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I've been thinking about this recently. When I was young, video games were a complete mystery to me. Every game, no matter how generic, was a joy to play, because I simply didn't know what to expect at the end of every screen. Strange worlds with unknown rules unraveled before me, whether in dungeons of Prince of Persia, the labyrinths of Jill of the Jungle, or the space stations of Duke Nukem 3D. Over time, this joy faded in the games I played. I can intuitively feel why this is the case: whenever I start playing a new game, I already know most of the rules, or at least I can figure them out from the first few levels. Floating things? Oh, just a Flying Enemy Trope. Glowing box in the corner? Health Kit Trope. Where does that door go? Nope, just a Door Decoration Trope. And don't even talk to me about the Crate Trope. What's more, you can immediately figure out how a game is going to play just by looking at the first level. It's rare nowadays that I play a shooter which doesn't solely involve moving forward, shooting bad guys, and collecting powerups. I can play the game in my mind almost from the get-go, and I get bored. A few months ago, I started playing a Japanese indie metroidvania game called La-Mulana (HD). As a game, it's rather obtuse: you'd be very hard-pressed to complete it without a walkthrough, as many of the later levels require figuring out the answers to obscure, poorly-translated riddles. But for the first time in probably a decade, I was completely sucked in. There was a true sense of mystery to this game. None of the tropes I was familiar with made sense here. Doorways to new areas kept opening up. Every decoration on the walls could be analyzed with your hand scanner. Items with no apparent purpose were scattered all over the ruins. Every obstacle was bespoke, not a generic "find the keycard" equivalent puzzle. For 20 hours straight, I could not get my hands off this game. It was exhilarating. And thinking back to the games I used to play as a kid, I'm starting to think that maybe they really did have a bit more magic than games do today. Take Duke Nukem 3D. You never knew what you'd find in a given level. An inconspicuous wall could hide a joke or easter egg. A vertical vent could contain a secret weapon. A manhole could lead to a secret level. Every area had something new, be it an interactive element, monster, weapon, or setpiece. (Remember how effective the mouse and mirror scenes were in the original Prince of Persia?) In those old games, there was always something new around the corner. You never knew what to expect, and the sense of mystery compelled you to explore until the closing credits. While I do think that childhood ignorance and obsessiveness made games feel a lot more interesting, I also agree with the author that something is missing in modern games. I was starting to expect that I would never again be consumed by a game, and then along came this tiny indie title to blow away my expectations. And now I see games like The Witness have a whiff of that same feeling. I'm really looking forward to getting sucked into games again. |
When you first start playing a game, or just look at the trailers and concept art, the visuals might promise you tons of possibilities that the gameplay doesn't actually support. But as you play the game, you learn to pay attention to only those entities on the screen that are relevant to the gameplay, and filter out those that are just scenery. When your brain realizes that the beautiful mountains in the backdrop are just a painting and you'll never be able to go there, you no longer react to them emotionally.
That theory suggests several ways to improve immersion in games. You could make a conscious attempt to mix up the game's visual language until the very end, like in the old adventure games, where anything on the screen could eventually become relevant in surprising ways. You could make the graphics simpler, to avoid suggesting possibilities that are not supported by the gameplay. Or you could pay attention to which possibilities are suggested by the graphics of your game. If the mountains in the background are so beautiful that the player wants to go there - let them!