Reminds me of that first level we see in The Beginner's Guide, the CS:GO map made by Coda, where there are just a bunch of random flying bright-coloured boxes just to show that it *was* made by a human.
Personally, I actually find evidence of the creator(s) make my games feel more immersive. Like knowing Toby Fox, Supergiant, and others great at stories and messaging are beneath the surface is really engaging to me.
some ppl can only be emotionally invested in something if they feel it's completely real. i've thought about this a lot with "it was all a dream" twists because ultimately it doesn't matter if anything is real in a story, because it ISN'T real! the only real thing is you and how you connect with it
fun fact (fun personal opinion), immersion actually ISN'T super important. you can be completely aware at every point "i am sitting on my couch watching a movie/playing a game" and it doesn't even matter!! i love thinking about why an artistic decision was made and seeing cuts and camera movement.
when you get something out of a piece of art, YOU'RE the most important thing. when it finishes, the movie's done. it's done! but you're still there and still thinking and still feeling.
I would also like to mention I am in no way an authority on this, this is a random opinion I posted, I feel odd abt it blowing up as if it’s some really well put thing when there’s a lot of clarifications I’d probably have to make if I thought about it for one more day
OMG YESS me And my Friend @bubbazoo.bsky.social always Watch stuff, Pause and Deeply analysis It as Well as Think why The creators Did XY or Z, we Use critical Thinking skills Like never Seen before From Schoolwork lmfao!
I think sometimes that there's 2 kinds of immersion, immersion in "the world of the piece" and immersion in the "artificiality of the piece", the sensation that you can almost feel the creator right there in it, the beautiful godzilla miniature city feeling of "someone made all this!!"
I think being engrossed too requires a certain amount of believing in the world of the piece, you the viewer having a stake in the happenings of a fake world
Personally, I think immersion and realism are two different things. Immersion gets me into the reality of the world, but it doesn't need to be "realistic" to do that. For example, 1000XResist is immersive, IMO. There is nothing realistic about it.
No, the realism kick is the same as the desire for live-action remakes of animated movies. It is a desire to not accept abstraction and get closer to "reality", even if it isn't really. To be honest, I don't understand the desire or why that is more acceptable, but immersion isn't the right word.
I think tbh the obsession with realism is theyve completely forgotten how easybit is for people to get immersed, in what can be the most ridiculous things, and now we get all this boring faff in games and unreadable scenes in movies cuz its "real" but man if i sint been pulled out of my immersion
Like i remember from the half life documentary, Gabe recalls being criticized because the game wasn’t realistic enough, and he remarked “riding the train to work is realistic, why would I want a game all about things I already do?” Or something along those lines
This is one reason I can't get into minecraft. the blocky graphics kill the immersion. and i'm from the oldschool 8 bit era. but they didn't make the graphics blocky on purpose. they were trying to make it as realistic as the hardware limitations allowed. That's the difference.
I don’t think that’s the case personally and I’m speaking as a seasoned game developer and player. A game is immersive when you forget that it is a game yes, but it can also have style and craziness to it as long as the experience is consistent and enjoyable
You know what does ruin immersion? Micro transactions, “can’t connect to server”, and some npc freaking out because they are walking into a corner and can’t get out. No amount of realism will make any of that immersive.
I hate realism because. I'm there to escape, am I not? I'm there to enjoy something different, to learn something new, experience creativity, am I not? Making something realistic makes it more difficult to escape the bounds of a reality I'm already displeased with. It makes it more boring and unsafe
But I say this as someone who does not find much value in the reality they are presented with in the first place. If people are in love with their reality it only makes sense they desire it to mimic that. Creativity can bring out fear of the unknown, unfamiliarity, which people don't like.
As well, especially when it comes to games, we have developed a culture of “the best” as a status symbol. This game publisher is the best one, this console is the most powerful one, this game has the best “graphics” etc We fetishise the idea that hyper realism is “the best”.
It ties a lot into classism and consumerism. “I have the PS5 so I get to play all of Sonys hyper realistic exclusives on my huge TV, look! Look at the things I own! It’s better than your xBox and your Switch! I only play the finest exclusives!”
I like this a lot. It's similar to what I griped about with CG animation years back, before more Spider-Verse-type movies were made. Like I don't need it to look like a copy of real life, what the artists do to make things feel real - whether it's a UPA-esque cartoon or a photoreal film - matters.
gonna ask my brother who's obsessed with realism what he thinks of this. he's so interesting. his favorite genre is survival games. and he's kinda mad that he has a hard time connecting with say, deltarune. for some reason there can be a disconnect when he sees "old graphics" or pixel art.
like I agree with your interpretation on many levels. but this doesn't sound like my brother to me. he does love good art i can tell you that.
(he loves deltarune but can only have the focus/drive to play it when I'm in the room with him)
It's obvious that photorealism doesn't contribute as much to immersion as these companies think because what is still one of the most immersive video games to date looks like this.
Reminds me of this argument of people that didn't understand the point of Hatsune Miku concerts because Hatsune Miku wasn't a real person, as if meeting/seeing a famous guy in real life was the main reason they enjoyed concerts.
The only art form where I encourage immersion is theatre. The thinning of the line between work and audience really only has active benefits within physical space. But, when I think of my favourite pieces of immersive theatre, they very much leaned into stylisation and the voice of the artist.
i have conflicting feels abt this because i would really like for my 4th yr film to have the technique bleed into the background, bc i want it to feel real and organic, but animators should also get to do as little work as possible imo
and the idea that unimmersive=bad just causes making art to be unbearable sometimes. you have to cloak yourself with hours of invisible extra labour and wat da… it doesnt even matter…
yea but also thats not INHERENTLY true. you can put effort in but just not into "cleaning it up." i intentionally put way more work into the way i color stuff, even animation, to add an artificial amount of human error into it, which is usually a lot more obvious with trad versus digital
it's a natural extension of commodity fetishism! corporations are desperate to abrade any evidence of a worker's hands on the product, and they market this to the people by insisting that these fingerprints are flaws.
Corps try to devalue the creative folks and workers. Big corp divides the world into consumers who pay them and workers who they hate paying. In their perfect world, there would only be consumers and robots to produce things. Never mind that people need jobs to pay for things.
for me, I think the mark of a truly immersive experience is how much I find myself thinking about it after the fact. I hate consumable media. I want to be able to think about it and analyse it, and even bad media gets you thinking about the processes and decision making involved in its creation.
I like immersion how it feels in immersive sims - not 'realistic' but internally consistent. If enemies can do that, can I? Do rules of the world apply all the time equally?
Ironically that works much better at creating illusion of a living world than the slow animations in RDR2
really well said! this goes along with a lot of what I've been thinking specifically about recent AI trends in gaming like chatbot NPCs or graphic filtering that promises a player full control over a game's visuals, where talk abt the latter almost always mentions its potential for enhanced realism
in games especially, this push for more "immersive" experiences generally undermines the nature of games as intentionally authored works. an inability to authentically engage with a work as it's presented and general attitude of "i want media to cater to my own wants and views" is Maddening to see
fool me into thinking it's live action. It's embracing the art and the medium and going "Look, see what we can do."
Because it is possible to be immersed in a work of art *and* simultaneously know it is art. It's possible to be caught up in the story whilst, at the same time, going "Dang, how did
I think this is true and naïve a misappropriation of what immersion ought to be. To me, immersion is to continue believing in a piece of media. Not because it's "realistic", but because its world, characters, and plot act consistently and is respected by the medium
There's always a feeling of something being broken when the author starts making the world, plot, or characters act in a way that completely breaks what was established before. Meanwhile, even something like Everything Everywhere All At Once has immersion by respecting what it sets up
Probably depends. Sometimes you see something so crazy you dont really care about whats being presented and you are uninterested. Being able to tell a choice isnt really a bad thing because theres always creative license but not knowing how the basic world works isnt that.
I feel like this is making the mistake of taking what some gamers or laypeople call "immersion" at face value, because they don't mean immersion, they mean acceptance. Immersion is important to me, but also I am a woman in our real world and I get fully immersed in Witcher 3
Like I agree on the level of I am frustrated with the idea of immersion and realism being considered the same by many laypeople, but I feel it is important to make the distinction that that correlation is erroneous
what I find interesting about this is that I think there's quite a market for heavily "realistic" games (more like immersive with survival mechanics) with trippier, more artistic visual styles
I'm developing one myself (the pig game), and I think it's been quite a successful experiment so far
Imo immersion in movies and games comes from completely different things depending on the media. I'm immersed in Civilization but where's realism in there? Where's the pooping horse? Nah, aesthetics, plot, mechanics and general rules of the game make it immersive. Not realism.
Look, I like a degree of grittiness is certain genres but grittiness isn't the same as realism. It's often very stylized in some ways and you can still see the finger-prints of the creators. Bland "realism" is often the opposite of immersive.
Realism still has a place in the Game Industry, however if Realism is the only thing you are offering, it will eventually just become bland, that’s why the PS2 is still the best console, because it had variety
I have a wild imagination and a strong empathetic sense, so putting myself into a universe is easy, even with the most basic graphics. It's why I like games.
I often see what the artistic choices are. I enjoy it even moreso, becoming fascinated by designs and artistic direction.
I think immersion has more to do with evoking strong feelings and creating an investment/involvement in the fiction than any sort of obedience to the laws of physics.
David Lynch's films are a great example. They're incredibly immersive.
oooh IDK! thats a good poiont tho where the medium is based around immersion. but i think even then i dont think it inherently needs to be immersive, id love to see more crazy insane vr games
I feel like it's way harder to get immersed in something when I CAN'T feel the artist in the medium, feeling what they poured love into and what makes them angry and what brings them joy... but I'm not a CEO so what do I know lmao
Big agree. Also, the argument that it has to be "realistic" to "draw you in" to a work is defeatist of the potential of art. For e.g. I watched a Lost Highway recently and avoiding spoilers, some events in that movie can at times be not very "realistic". I was "immersed" in it's happenings anyway.
to put it bluntly this kind of fixation on immersion really shows people’s push to wanting media and the way to consume it to revolve around them. it’s a selfish view of looking at art, of enjoying it even
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Personally, I actually find evidence of the creator(s) make my games feel more immersive. Like knowing Toby Fox, Supergiant, and others great at stories and messaging are beneath the surface is really engaging to me.
I agree with what u said here
(he loves deltarune but can only have the focus/drive to play it when I'm in the room with him)
yeah
that is something that always bothered me with the "immersion above all" type arguments
Like, for me, most of the games I have liked, I have not liked because they were *immersive*
hell, the ones I remember immersing into are kinda
abstract, even?
Rez and Tetris Effect on VR
Ironically that works much better at creating illusion of a living world than the slow animations in RDR2
I hate hyper-realistic 3D animation.
If I am going to watch a cartoon, I am going to watch *a cartoon*.
I consider Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse to be a classic because it is shamelessly, openly, vivaciously a cartoon. It's not trying to
Because it is possible to be immersed in a work of art *and* simultaneously know it is art. It's possible to be caught up in the story whilst, at the same time, going "Dang, how did
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Like this.
I'm developing one myself (the pig game), and I think it's been quite a successful experiment so far
all of that is just jacking off talking about graphic cards anyways.
a cohesive artistic vision will always be better in the end, realistic or not (and most really aren't!)
I often see what the artistic choices are. I enjoy it even moreso, becoming fascinated by designs and artistic direction.
David Lynch's films are a great example. They're incredibly immersive.
A fantasy world isn’t realistic but it can immerse me in its worldbuilding, setting, characters, etc.
A silly crazy wacky game can be immersive, I’m just-