| as others have already suggested, i think the contrast of immersion vs no immersion is not really the issue (only as much as immersion helps people get addicted to games). the focus on entertainment and making a profit vs doing something to advance society is. immersive games are fine. games aren't failing to teach anything or help you relax because they are immersive. they are not teaching anything because they don't have a good story that would teach something, and they don't let you relax because specific game elements are putting you under stress. to give two examples: i play elite dangerous. i can travel through space with a VR headset and i trade items between various space stations. very immersive and quite relaxing, until pirates come along and want to steal my cargo. that's stressful. and i wish i could turn that off. likewise i may play some puzzle game, that is not immersive at all, and that could be relaxing if the gamedesigner hadn't added a timer that forces me to complete the puzzle in a certain time. that's stressful. so i don't think immersion has any impact here, other than immersive games are just more attractive. both are a waste of time however if they are not educational or relaxing. but now this issue of entertainment vs advancing society is a problem of the whole entertainment industry. very little content produced is entertaining as well as teaching something. and so for me the question is not about how immersive the games are but how educational. i believe it is quite possible to create fully immersive but educational games. looking back at elite dangerous again, for example, the universe in that game is modeled after our actual galaxy. where possible, stars are named by their actual astronomical names, and their looks are designed after what we know about them and i can take a star system in the game and look up its name on eg wikipedia and learn real facts about it. compare that to eve online where the universe is completely fictional. in elite dangerous i can fly around and get a sense of the relative distances of say alpha centauri vs the north pole star or of the position of our solar system vs the rest of the galaxy. (assuming that it is all accurate) immersive and educational and relaxing (as long as i can avoid pirates) |