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[Common Kingfisher]

Call it selfish, but I want to make a game that people lose their
social lives to play. Something that they decide will be their new
life. Its been done before, and its still being done now. (I have had
friends who haven't left their houses due to Minecraft)

ASnogarD brings up some valid points on how to keep a player from
raging, which is also a way to immerse the player... but if a game
makes you mad, isn't that a good reason to keep playing? I've known
many a people to break their laptop on a game called Super Meat Boy,
yet promptly pay to get it fixed only to continue on..

...Yeah, okay, you freak me out a little bit, but I'm going to give
you my opinion anyway.

First off, I disagree with the general consensus in this thread. Graphics, music, story, characters, etc, all play a part in creating this feeling of immersion, but it's far from being the most important. The most important part is if the player likes your game.

I mean, it sounds silly but it's true. Just like every guy who grew up in the '90s, I was very into the Harry Potter series for a while. I could sit on the couch for an entire day barely eating and drinking, and I would get so into it that I would shut down everything around me. Yet to my knowledge, Harry Potter doesn't have high-resolution graphics, 3D particle effects, or a soundtrack composed by Harry Gregson Williams.

So, to answer your question, how do you make a game so addictive that it makes people put it over the real world ? Well, you don't. According to Parks Associates, there is about 135 millions gamers in the US alone, and each one of them is different. You mentioned Minecraft : some people love it because for them it's the ultimate sandbox, and they like the emergent gameplay the game offers. Some people loathe it because they have no idea what the fuck they're supposed to do, and they prefer a linear game. Some people love FPS because they like the competition aspect, and they're always trying to better themselves. Some people loathe them because they think it's always the same thing. Even MMORPGS, commonly considered the most addictive genre out there, cannot please everyone. (I played WoW. I quit before reaching level 60. I didn't see the point of killing the same enemies and taking the same quests over and over again just to see a halo of light surrounding my character and the words "Congratulations, you have reached level XX !" popping up on the screen.)

I think you see my point : you can't make a game that's going to be addictive for everyone. First, determine what your target audience is, then try to make the best game for them.

The greatest game is a social life, it is just too hardcore for
many players who struggle with its control scheme and don't like
grinding for experience.

That is one of the most beautiful quote I've ever seen. You're going in my signature.

[C.A. Sinner]

just because i've seen this floating around in this thread a bit: intensely focusing on an activity isn't the same as "forgetting" you're doing it, it's the opposite. if you were really "forgetting" you're playing a game you'd either ignore it (like what happens when people listen to music to distract themselves from boring, repetitive work) or you'd treat it as if it was real, which unless you're on drugs or have some kind of mental defect hopefully won't happen.

[1982]

which unless you're on drugs or have some kind of mental defect hopefully won't happen.

I don't use drugs, and I see myself as quite sharp knife in "normal" life. However, I have great ability of relate to various circumstances or characters. That's why I probably like to do acting work as well. Those games that make such possible are quite good, and truly in best scenario I really forget that I am playing a game.

But like I said, the real problem is not forgetting that you are playing a game but forgetting that outside games you live in real world.

[Graham.]

There is a state called "absorption" or "flow" in Western culture that athletes and psychologists always talk about. The phrasing can be like, "when you're absorbed in an activity you lose self-awareness, or awareness of the activity being distinct from the self," and so on. You can "forget" you're playing a game, in this sense.

You can say that absorption is about attention. Players have a conscious mind that pulls them around. It focuses on different things. Sometimes only a small portion is "turned on" at any point. Absorbing a player, making them "forget" about life, is about giving something for every piece of their consciousness to care about. If you can make them very alert, increasing their conscious capacity, and give them a lot of stuff to focus on, that's even better. You can watch a movie and forget you're watching a movie, then meet a girl and really forget about the rest of your life.

Good stories form relationships between the readers' lives and the events of the story, by talking about universal truths, then explaining them in a way that makes them easy to understand. If the story-world is internally consistent, if it follows some logic that doesn't disobey the rules the player has come to expect, then the reader won't break from it. If it talks about relevant things, the reader will be motivated to care in the first place.

There's some function between a players own experiences and the ideas in a story, through which players find relationships i.e. "relate," and feel stuff when they read. Keep a simple function, and don't break it, and your world will be consistent. Talk about universals and it will be relatable.

Example: If your buddy is sarcastic and indicates his sarcasm through context, which you recognize from your experiences, then you will understand and appreciate his sarcasm when he uses it. If you don't understand this function - situation IN, sarcasm yes/no OUT - then you might misinterpret his meaning and lose its value. If he changes the function unexpectedly, like being sarcastic at an usual time, you'll "break" immersion in him, and it won't be great, unless of course surprising shit is a comfortable thing with you.

Games "break" immersion when they do shit that doesn't make sense.

Universals are things that are at the center of experiences. Feel something strongly, understand the core cause of the feeling, then recreate it for the player by reproducing the cause in a new context.

Everyone wants to rage a little. God of War gets to the center of that idea and makes the whole game about feeling like you're destroying shit, then bigger shit, and, "aahhhhh. RRRRRAAAAA.  ... die." To make a game more interesting than God of War you need a feeling more relatable than blind rage, then express it clearly, like God of War did (hint: this is possible).

Kids relate to Harry Potter because he's a kid trapped in a boring life who's under-appreciated, then gets whisked away where the dullness of reality is replaced by imagination, where he is very important, and regularly engages in things that the regular people, "muggles," just wouldn't understand, further accentuating his "untapped" secret incredible-ness. What kid can't relate to that? Also, J.K. Rowling writes briskly, clearly, understands what the most important parts are, and makes it very easy to follow along without redundancies.


-----

I'm trying to narrow it down to one important thing, but all I've been able to conclude is that it relies on flesh and blood events...

The one thing? You ready?

Imagine the whole world feeling better than they have ever felt ever, beyond what a normal human has ever thought possible even at the height of their existence. Humanity is still diverse. What are the central ideas at the center of everyone's lives? What are the thoughts that power our state of heaven-on-earth? What are the common elements between those thoughts?

Okay? Figured it out?

Now express those ideas in simple terms, and optimize the rate at which you transfer those ideas to your player's minds. Oh, and make sure everyone can understand it all equally.

Ideas are big things. Universal Truths are endless. So you'd have to be in constant state of transmitting-ideas-to-the-player forever, always explaining the right slice of your idea at the right time to the right person so... that they relate - meaning they understand - in an optimized time-frame.

Dead simple.

(Absorption is about relating Truth)

[sigfarter]

We're already playing a game, and most people don't know it, so you have already succeeded.