Comments: 0 (Go to Comments)
Categories: Commentary
Tags: ausam-con, dodd alley, ds, gamers and gorehounds
I’ve been reading Gamers and Gorehounds by Dodd Alley to prepare for the horror panel I’ll be sitting on. I’ll write more about Alley’s book later, but one thing which struck me was this quote he pulled from Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon.
What makes it immersive is a world where no territory is off-limits, anything you see is fair game, and all your actions have consequences.
J.C. Herz
Herz is talking about what makes a video game immersive, but this is really criteria for what makes a game great.
Modern games with the open-world aesthetic are defined by having no territory which is off-limits and where anything you see is fair game. For all its underworld thrills, one of the greatest joys of Grand Theft Auto IV is simply exploring Liberty City. Pulling off heists, winning races, and completing missions are rewarding, but there’s a special sense of satisfaction in discovering how to make your way inside the Statue of Happiness (GTA’s stand-in for the Statue of Liberty).
However, this aspect of immersion extends beyond modern games. Tomb Raider made its bones by throwing gamers into underground ruins and letting them jump to ledges, climb up walls, and swing on vines in search of relics. I’ll go beyond this and say that anyone who clicked their way through Myst found themselves on an island limited only by the waters which surrounded it. Even the 2D Mario games featured secret areas and hidden blocks for players willing to test the boundaries.
Herz’ point about all your actions having consequences is harder to pin down. It’s difficult to imagine a game where a player’s actions don’t have consequences be it making it to the next stage of Donkey Kong or defending Mass Effect’s Citadel against the Geth invasion. I can think of a few ways to interpret this, but I think a two-fold approach is best. For your actions to have consequences, you need to have an understanding of your character’s role in their environment and — as your character — you need to be able to affect your environment.
I’m currently playing a horror adventure game for the DS (more research) where I’m a character who’s lost her memory, keeps adding strange objects to her inventory, and has inscrutable flashbacks brought on by seeing scraps of paper. In other words, I don’t know who I am, what I’m doing, or why I’m doing it. You could kindly say that I’m not immersed.
On the other hand, here’s a portion of Exodist’s walkthrough for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: REMOVE GOWN, PUT GOWN ON HOOK, PUT TOWEL OVER DRAIN, GET SATCHEL, PUT SATCHEL IN FRONT OF PANEL, PUT JUNK MAIL ON SATCHEL, PRESS DISPENSER BUTTON. The stage of the game where this needs to take place occurs when Englishman Arthur Dent finds himself on a alien spaceship moments after Earth has been destroyed. More than anything, Arthur Dent needs to have a small fish placed in his ear — the end result of this series of actions.
On the surface, it’s equally as labyrinthine as the DS game, but within the context of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy these actions have consequences. At this point in the DS game, I’m not sure that anything my character does really matters.