On his new media weblog, Spazeboy comments about the relationship between immersion and realism in games. He writes (I think correctly):
But an experience doesn’t have to be realistic to be immersive.
He concludes:
I guess that the more realistic something pretends to be, the more disappointment with the experience is possible and likely. If something looks real, and you can’t interact with it the way you would interact with something real, then it’s immediately clear that it’s NOT real. In my opinion this ruins the experience.
If you’re in a game environment that doesn’t pretend to be realistic, you don’t bring in your real-world expectations.
Spazeboy’s right about the logical infraction of equating immersion with realism, since an abstract object can prompt immersion, and many abstract and iconic-scale games immerse their players in hours of fun and thinking. We can, however, come at this from another angle. Realism in games creates expectations for the interactor or user. The more realistic the environment, the more “realistic” our reactions and actions should be, immersive or not. At least that’s the argument. The behavior of blood splatter is a classic case of this kind of detailing or the methods by which we go about solving a puzzle. HL2’s lever puzzles fall into the latter category, I would argue. But Prey’s disorienting and surreal environment elicits a different expectation and set of responses. A lot of this may have to do with McCloud’s exposition on progressions along the bottom line of his triangle.
But isn’t it a problem in this debate when we get to the notion of simulation in games like America’s Army? In other words, how is realism created and why? Some experiences require simulated combat as a part of their goal. Simulation may have more to do with idea of immersion than realism in the context of aesthetic and design goals, but neither simulation nor realism may have a lot to do with keeping someone immersed without other factors involved as well. I’d partially argue that players who suggest a relationship between immersion and realism may really be reacting to a game’s problems and solutions, atmosphere, characters, flow, and point of view in-world, and that these are generalized as a part of its overall, graphical aesthetic. I don’t know this for fact, though, and my inference is based on personal experience. I remember vividly reacting to the sound of my opponent’s engine coming up on me at 180 mpg in Gran Turismo 4. What was I supposed to do but turn around while seated comfortably in my living room? My short run with Okami, though, was also vivid in the same sense, learning from the expectations of a 3-D painting, and experiencing it in different ways. Both are immersive but in different ways and for different reasons.
Here’s a link to an article by Kevin Cheng and Paul Cairns which has been on the computer for a while, titled “Behaviour, Realism and Immersion in Games” that provides some study of the issue.
And there’s this one off the feed from Serious Games on headsets.