   Not saying there are't VNs with those features (because they are), but generally the emphasis is on the story and characters and the "other" game mechanics are attached to them.  As opposed to story and character development being tacked onto a FPS or turn-based tactical game or something.


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For me immersion used to be before boats and horses and going out hunting on Chaos when there was still almost no road system.

 

Navigating by landmarks, getting lost in forests, hunting for my arrows and running out of water then husbanding stamina in case a croc, spider or god forbid, a troll caught my scent. Add in some inevitable fog and I was most definitely "there"

 

Good times.

Edited by Depends

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