Pretty games are not immersive
I think I've been playing video games wrong my whole life.
But I also think a lot of other people have too. I worry that the industry's relentless march towards prettier, more graphically sophisticated games is taking us away from the substance of why games are so good in the first place.
I am coming into this argument as a convert. Previously, I would only buy games which looked amazing — and I mean that literally. I would scroll through the screenshots on Steam, and if it caught my eye visually, I would buy it. Alternatively, if the game fit thematically with other games I'd enjoyed before, I would give it a try.
I never stopped to wonder why I ended up returning so many games.
But the reason hit me recently during yet another play-through of Skyrim. This time, I said to myself, I'm not going to role-play or try and make "realistic" decisions for my character; I'm just going to play the game. I'm going to focus on the systems, not the world. This play-through has turned out to be my highest-level character yet.
What was my mistake?
Before, I saw games as a sort of simulation. I would play the game as if I were a real character in that world, acting as a real character would. In Skyrim, this meant avoiding any cognitively dissonant decisions, like joining the Companions and the Thieves Guild as the same character. It also meant considering the morality of my play-style and the way I interacted with the other characters in the world.
But in other games like Civilization, it almost meant ignoring the systems and gameplay mechanics and just trusting that they supported this roleplay-style approach. My thesis was that the gameplay mechanics were sort of an implementation detail; you didn't need to understand them because the sum of them should create a cohesive, intuitive, and realistic representation of what you would expect to happen in real life.
In fairness, some games do, to a certain extent, support this. You can definitely role-play in Skyrim and other open-world RPGs (I mean, they are called "role-playing games" after all). But I think that means you are crossing a line, into a territory outside of the realm of "playing a game".
What changed?
I've recently been playing more board games, as we have some good friends who are pretty into them. And as we played lots of different games, I realised something about how my friends approached them. They defined the games not by their design, setting, or theme, but by their gameplay loop and mechanics, and that's what made them fun.
So I tried to apply this thinking to playing video games. When I started my recent Skyrim play-through, I tried for the first time in the 15 years since it came out to actually understand how to level my character effectively. And it's the most fun I've ever had playing Skyrim.
I found myself playing completely differently. I would walk between locations rather than fast-travelling not for role-play reasons, but because it allowed me to spam the Muffle spell to level my Illusion skill (this is shockingly effective actually). I found myself actively seeking out combat encounters rather than trying to avoid them. And I became completely unsentimental about the gear I picked up along the way — it's all a means to an end.
Don't get me wrong — I was still having to make decisions for my character such as which quest lines I would pursue and what factions I would join. And I definitely took time to appreciate the absolute beauty of the world, and to immerse myself in the story and characters. But for the first time I didn't feel an overwhelming sense that I could be getting it wrong. As long as I was playing the game and advancing my skill level, the route I took through the game didn't really matter.
Immersion is not pretty graphics
I think the word "immersion" has been hijacked in the world of video games. To many, an "immersive" game is one which looks and feels as close the real world as possible.
But my recent experience has shown that feeling immersed in a game requires me finding a flow state, which in turn requires a satisfying and engaging gameplay loop. This is the reason people are still playing old 80s games on emulators; there may be a certain nostalgia for the art style and graphics, but these games are fundamentally fun to play because of the mechanics.
If anything, the closer a game gets to looking realistic, the further I get from feeling immersed. You enter the uncanny valley where you feel like you should feel immersed, but in reality you spend the whole time thinking, "wow, this game looks amazing". A bit like Oliver Burkeman's theory that people who worry too much about "living in the moment" are too busy thinking about living in the moment to actually be living in the moment.
My new approach to games is to not just superficially assume they are trying to simulate some kind of real life. Instead, I'm going to take the time to learn and understand the way the game works, so I can use the mechanics to my advantage. Mastery of the gameplay loop is harder, and takes a more concerted effort on my part. But I'm starting to believe that it's where true immersion lies.