next »

[Samtagonist]

Here's my response:

Whatever this idiot said, I think the opposite.

There's nothing left for the genre to improve over other than graphics.

FPS is the perfect genre for console online multiplayer.

Playing an online FPS is like being inside an anthropomorphized message board forum.  It's what 4chan would be inside the Matrix.

Portal and Half Life are not enough to excuse everything else.

Skip to about 5:00 to hear the relative bullshit, I have outlined the hilarious bullshit prior to that here for your amusement and inevitable derailment.

[DavidCaruso]

First person perspective is dickloads more immersive than any other one when done correctly in a great game, and everyone in this thread needs to replay Deus Ex or System Shock 2 or even the original Half-Life. Also first person is the way of the future, don't worry about it though because we'll be able to have multiple levels of simulation (like Inception!) and in the future you'll be able to play old classic games or third-person games on planet-size perfect-quality TVs with your friends in simulated virtual worlds, etc.

I almost think the interactivity of games can sometimes be a hindrance to immersion (especially with motion controllers where you are very aware that you're standing in the middle of your living room and waggling the remote or waving your arms), since you're constantly aware of playing the game. With a movie, I can lose myself much more in the movie and almost forget I'm actually sitting in a theater watching light projected on a flat screen. A game constantly reminds you that it's just a game: you have to use a controller, you have to replay hard parts, there's often a HUD, you can jump around in time and the narrative by saving and loading games, the game world and the unfolding events often come to a complete halt until you've overcome a challenge, and so on.

You're completely right about motion controls and how they completely ruin immersion, but I don't think being "just a game" is a bad thing at all. They're tons more immersive than movies and literature, for me at least. I think challenge is actually a key part of this immersion, because I mean if a game is so easy and boring that you barely need to try or focus to get through it you're not being engaged at all, or even being forced to pay attention to the game's world. I can see how HUDs and other forms of abstraction might ruin immersion but I think they're pretty much necessary until the technology gets better, and some game genres (e.g. fighting games)  are practically built on these abstractions (though many others are taking them away, like FPSes with regenerating health).

You'll never be able to shake off the feeling of it being "just a game" anyway, no matter how immersive or realistic game technologies get (even if they make holodecks or life preserving fluid tubs which connect wires directly to your brain), bar one very extreme measure (memory replacement to actually put you in the role and past of the character you play as, which basically negates the entire point of the experience since you won't remember your time playing the game once you're done with it).

the gameplay is trivial (just point the mouse and click))

Man, someone doesn't like Monkey Island. Also the beat-em-up genre is just random button mashing and then you feed in another credit. In Sonic games all you do is press right and jump.

[Christian Knudsen]

A game constantly reminds you that it's just a game: you have to use a controller, you have to replay hard parts, there's often a HUD, you can jump around in time and the narrative by saving and loading games, the game world and the unfolding events often come to a complete halt until you've overcome a challenge, and so on.

This is something I personally love, I love when games are games and are okay with being games. Lifebars, power-ups, bosses, credits, I like that. I guess I don't play for immersion at all.

You're completely right about motion controls and how they completely ruin immersion, but I don't think being "just a game" is a bad thing at all.

A clarification: I love games and I love games that are games and don't try to be interactive movies or stuff like that. "Just a game" is meant as opposed to the real world and total immersion, not as a dig at games.

[Samtagonist]

total immersion

I think that total immersion is a complete impossibility, and thus becomes a rather irrelevant measure of how engaged a person is.  It can never be achieved, short of the elective lobotomy that David suggested.  It's just like how there are no movies where we feel as though we are a person standing there watching the action.  That isn't how we interpret the information we are seeing.  I never view and image and think that I am there, nobody does.  They think, I am viewing an image of something happening.  Since video games are displayed in the same manner, we're forced to endure the same trappings of a movie.  We don't think we are Gordon Freeman, we think we are playing Half Life.  In the end, this is a very healthy and normal thing to think and I don't see any merit to trying to move beyond it or how our inability to do so is a bad thing.  Making movies into 3D seems to be their attempt to do this, and it seems like a really awful misstep in the progress of cinema.

Because of this thinking, I always feel as if I'm "immersed" in a game, because all I ask is that a video games makes me feel as though I am playing a game.   Which, with only a handful of exceptions not worth mentioning, I always have.

[Belimoth]

I play as a much cooler version of myself. 

[Paul Eres]

another issue with immersion is that there are different kinds of immersion; immersion for the sake of it is useless, unless it's used to produce and interesting / memorable experience. i don't care about immersion so much as new experiences, and i enjoy experiences the most when i can see the person i'm playing as

i think a big part of this is a console vs pc games thing. pc games tend to have customization and make you play as yourself, console games tend to make you play as other people, they're different gaming subcultures

also, a lot of games do allow the option for both (for instance, fallout 3) which may be a good compromise, but even in fallout 3 i didn't feel as if i was playing someone else, because the game made me make all of that person's dialogue decisions. i never got to know the *personality* of the person i was playing as, instead it used the player's (my own) personality instead of bothering to give the hero a personality of his/her own. that's particularly what i hate, i like when the main character has a strong personality, says things themselves without making the player choose between various dialogue choices, etc.

[moi]

first person requires a lot more time to get the player used to the controls and the world interaction and it requires also a lot more freedom and free-form gameplay.
Non-1st-person is much more adapted if you want to show a story, fast, from the angle that the develloper wishes to.

[Jasmine]

Damnit, I don't want to relate to character that has been chosen by the developers, I like to be me in that world they have created.

This is interesting because it's the exact opposite for me...

It could simply be the difference between extraverts and introverts.

[C.A. Sinner]

i never got to know the *personality* of the person i was playing as, instead it used the player's (my own) personality instead of bothering to give the hero a personality of his/her own. that's particularly what i hate, i like when the main character has a strong personality, says things themselves without making the player choose between various dialogue choices, etc.

Interesting, that's something I've never thought of. Games with "strong" characters tend to be more linear while games with self-inserts tend to be more open.

I guess I usually prefer self-insert games because I prefer nonlinear, open games to linear ones. A linear game would have to be REALLY excellent to hold my attention for long.

[C.A. Sinner]

first person requires a lot more time to get the player used to the controls and the world interaction and it requires also a lot more freedom and free-form gameplay.

Then why are there so many linear, "cinematic" FPSs?

[Jasmine]

Why are there so many linear, "cinematic" FPSs?

It's either because they sell better, or because they have lower replayability (aka planned obsolescence).

[Paul Eres]

i think non-linear games with a strong character personality can exist -- although my own game saturated dreamers is the only one that comes to mind immediately. another might be star ocean: second story for the ps1 -- it was pretty non-linear, but maintained strong personalities in the two main characters

but there are so few non-linear games in general that it's hard to judge what type of character works best for those games. i'd say less than 1% of games are non-linear, it's a pretty underexplored element

also, there are non-linear or semi-non-linear games which have strong *secondary* characters, which i like. for instance, the baldur's gate series, or (more recently) the dragon age series; the main character is pretty much empty putty / a blank check, but the secondary characters do have a lot of personality, and they are "playable" in a sense

[C.A. Sinner]

Why are there so many linear, "cinematic" FPSs?

It's either because they sell better, or because they have lower replayability (aka planned obsolescence).

Probably, but I was responding to moi's post saying that first person view requires more open-ended gameplay.

[C.A. Sinner]

i think non-linear games with a strong character personality can exist -- although my own game saturated dreamers is the only one that comes to mind immediately. another might be star ocean: second story for the ps1 -- it was pretty non-linear, but maintained strong personalities in the two main characters

I never said they don't or can't exist, it's just a tendency I've noticed. Generally I don't care how strong the personality of the main character is. Whatever suits the game.

[1982]

I never view and image and think that I am there, nobody does.  They think, I am viewing an image of something happening.  Since video games are displayed in the same manner, we're forced to endure the same trappings of a movie.  We don't think we are Gordon Freeman, we think we are playing Half Life. 

IMO games are more than just images. They are interactive experiences, some better some not. Some more immersive some less. Just that games happen in 2D surface doesn't mean they are equal to viewing a image. There is actually a huge difference, no even best possible execution of film or image can achieve same effect than one good "level" in proper first person game (Penumbra, Arma2, Terminator Future Shock).

I personally never role play anything unless I can get option to completely create my game character from scratch. But usually it's me there and if the game allows me to be me and not Gordon Freeman, that's good. I am very picky in genre of FP because for me it's not enough just to consciously be aware I "play a game". I want to experience the game through my guts. Some games really achieve that, and there is no going back to lesser forms of immersion entertainment like films. But like said, I enjoy my films from completely different perspective.

I really hope that more games would not be used as narrative tool, but more as virtual experiences where "story lines" evolve dynamically through choices player makes. Player can then choose to role play or not, for the game itself it doesn't matter.