What isn’t emersive?

I find prototyping is a really trial-and-error experience, a random walk around playspaces to discover what works and what doesn’t. It’s the only way to stumble upon something totally new! So my personal answer:
– Pay attention to systems external to the game.
– Reject non-emersive designs and see what I find.

Droqen (Prototyping Emersive Games?)

A question for you Droqen: what is a ‘non-emersive design’? I guess I’m asking because I’m not sure ’emersiveness’ is well defined yet:

To make players more aware of themselves and their actual reality rather than the fictional world presented

To what degree does this awareness shift? And what does it shift to, what part of themselves – any part? Is it complete? Do you exit the game? Do you switch to a different game? Do you stop playing any game altogether? (uhoh: what is a game and what is not a game?)
Or are you still playing the game? Is this emersivity different from playing a game like Tag or Twister – games with no ‘video’ before the game? Or what about Bounden?

I am with Zeigfreid here, I don’t think this emersion is the same as playing with your whole body in our real space, as in Tag (as opposed to playing only with your hands on the controller, existing in a virtual space). And I don’t think it is the same as the way that The Beginner’s Guide or SUPERHOT connect with your real experience of sitting at your computer playing the game. But, I’m still not sure what exactly it is.

Another slightly emersive aspect of games is the way that player’s can, when prompted by a game in the right way, consult their own experience and bring in some context, memory, feeling, fact, reason, etc. and so supply some part of themself, something external to the game, to their experience with the game. Whether that be the simple act of remembering a feeling and having it coexist with some of their playtime, or the more complex act of ascribing their own reason for the behavior of a system that has not explained itself fully. But I don’t think this is what you are talking about either.

I suppose what you’re after with ’emersiveness’ is something like BERV’s post-game realization of how easy it was to be oblivious to his impact on others while playing Cruel World, and his subsequent musing about how easy it might be to do that In The Real World.
In this case the external systems and the internal systems are parallel, and have a natural mapping. It is an obvious way to invoke the real world: paint an exaggerated simulation of it.

what’s something I would enjoy … doing? … thinking about? … watching someone else do? … talking about?

Droqen (Prototyping Emersive Games?)

So let’s keep thinking about this Cruel World example. I suppose you might have thought: ‘[I would enjoy thinking about] how easy it is for my actions to negatively affect others without me realizing it”, and then you made cruel world as a simulation where that happens, and hope people recognize it and consider that idea in their life at large.

But I dunno, this feels backward to me. Why not just make a tweet that says as much? There is something important about actually doing this thing before you consider it – it gives it a necessary salience in our mind so we can properly consider it, instead of letting it roll straight through our brain and fall out the other end. I think this is where the power of the game comes in, and in this case it all happens within the game. But after it has happened inside of the game, you are properly primed to consider its consequences outside of the game. You have been ’emersed’.

So, again, what is a non-emersive design? Simply one that has no parallel with a real-world system (or at least not one that the player has a relationship to)? One that has too much fantasy and fails to evoke a real-world experience that you might transfer your play experience to? What other ways of evoking a real-world system are there that have the same salience as an allegorical simulation?

I also want to consider physics-based games – which could emerse you into more familiar and relevant physical systems that we experience all the time, but often just build out a fantasy system and explores its gamefeel. Let’s say Mario or Crayon Physics are too fantastic to emerse you, but what about QWOP? Or hmm… does Getting Over It emerse you into thoughts of grit and determination, and the relationship of pain and pleasure? As you confront your failures in the game, you see parallels with other failures you’ve had at other activities. Or is this not emersion?

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