Post by Morreion on Oct 13, 2009 6:54:17 GMT -5
The Digital Continuum: In pursuit of immersion
When Magic Becomes Mundane in RPGs
If you're looking for more immersion, you're looking to kill a certain amount of game mechanics. Removing numbers from equipment sounds like a totally rad way to make an experience feel less "gamey" but ultimately players still realize they're playing a game.
And that's really the whole problem with the concept of immersive gameplay, it's such a subjective concept. What if immersion to me is having those numbers? What if those numbers validate my alternate, digital existence? I feel like the whole discussion is something of a dead end that ultimately gets us nowhere. Mechanics are at the core of every game; moreso with persistent world online games. Thus, to me, the debate isn't about how much immersion we should or shouldn't have, but how we can create an improved sense of immersion via new mechanics.
And that's really the whole problem with the concept of immersive gameplay, it's such a subjective concept. What if immersion to me is having those numbers? What if those numbers validate my alternate, digital existence? I feel like the whole discussion is something of a dead end that ultimately gets us nowhere. Mechanics are at the core of every game; moreso with persistent world online games. Thus, to me, the debate isn't about how much immersion we should or shouldn't have, but how we can create an improved sense of immersion via new mechanics.
When Magic Becomes Mundane in RPGs
Tracy Hickman, best-known as the coauthor of the original Dragonlance novels, once spoke about his fantasy writing at a symposium I attended, and stated how he thought the whole "It's magic" explanation was a cop-out in fantasy. I tend to agree. Sure, magic may be the enabling power, but still, one expects the world to follow something vaguely resembling natural, physical laws. Better still magic itself seems to follow some consistent pattern and internal logic...
Now maybe it's the rogue-fan in me, or the software engineer in me, but when you get to the really "gamey" aspects like the automatic doors which "just work" with some monolothic and inviolate force, it starts to bug me. How is it supposed to work? Are the doors sentient? In a world where wizards are supposed to be able to detect magic, and rogues are supposed to be able to detect and disable even magical devices, why can't we find some way to spoof or tamper with or work around the magical-door-with-buried-monster trick? I mean, we KNOW it's going to happen, so why can't we just jam an extra sword (maybe one of those useless +1 swords we're just gonna sell because we already own better) into the door's mechanism to keep it from closing.
Alas, the answers are:
#1 - Because the designers WANT to force you to brute-force your way through it.
#2 - Because it's easier to program this way
#3 - Because it's an MMO and so the first time ANYBODY figures out how to get around this trick, it will no longer be effective against anybody but a party of newbies for the rest of the game's existance, and the developers just don't feel like throwing away that much effort.
And perhaps most importantly:
#4 - Because players don't really care about things being believable, they just want it to be interesting.
Now maybe it's the rogue-fan in me, or the software engineer in me, but when you get to the really "gamey" aspects like the automatic doors which "just work" with some monolothic and inviolate force, it starts to bug me. How is it supposed to work? Are the doors sentient? In a world where wizards are supposed to be able to detect magic, and rogues are supposed to be able to detect and disable even magical devices, why can't we find some way to spoof or tamper with or work around the magical-door-with-buried-monster trick? I mean, we KNOW it's going to happen, so why can't we just jam an extra sword (maybe one of those useless +1 swords we're just gonna sell because we already own better) into the door's mechanism to keep it from closing.
Alas, the answers are:
#1 - Because the designers WANT to force you to brute-force your way through it.
#2 - Because it's easier to program this way
#3 - Because it's an MMO and so the first time ANYBODY figures out how to get around this trick, it will no longer be effective against anybody but a party of newbies for the rest of the game's existance, and the developers just don't feel like throwing away that much effort.
And perhaps most importantly:
#4 - Because players don't really care about things being believable, they just want it to be interesting.
