immersion

The Power of Music in Gaming

I would like to begin with an admission: As I write this, I’m listening to the Undertale 5th Anniversary Concert, as I tend to do fairly frequently while doing work. My downloads on Spotify consist primarily of video game soundtracks, including (but not limited to) the entirety of the OMORI and Octopath Traveler OSTs, an album of lo-fi covers of music from the Legend of Zelda, and a playlist titled “game bops” that includes tracks from Hollow Knight, Celeste, Undertale, Deltarune, and others. I learned how to semi-illegally download music into iTunes specifically for the purpose of being able to listen to pieces from the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 soundtrack on repeat until I could notate them by ear.

That was actually several admissions, but in short, I really like video game music, okay?

I obviously enjoy it aesthetically – a lot of the soundtracks I’ve mentioned are simply good music – but there are several ways in which video game music is particularly powerful due to its relationship with gaming. Here are just a few:

Several others have discussed immersion and its importance in gaming, so I’ll skip right to the bit about music. Obviously, sound design plays a large role in immersion, since replicating the “soundscape” of an environment is an important part of making a player feel transported into the game world. However, we don’t usually have music playing in the background of our lives, so how does the soundtrack contribute?

Video games, like film, take advantage of our enculturation to immerse us – by using motifs that have historically been used in media to depict certain environments, the composer cues the player to expect that type of environment. For example, jingle bells are well established as an auditory symbol of wintertime, so by incorporating them into a piece of video game soundtrack in a cold, wintery area, the player is further immersed in the winter “vibe”. Similarly, to depict a desert environment, composers will often use instruments such the sitar, guitar, and various percussion instruments. They might also feature pitch bending or non-Western scales. Often, this music doesn’t resemble that of any particular desert-based culture, but because of the film and games industry consistently employing this style for desert environments, it feels natural and immersive.

“Flamesgrace, Guiding Light” by Yasunori Nishiki – Can you tell what type of place this is just by the music?

Emotional Manipulation

Not the bad kind of manipulation! I mean the kind we want in our media, where we feel compelled to emotionally respond to the situations, events, and characters present in a game. It is well-established in the psychological literature that music is deeply intertwined with emotion, although we don’t quite understand how or why. It makes sense, then, that music is frequently utilized in media, particularly film, to provoke certain emotions and experiences. Consider the playful, peaceful character of Howard Shore’s “Concerning Hobbits”, the swashbuckling drama of Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer’s “He’s a Pirate”, or the awe evoked by John William’s theme for “Jurassic Park”. These same principles can be applied to the more cinematic elements of games. But what makes game music unique is its role in gameplay and how the player experiences the interactive elements of the game. One study demonstrated this importance by measuring cortisol, a stress hormone, while subjects played a shooter game. When there was music present, the players exhibited a greater stress response. This has implications for immersion – they are physiologically responding to the game events – as well as performance – a healthy amount of stress can be beneficial for attention to and execution of difficult tasks. Music can also augment the emotional payoff of completing a game – in the wake of a dramatic encounter, the ending themes of games in which I was invested frequently bring me to tears.

Narrative and Nostalgia

We don’t always notice it, but the soundtrack of a game can play a major role in the storytelling. Undertale is a classic example of storytelling via music, specifically through the usage of various leitmotifs which represent characters, relationships, and ideas. For example, Toriel and Asgore have similar motives in their battle themes, alluding to their past relationship. Similarly, the themes associated with Flowey and Asriel throughout the game share multiple motives. The events of the game are intertwined with the music, hinting at the underlying story and providing experienced players various “aha!” moments while replaying the game.

A motif can provoke memories from earlier within a game for narrative reasons, but in long-running series of games, motives can also be used to tie together separate games released years, or even decades apart. The Legend of Zelda series features many of the same motives and themes across its various installments, and with great success. For returning players, especially those who may have grown up playing earlier games, these references evoke a great sense of nostalgia and familiarity. Similar to how soundtracks can use enculturation to amplify immersion, they can use established associations between musical themes and characters, locations, or concepts within a game world to set expectations or imply events. For example, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess share the location of the Lost Woods. Twilight Princess also borrows the musical theme of the Lost Woods, inducing nostalgia and connecting the two settings. However, the Twilight Princess version is modified to be very different in character – this version is mysterious, and lacking the jaunty playfulness of the original theme. This mirrors the darker, creepier setting of Twilight Princess in general, as well as the fact that the location seems to be largely forgotten and desolate, while its predecessor in Ocarina of Time was populated by the childlike Kokiri. The musical reference therefore is a fun, nostalgic addition for long-time fans, but it also contributes to the overarching story and world in an impactful way.

Video Game Composers Deserve So Much Respect, Y’all

Part of the reason I rave about video game music isn’t just the aesthetics, nor their value to games – in addition to being beautiful and important, game soundtracks are incredibly impressive in scope. Scoring a movie is a lot of work, but it’s ultimately only a 1.5-2 hour runtime. Video games can take anywhere from a few hours to several full days worth of time to complete -many JRPGs have a main story that requires over 60 hours of playtime. OMORI, a relatively short JRPG, has an OST with nearly 180 tracks, totaling almost 4 hours of music. The Final Fantasy VII remake soundtrack is over 8 hours long!

Additionally, games are inherently interactive, so the music can’t be precisely scripted; it has to react to the player’s choices. Oftentimes, different pieces need to blend seamlessly into one another. Octopath Traveler is an excellent example of this, where each protagonist has a unique motif, which is incorporated into a “hype” theme before each boss battle, which then transitions into a unique “transition” clip, which leads into the boss theme itself. It’s incredibly complex on the composing end, but feels effortless for the player, and really adds to the drama of the story.

If you’re interested in music theory, here is an explanation of the soundtrack magic I described!

TL;DR: The soundtrack is an underappreciated aspect of video games that deserves more love! Video composers deserve so much respect and hype, and game studies can and should incorporate music into analyses of immersion, narrative, gameplay, and culture.

-Audrey Scudder

Reminiscing in Winterspring: Video Games and Nostalgia

When I was around 10 years old, I made my first character in World of Warcraft. She was a night elf hunter with a pet cat who was excited to learn a lot and explore the world. A few weeks ago, around 10 years after I had created my first WoW character, I made a new night elf character and returned to the starting zone: Shadowglen. When I saw the architecture and nature in Shadowglen (years after I had last looked at it), I was surprised by how overwhelmed with emotions and memories I felt. I seemed to take a real time machine back to the past, back to when I was 10 years old and playing my first night elf character. I remembered some of the thoughts that 10-year-old me had and I remembered the room that I had been playing the game in (a room that I had otherwise forgotten about).

The architecture and nature in Shadowglen

I haven’t experienced anything else that can take me right back to vivid memories the way a game can, and, more specifically, the way World of Warcraft can. I have returned to meaningful places in real life after leaving for a few years, and I have unlocked memories and felt a strong sense of nostalgia, but World of Warcraft has allowed me to get this experience on an even deeper level without any plane tickets. Because my favorite places in World of Warcraft look exactly the same as they looked when I visited them in the game a number of years ago, I find that the feeling of nostalgia is even more powerful.

Shadowglen was the beginning of my World of Warcraft journey, so it holds a lot of sentimental value to me, but the location in WoW where I feel the strongest sense of nostalgia is in Winterspring. When I play video games involving a vast virtual world, one of my favorite things to do is explore and see all of the different territories. One day, I felt inspired to walk around one of the WoW continents, and on my journey I came across Winterspring. Since my favorite place to be in real life is in the snowy mountains, I was immediately drawn to Winterspring and the beauty of it. I visited everyday to unlock the Winterspring Frostsaber mount, and therefore created a lot of memories in this zone.

The mountains and the moon in Winterspring

Visiting Winterspring reminds me of my sophomore year of high school, and how I’d explore the snowy tundra of Winterspring after getting home from a cold and rainy soccer practice. Doing the Battle for Azeroth dungeons reminds me of days when I felt lonely quarantining during COVID, and how running dungeons with strangers made me feel more connected to others. Having my pandaren swim in the lake near Pearlfin Village reminds me of the memories I have questing with my boyfriend over winter break, which was something fun we could do together when the holiday break prevented us from being together in person.

Many people think of games as simply a form of entertainment, but over the years I have realized how powerful they can be, and the nostalgic sense they provide is just one of the reasons. If I didn’t have the nostalgic connection to World of Warcraft that I created during my childhood, I would only play it every once in a while as a form of entertainment, like I do with a lot of games. But because I developed a connection to it, I can play it when I need an escape from stress and can feel like I’m traveling back to a simpler time. If you have children or want to have children, I urge you to let them and even encourage them to play their game (at least every once in a while), because that connection with the game will build a sense of comfort that will last them a lifetime.

-Kaitlyn Bushey

Discovery and Control: How Video Games and Tabletop Games are Learning from One Another

This week, I once again found myself listening to one of Geoff Englestein’s excellent “GameTek” segments on the podcast Ludology. Geoff’s short segments cover scientific and psychological topics related to gaming, and the topic from this installment – episode 230.5 – was “Implicit vs Explicit”. Geoff’s analysis underpins a foundational struggle underlying game design, one which I feel explains many of the recent trends in the game mechanics found across both video and tabletop gaming. In case you have six minutes to spare, do go listen to Geoff’s eloquent and insightful analysis for yourself:

In this brief segment, Geoff uses a case study from his historical game Versailles 1919 to describe a common tension in game design: when should designers make the systems of a game explicit for player’s to understand from the outset of play, and when should they leave parts of the system hidden such that players must learn by discovery? In his own design, Geoff wrestled with whether or not he should make the political stability of regions explicitly stated on the game board, or if he should make differences in stability expressed varying ratios of each region’s cards in the deck, the latter being an implicit way to show region’s individualities that requires repeated play to learn for oneself.

There is evidence that player’s engage in implicit learning before they can even articulate what they have learned. Geoff cites the Iowa Gambling Task, an experiment in which individuals could draw from any of four decks (each with different ratios of cards) and gained or lost money based on what they drew. Although it took forty draws before most players could articulate which decks they felt were better or worse, after only ten draws players showed stress reactions when they decided to draw from one of the bad decks.

Geoff concludes that designers can leverage implicit information in games to reduce the cognitive load on players. He also notes how video games tend to do this well – hiding lots of information about the strengths and weaknesses of various options so that players must discover the system through play. Implicitly learned systems can likewise create a more immersive experience within the fiction of the game world by not plainly explaining their rules.

*Tabletop games typically feature explicit rulebooks outlining their systems.*

Nevertheless, there is a degree of control gamers can gravitate towards when rules are explicitly stated. Many board games are easier to approach competetively as a first time player than many video games, as it’s far more difficult to shortcut the learning curve of discovery than it is to efficinetly digest a rules explanation.

As I read this part of Geoff’s analysis, I realized I saw a trend in popular gaming over the last two decades. Video games often seem to be utlilizing smaller rules systems and online communities that work to provide explicit conslidation of those systems, while new tabletop games are striving for the open-ended allure of video games, wherein systems are largely implicit and left to be discovered.

For example, the most high-profile Kickstarter successes by board game designers in the last decade have been games like The Seventh Continent and Gloomhaven, games with massively expansive worlds and stories to be explored over repeated plays. New types of cards and challenges are unearthed as the game progresses, effectively melding the immersive discovery of video games with the tactile nature and social allure of tabletop gaming. On a personal level, I was intrigued by both of these designs when droves of reviewers called them innovative, and after trying them found myself impressed with the way in which both games put players on a constant brink of discovery, both in terms of the fictional world and gameplay mechanics.

“*Gloomhaven” is a massive fantasy board game, weighing almost 22 pounds and containing hundreds of hours of gameplay across branching scenarios and divergent storylines.*

Conversely, one of the major genres of games to succeed in the last five years are battle royal and arcade games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Zombies. These games see players repeatedly playing in the same gameplay space, one which is very small by video gaming standards, and striving to improve their performance in game after gme with relatively little randomness to obstruct the player’s agency. Sound a lot like a digital implementation of a tabletop game? I think so too. Moreover, the increasing popularity of forums and write ups in video gaming communities has led to more sharing of explicit information than ever, and increasing numbers of players are flocking to these articles to find out the exact mechanisms at play behind their favorite game’s flashy graphics. In essence, video game communities are writing and sharing the rulebooks to their games, even though rulebooks are an often maligned attribute of tabletop gaming.

The original map for the hit game “Fortnite”.

I don’t foresee these trends continuing forever, but I do think they represent much needed growth from designers in both digital and analog games. Implicit and explicit systems have their place in all kinds of games, and judicious employment of each is crucial to design. As a game designer, I’m keen on identifying the strengths of various mediums, but I also love to identify where design has restricted itself based on unfounded assumptions. Why should a Skyrim fan limit their gaming to digital worlds when analog games like Gloomhaven might satisfy the same itch? Mediums should indeed play to their strengths, but all games can bring in new audiences and innovate in their respective fields by studying other game forms and rethinking hitoric assumptions.

– Dylan Kistler

Interactive Fiction: A Comparison of Immersion

As an inexperienced gamer, I am very much out of my comfort zone writing a blog post related to video gaming. I do, however, have a lot more experience reading books and watching movies. That is why I chose to write a multimodal comparison of interactive fiction across a book, video game, and movie format. In this post, I will analyze the level of immersion that each medium conveys and rank their respective levels based on my personal experience.

Growing up I loved reading the Choose Your Own Adventure series. These interactive gamebooks began in 1979 and helped make RPG, narrative-based, and interactive fiction video games popular in the 80s. Each book that I read transported me to a fantastical setting, such as on the moon, under the sea, or in a dragon’s lair. As I flipped through the pages, I was presented with choices, and each choice led me to a different page to continue the story. I vividly remember becoming quickly frustrated with choosing the “wrong” path over and over again, so I would read through the book beginning to end to see all of the possible paths my character could have taken.

As I got older, I wanted a more advanced and “mature” version of the books that I enjoyed so much. My dad remembered playing Zork, an interactive fiction video game series, on his computer in the 80s and suggested that I try it. Zork, created in 1977, is one of the earliest interactive text-based adventure games. Before playing this game, I assumed that video games = graphics. I was surprised that Zork‘s screen only displays text in which the gamer responds to prompts and commands to work through a narrative. Zork outshines a lot of other text-based games because of its more advanced text parser that uses prepositions and longer sentences. Without graphics, I had to create a mental map of the setting and input an array of commands to complete my character’s quest.

Example of a *Zork* screen. *Screenshots taken by Abandonware DOS.*

Years after my interest in these interactive fiction-based stories, Netflix released Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, an interactive film, in 2018. Funny enough, the protagonist is a programmer that is making a video game out of a choose-your-own-adventure book. A lawsuit resulted from this plot point which claimed that Netflix took the “choose your own adventure” trademark. Netflix was able to evade the lawsuit because they argued that the viewer’s perspective is different than the perspective used in the book series. This brings me to my next point, as the moviegoer, I did not become the protagonist but instead watched the protagonist. With my remote, I made choices for the main character that determined his fate. Just like when I read the books, I rewatched the movie many times to see each alternate ending.

A fun video on the behind the scenes of Bandersnatch.

It would be reasonable to assume that more graphics and visuals would equate to a more immersive experience. Through reading, playing, and watching these interactive fiction adventures, I found the opposite to be true. While watching Bandersnatch, I felt a disconnect between myself and the protagonist because I was not given the chance to put myself in their shoes and create my own world. I was easily distracted throughout the film, was not able to fully immerse myself in the narrative, and I felt less connected to the choices I made for the main character. Written words forced me to create an imaginative world in my head which limited external distractions. The Choose Your Own Adventure series is written for kids, so its writing style is slightly less complex and less descriptive than more mature works. That is why I believe that the text-based game, Zork, is the most immersive medium. The programmers used detailed storytelling, complex settings and characters, and sophisticated parsing techniques to create a game that brings the game player into the world of Zork.

I definitely recommend giving this game a try!

The Duality of Gaming

Every year I surrender sixty dollars to experience the thrill of the games in the Call of Duty franchise. I put in hundreds of hours into both the multiplayer and campaign modes, each mode fueled by vastly different motivations. I play multiplayer to kill as many opposing players as possible, all while being completely detached from my in-game actions. Conversely, I play campaign and get immersed into the story and framework presented to me, with the story and relationships that I build with the characters all feeling very real. Both modes consist almost entirely of me controlling my character to kill another in game character, yet the two feelings I receive from each mode are nothing alike.

In the multiplayer of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, a large goal of mine was to reach master prestige, which comes as a result of putting a lot of time into the game and leveling up over 500 times. To reach this goal, I load into game after game, killing as many opposing players as I possibly can, using whatever killstreaks or other egregious methods I can to complete that task. Whether the method is sitting in a window on Nuketown, or calling in an attack helicopter to slaughter the enemy team, I commit these acts without a second thought of the act itself.

Chopper Gunner on Black Ops’ map WMD

However, I can turn to the campaign and feel entirely immersed in every mission I play. I feel direct connections to every character in the story, and when those characters die, it hurts me. (Spoilers incoming for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2/3 ) On the multiplayer battlefield, both my teammates and I die with regularity, and I respawn unfazed. Yet, when my long standing partner John “Soap” Mctavish dies in battle, I am brought to tears. Or when I compromise a mission as the player that I control, I feel as though I have let my comrades down. Even the death quotes make the game feel as though you are being faced with real consequences and lessons for every mistake you make.

Post death screen in Call of Duty: Black Ops’ Campaign

I begin to bond with the people I run alongside; I understand their motives; I yearn to protect them, and carry out the mission assigned to me. This growing feeling of trust and companionship with my comrades makes every mission feel increasingly important leading up to the end of the campaign. These feelings of trust and companionship make General Shepherd’s betrayal in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 feel so real. They create genuine feelings of triumph when I am the one to kill him.

Final Mission of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. “Endgame”

The duality of this gaming experience of war is what brings me back to play a new Call of Duty title every year. I truly believe that the games I have described are each masterpieces in their own right. The ability of these games to evoke two completely different levels of attachment to the experiences within the games is something incredible. There are even elements of the individual modes from which I am both immersed and detached simultaneously. No matter how invested I am in my experience, I am still detached from this virtual world.

Atop these feelings stands the sheer enjoyment and entertainment value I receive from playing these games. No matter which mode I play, I can sit back and escape from my own world and responsibilities all while thoroughly enjoying the experience. This is what I believe makes video games a work of art. The possibility to directly interact with a world that is so distant while feeling so real is remarkable, and my desire to experience this feeling brings me back to these games time and time again.

Immersion for a Skimmer Like Me: LOTRO

I used to be into immersion, I really did. I loved an immersive gaming experience, even if it was linear. A first person game with a focus on cinematics was a guilty pleasure for me over games with, perhaps, better game mechanics and replay value.

Now that I’m a bit older, I appreciate elegance in game mechanics. I now see the appeal for classic games like Super Mario and many arcade games where you can just jump in and start playing. In addition, it takes a more integrated narrative to get me invested nowadays.

I don’t read many of LOTRO’s quest prompts. For me, running around Middle Earth and piecing together my own story creates experience that I still love. Ideally, the lore of the quest would come out as I play the game (the floating dialogue above the characters is a great tool). I can understand wanting an initial text prompt (which can then be easily translated to other languages) for the important quests, but why would anyone care about the reason that they have to go kill five random bears?

It evens out, though. On my journey to kill the five bears for the never-again-relevant Dinglebeard the Dwarf, I get to see Middle Earth and other players running around doing their own quests. I can’t compltely explain why, but it just makes me happy. I get the same feeling that I did while playing Runescape when I was in sixth grade. There are no real-world problems or societal pressures. There are just a bunch of adventurers looking for their own experience, whether it be curiously poking their head around the world or stategically gaining XP and dominating the game.

-MEvelop

Assisted Suicide

WARNING: The following post contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VI.

Grandpa, no!!! You can’t die! What will I do? How will I live? I need you, Grandpa; you’re all I have left on this island. Everyone else is dead! No, no, not you too! Please, don’t leave me!

But, it’s too late. Grandpa…Cid…is dead. After the cataclysm, we both woke up here, on this island. We…I…won’t have enough food to last much longer. My friends are dead. There’s no one else here. I have no reason to keep living.

Overlooking the cliff, a soft ballad plays in my head. Soothing, in a way. A fitting end to a broken life. A relic of a forever-unrequited love, it will always remain. Locke…no, I don’t think he ever knew how I felt. But that was back when I knew people among the living. They’re all gone now. They…must be waiting for me, right? It’s time to join them.

A brief surge of hesitation flashes through my mind and body. Is this wrong? Too drastic? I take a step backwards. No. I need to euthanize myself from this pain of loss and nothingness. The best hope for my current life is unrelenting agony, assuming nothing else goes wrong. But then again, what can?

Tears well up in my eyes. The music in my head grows louder. It drowns out all else, allowing me one final auditory glimpse of the past. Goodbye, faded memories. Goodbye, remnants of a promising life. Goodbye, world.

I jump.

This scene from Final Fantasy VI, in my opinion, is the single most compelling example of why a video game’s story can be more important than its gameplay, if executed correctly. Once Kefka (the main villain in the game) deforms the world by disrupting the very fabric upon which it is built, we find the rune-knight Celes alone, save for her former mentor, Cid, on a scarred, deserted island. The two become close; Celes takes to calling Cid “Grandpa” since she never really had a grandfather and needs someone to protect her. Unfortunately, Cid is old and frail; he’s dying. Having just presumably lost everyone in her life, Celes’ only goal is to make sure that Cid lives.

The player’s only available task at this point is to go get fish from the ocean and desperately feed them to Cid, hoping he lives a little longer. Apparently, it is possible to come out successful in this task, and allow Cid to live. However, no instructions are given at all with regard to the mechanics of “getting” a fish, and even when you do give Cid one, his condition doesn’t seem to improve. Indeed, it seems almost as though developer Squaresoft didn’t want the player to let Cid live because of what ensues with his death. I lost this mini-game, and Cid perished.

After Celes finishes mourning, the screen fades. On the next screen, you see Celes, now in your control, standing near the edge of a cliff. No words are used; you know exactly what her intentions are. Instinctively, you try to leave the cliff. The game does not allow you to do this, furthering the sense of Celes’ hesitant determination. In the end, you are left with no choice but to walk to the edge of the cliff and press the A button, causing her to fling herself off the ominous peak.

You don’t want to help Celes kill herself, but you know that it has to be done. Inside, you completely sympathize with her and understand her reasoning. By having you attempt to keep Cid alive in vain, the game creates a perfect sense of futile desperation. By not allowing you to leave the cliff, this sensation is only furthered. Throughout her suicidal decision, you are made to feel exactly as Celes does.

Could this be accomplished by a book or movie? Absolutely not. I am fully confident that only interactivity could elicit feelings like this. Considering my hatred for the very concept of suicide, the fact that the game was able to make me accept its necessity is simply astounding to me. Never have I felt an emotional connection with a fictional character as strong as I felt at the precise moment I pressed that button, condemning Celes to her fate.

It turns out that Celes does not die from the fall, but all the same, the buildup to the jump is one of the most involving virtual experiences I’ve ever had. Getting that Triple Kill in Halo or 5-starring a song in Guitar Hero just does not satisfy after you have experienced this true potential of gaming. To all who claim that the mechanics of a game are more important than the enveloping narrative, I say this:

You never made Celes jump.

-Billy Bunce

Interactive = Interesting

With absolutely no doubt in my mind, I know that I am easily the biggest gamer in this entire college, let alone this class. I have played almost every game of significance released since the Nintendo 64 era, and even plenty from before then (nearly the entire Final Fantasy series, for example). I literally have a wardrobe filled with over 325 video games at home, and those don’t include the 100+ digitally-downloaded games that I own. Ever played Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES or Hotel Dusk: Room 215? I have. Enough said.

As such, it probably isn’t a very shocking statement when I say that I greatly prefer video games to books. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy books; reading 1984 bordered on a life-changing experience. However, I’ve always felt that video games and movies are more of an evolution of books rather than merely competing media. They (usually) combine the well-told plots and themes of literature with audiovisual enhancements that enrich the overall experience, allowing them to transcend their text-based counterparts. Of course, central to the gameplay of most video games is the idea of combat. While this centrality of physical strife does slightly limit the subject matter of video games, it tends to provide an infinitely more engaging experience.

Case-in-point: Snow Crash. Sure, it was fun to read about Hiro’s incredible swordfighting skill, but reading about a fight and trying to mentally piece it together is just not as engaging as an actual interactive simulation of combat. In LOTRO, the outcome of any given fight is entirely dependent on my actions. Thus, it yields much more satisfaction to defeat an enemy by my own hand — knowing that had I acted differently, the fight would not have been won — than to attempt to visualize someone else fighting the battle for me. Sure, I may just be pressing a series of numbered buttons and not actually physically wielding a spear, but my button presses are still managed by a skill that I have developed. Combat in a video game is so immersive because, by presenting audiovisual feedback based on your input, the game is temporarily able to convince you that your button-pressing skill is actually real combat skill.

Think about it. After winning a fight in LOTRO, which thought is more likely to cross your mind: “Wow, I’m awesome at hitting buttons,” or “I’ve gotten really good at fighting”? When you approach an enemy, do you intend to kill him or to press a series of buttons in a timed manner which, with proper execution, will cause a certain number to be added to the value designated as “Experience Points”? Video games have mastered this art of subconsciously convincing the player that their prowess in combat is directly tied to the thoroughly unrelated skill of button-mashing. It really is the ultimate in “make-believe”. And, simply put, it works.

In Snow Crash, I cannot in any way affect the outcome of Hiro’s battles. The book does not provide me with a way to immediately act out the fights. Sure, my imagination is at work in constructing the conflict, but experiencing a semi-concrete form of the fight is definitely more involving and immersive than reading a text description of it. In this sense, I’m infinitely more absorbed in LOTRO’s battles than those found in Snow Crash, as I engage in the near-perfected illusion of actual interactive combat. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ll always prefer pretending to fight an enemy myself to imagining someone else fight the pretend battle for me.

-Billy Bunce

Lost Connection

NOTE: Apparently this didn’t post the first time, so I’m going to try again. I apologize in advance if it ends up posting twice for whatever reason; just let me know and I’ll delete one of them.

BY: Billy Bunce

Due to technical difficulties which led to a total reformatting of my hard drive, I was only able to finish the Epic Quest Prologue and not Book I; therefore this blog post will focus only on the Prologue.

I must say that, while I was pleasantly surprised with the Prologue quest’s story overall, it certainly gave off a misleading first impression. Despite its titular “epic” nature, the early portions of the quest primarily consisted of me painstakingly and unnecessarily investigating a possible goblin sighting by asking around in the Shire. Don’t get me wrong; I love the way the quest culminated (raiding the goblin encampment actually did feel epic), but to me the beginning of the Prologue really highlighted one of the flaws of storytelling intrinsic to the dynamic nature of an MMORPG.

This dilemma is that of establishing a connection with the reader/player, allowing him/her to vicariously become affected by the narrative and how it plays out. Such an experience was most definitely not found in the beginning stages of this quest. I play the Warden, a class marked by a commitment to defend the weak and to “[protect] those who cannot protect themselves” (http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/classes). The Introduction (which comes before the Prologue) did allow me to establish a connection with my character as a sort of heroic guardian, as I bravely rushed to protect the town of Archet from the Blackwold raid. I had mentally established my character as one who would never back down from a fight and who would put his own life on the line to save the innocent.

Yet, the Prologue quest would have me believe that, upon hearing of a goblin sighting, my first instinct would be to ask around about it, rather than to go out on a limb and investigate it personally. When the game forced me to passively inquire about the goblins rather than slay them, any connection I had with my character was lost; LOTRO had decided that Shandelin the Hobbit was different from whom I thought he was. If my character has a giant spear and the skill to use it, wouldn’t he act out of a desire to protect rather than a desire to learn? Although the plot for the rest of the quest was involving and helped to reestablish this broken bond, the opening to the Prologue clearly stuck out as a negative point which almost removed all characterization from the vertically-challenged avatar running around on my screen.

Herein lies the main problem with dynamic storytelling; it is almost impossible to tailor a specific story to a very unspecific character. I’m sure that had I played a Burglar, my internal characterization of him would be much different than that of my Warden. Due to financial and time constraints, however, the developers cannot possibly hope to create a narrative which fits every possible protagonist’s profile. They are forced to construct a relatively generic tale in which the main character is involved physically but not emotionally or mentally. This stands in stark contrast to statically-told stories, where the protagonist is clearly defined and, thus, always takes logical, believable actions as they relate to his overall characterization.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, we never encounter the aforementioned flaw of LOTRO because the character of Frodo is consistent and completely laid out for us; thus, we never experience a moment in the book where we are tempted to disconnect from him. The bond between the reader and Frodo only grows stronger as the novel progresses, due to his believability. As the story is told statically rather than dynamically, we are able to experience a significantly more character-driven and involving plot. This static storytelling is not a monopoly held by books, either; movies and offline video games almost always use this approach as well. I am able to easily sympathize with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or Cloud in Final Fantasy VII because they are clearly defined and their development is natural given their initial characterization. Even in BioWare’s sci-fi epic Mass Effect, where one’s individual character is completely unique, the player can still easily establish a connection with Commander Shepard (the generically-named, player-created main character) due to the fact that the choices made by the player actually affect the world, and one’s character is never forced to linearly proceed in a fashion which does not befit them.

The online game is a medium which, in terms of storytelling, is inconsistent at best. The developers don’t know exactly how you see your unique character, and as such it is incredibly difficult for them to tailor a believable experience to every single player. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, the game’s story differs so much from that of the book because of the inherent difference in the way the story is told – dynamically in the former, statically in the latter. Though Frodo is an exciting and interesting character to follow, my character in LOTRO doesn’t seem to have any sort of well-defined identity and it is therefore much more difficult for me to really care about what he does.

The Evolution of Immersion

By: Billy Bunce

Help me. I’m being pursued. I desperately flee from four shadowy figures, each of whom desires nothing more than my death. Oh, but what a relief it would be were that my only dilemma. As I was first abducted by these four (though I luckily just escaped), I have absolutely no knowledge of my surroundings. In fact, I feel almost…trapped. I have no idea how to escape. My only chance of temporarily evading my captors would come from thoroughly surveying the area in which I currently find myself. Then and only then might I possibly be able to find some fleeting escape to postpone my inevitable demise. Maybe I’ll be able to find a weapon soon and fight back against my captors for a brief while. But until then, I run.

Now, reread that paragraph with the newfound knowledge that I just presented a more absorbing, epic, and slightly altered synopsis of the game Pac-Man. Such an involved mindset, though actually rather commonplace in modern console and computer games, is never encountered in classic arcade games. This, in my opinion, is the primary difference between arcade/board games and contemporary video games: a sense of immersion.

I’ll never forget the evening when I finished the fourth case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney on the DS. The ending was so shocking and mind-blowing that I literally found myself unable to study for the AP exams that I had the next day. Lost in contemplation, I was only able to think about the game, the characters, and the complex murder mystery that had just been revealed to me. It was then that I first realized just how absorbing a video game can truly be if done right.

However, it wasn’t just the narrative that caused the game to affect me the way it did. The graphics, music, and presentation all combined to make Phoenix Wright one of the most enthralling experiences I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. None of these great aspects, though, can be found in arcade or board games. Although the original arcade games should be appreciated for the difference they made in shaping the present state of video games, the truth is that I will never be as enthralled by a game of Pac-Man, Monopoly, or Galaga as I am by Phoenix Wright, Metal Gear Solid, or Final Fantasy VII.

This difference in the immersive abilities of a game arises primarily due to the evolution of the medium of video games as a whole. Board/arcade games are, more than anything, relics of a time when video games were naught more than quick, simple endeavors. The purpose of video games was once solely to have mindless fun, while they are now transmedial fusions which can provide involving, absorbing, and potentially life-changing experiences (Kingdom Hearts actually fell into that final category for me). Sure, a game of Dig-Dug or Donkey Kong is still fun every once in a while if I just need to kill some time. But for me, an immersive console game will always beat a simple round of an arcade game.