http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28449/Tomb_Raider_Creator_Immersion_Is_Everything.php

There are many opinions on what makes a great game. For Tomb Raider creator Toby Gard, the answer is immersion.

“I would argue that the power to immerse the player, to absorb his attention completely, is the common attribute of the greatest and most successful games,” Gard wrote in a new Gamasutra feature.

He said that when creating a game, the entire development team — not just the artists — should put forth effort in establishing immersion within a game. “Gathering and studying reference is critical to creating immersion for the player,” he said.

I’m all for some fantastic virtual world design. That’s why I started blogging, as it happens. (Being who I am, I’ve run a few tangents since…) I just don’t think we’ll see it in the mainstream until it can be comparably profitable to the skinner box MMO design. I’m not sure that will ever happen.

The fact that since the introduction of the Dungeon Finder feature, most players now just show up in random dungeons and never talk to each other. MMOs have been reduced to PEZ dispenser machines. How sad that social interaction — and there wasn’t much in WoW to being with — is seen as something that impedes the process of getting more loot.

The concept of a “world” in WoW is just an illusion. Never mind the fact that 80% of what goes on in WoW is happening in instances which there is zero persistence and the other 20% which is the outdoor “solo” areas are barely persistent to start with.

MMOs have been reduced to reward dispensing Skinner boxes. It’s a sad and sorry state.

However I think it’s apparent that the ‘virtual world’ was simply a medium used to apply the behavioural psychology techniques designed to produce compulsive behaviour. As time progressed, that medium was simply streamlined. Anything that delayed someones reward was cast aside in favour of easier access. Smaller required teams, more instantaneous travel, shorter story arcs.

The end result is what we see now, where you teleport from one planet to another in order to fight space goats among floating purple rocks, then teleport back to hand in the tokens you were awarded while communicating telepathically with people fighting the lich king in Northrend and others who are several years backwards in time, engaged in combat with Arugal at the time when he was still alive and living in Shadowfang Keep. There is no need to communicate with your fellow players for 99% of the game, as everything can be pugged via the dungeon tool with zero communication apart from a few raids.

However we all know that part, the thing that interests me is that which I was referring to earlier… every change was made with the intention of making it easier for people to press the lever enough times for the pellet to drop. I won’t go into the origin of battlegrounds since they were announced before release, but there are other changes from that era that also signalled what was to come.

People found the instances too difficult, so they were made easier. More flight paths added. Smaller raids added. Shorter instance reset timers. Cross realm battlegrounds for shorter queues. Portals from the new cities to the old. Removal of elite mobs. Cross realm dungeon tool.

All so that people don’t have to waste their time travelling through the world or communicating with other players, and can instead focus on obtaining more upgrades. Less interaction, more repetitive behaviour.

If nothing else, they’re obtaining some relevant data on exactly how close your game can be to progress quest before it affects subscriber numbers too dramatically.

Haven’t checked out your blog in a while, which was a mistake since your articles always get me thinking! Thanks for wasting the last 3 hours for me.:)

Awesome article, I guess now that I think of it immersion in a game is what I have always wanted but there seems to be a wide gap with the immersion I may feel watching a video clip of a game and the actual playing. And I agree culture references and even instances have taken away from that.

I have found though in some MMOS I have played having a house adds to the immersion in the sense something belongs to me while I am there.

Thanks Tesh for your comments, always food for thought!