Instant Immersion
When I engage with a new game, I often become immediately immersed, and borderline obsessed with exploring the entirety of the environment of that game. From the expanse of the landscape to the tiny details of the architecture, furniture and decorations, character clothing, atmosphere, ambient sound, weather, and more. Full immersion in a digital game environment is the true joy of the experience for me, way beyond the core gameplay of scoring and achieving. I’ve often described the experience of gaming as my escapism, my catharsis, my meditation.
I’ve been known to spend hours in a single game environment doing nothing else but wander and watch. I’ll leave a game running while I go off and do other things, returning periodically to check if anything has changed – litter has blown away, a non-player character (NPC) has altered their behaviour or position, or the weather has changed. This can be very much to the frustration of anyone playing in a multiplayer instance with me. Too often have I replied to a request to keep moving, provide backup, or complete a set action with “Sorry that gunfire was me, I was checking if the pots and pans move when I shoot them” or “I just want to see if the pigs come when I drop apples“, or a clan favourite “Hey everyone, you can see the rust on the underside of this vehicle, come see“…shortly after which the vehicle exploded, killing us all. Many a lost life, or even an entire competition has been lost as a result of my immersion.
While I’m guilty of doing this in almost every genre, the First or Third Person Perspective and/or First Person Shooter (FPS) genre are by far the most immersive. That’s not to say that all of these games do it well, but immersion in these kinds of games is by far the most natural for me. Games such as Deathloop, the Batman Arkham series (in particular Arkham City), Mad Max, the Bioshock series (in particular Bioshock Infinite), and my all time favourites – the Dishonored series, the Hitman series, and of course the vast and truly immersive Elden Ring.
Living Lore
At the heart of this is the fact that I’m really looking for the lore…and here’s the thing – I don’t need it to be explicit. I don’t need it to be explained. It doesn’t have to be official or a part of the formal, pre-designed gameplay. I don’t even need it to be extraordinary! In fact, I prefer it not to be. That to me is the point of lore. It should remain misty, unclear, wonderous. Lore as legend, but also every day. I want to ponder on the history of a place and the people and creatures in it. Pushing the story way back before the game narrative we experience began. I ask a thousand questions as I play – How did this place come to be? What happened to lead us to this point? Where and who are the other people? Where do they work? What do they eat? Do they know each other?
I spend a huge amount of my game time in any given world exploring the places and objects not designed to be explored. Looking through windows I’ll never be able to open and wondering what’s going on beyond the glass. Wishing I could open drawers and cabinets to see what’s inside. Standing on the edge of cliffs wondering what will happen if I jump into the uncoded yet graphically designed void. For every official story written into a game, there are a million that could be. But I don’t need stories of heroes and great battles, or prophets and destiny.
Observing Ordinary
I’m looking for the ordinary. Those moments in between the coded chaos of another battle, the next mission, the latest puzzle, the boss fight. Watching leaves fall in Hitman’s Whittleton Creek level, wondering who will sweep them up. In a world without the explicit code for insects, I wonder about insect life. I remember so clearly how amazed I was at the scarab beetle and sun lounging sea creatures in Myst: Riven. I look for moss and lichens on digital stones. I wait for the turn of seasons never coded. Distant laughter at a joke not meant for me. A fly poster for a music event I can never attend, wondering if the artist even exists here at all. Wonder at how the car got dented, or who spilled that paint, or when the road construction will be fixed, or if the fisherman caught anything already…and does he need a permit to fish there?
Recently I sat atop a building in the Sawah Village region of Al Mazrah and watched the sun create vibrant rainbows on oil-covered water, wondering about the environmental impact. I wonder if and how characters interact without the trigger I provide. I hope to catch emotions that were never in the code. Interrupt conversations I wasn’t meant to hear. Watch them bicker over who has right of way. See them stifle laughter as one trips on a loose pavestone. Hear them lament the last player to die here, in this very spot.
Witness them fall in love.
Hitman peppers each mission with seemingly idle NPC chat that helps feed this immersion. In one instance in the game’s Hokkaido level we hear two people at a bar talking about Scottish independence. Something personal to me and my culture, yet totally unrelated to the game in any way. While autumn leaves and dents in cars can be found if you just take the time to look.
In the apocalyptic landscape of Mad Max we find a series of old photographs of life before the apocalypse, written on and signed by people who no longer exist, the game only hinting at their demise. The remnants of humanities garbage blowing on the wind as you drive by.
In Bioshock Infinite we see people doing what seem like ordinary things like children playing with a broken water hydrant, having a picnic, or buying goods in stores, etc. This ordinariness is something that is critical to the narrative of a world that is far from ordinary and in fact quite sinister. They talk amongst themselves and in one beautiful scene two lovers dance to a song playing. I can simply wander and watch them in the streets of the steampunk city-state of Columbia.
Deathloop characters, looping their lives over and over again on the same day in 1961 leave messages to themselves in the form of graffiti among the hedonistic destruction of their surroundings. Dialogue between the characters suggest they are bored, often rifting off memories of a time before the creation of the time loop.
In Stray, our feline character observes a litter-strewn, cyber-city in the near future. Bags belonging to homeless robots hand from windowsills and air conditioners. You can also get into many of the apartments and wander homes, peering into open fridges and exploring under beds.
But perhaps the closest a game has ever come to fulfilling my need for such a deep immersion is that of Dishonored and the combination of the game mechanics that are Blink and The Heart. Blink is a power that allows me to move unseen to any point of advantage to watch the scenery and characters. Usually high above, looking down on them live their lives. While The Heart whispers their thoughts to me as I watch. Using The Heart I am given a glimpse of their back story. Their hopes, dreams, memories, and justifications for their actions. Entirely unrelated to the game narrative. In one case we hear a drunk guard justify the beating of his wife, while a fisherman wrestles with the stealing of food from his employer to feed the orphans hiding in the city sewers. It is here I find the teasing of lore and the ordinary struggles of life, as one. A triumph of game design that teases the ordinary among the extraordinary.
In writing this, I’m reminded of 19th Century Scottish writer, Thomas Carlysle who said “the past is a series of acts and decisions by influential individuals“. His ‘Great Man’ theory suggests that the state of the world as we know it is the result of a series of decisions made by extraordinary people. He describes the history of the world as “but the biography of great men“. I disagree with his theory in general, if not only for his gender bias, but from a game design perspective there is some truth to it. The games we play are generally centred around notable characters – legendary heroes and ferocious villains. Those who’s decisions have led us here to this moment in this narrative, in this world as we find it. They wouldn’t sell otherwise, right? Yet for me these worlds are made real and important by so much more that is ordinary. The every day. The unseen. Unspoken. Uninteresting. The working class NPCs.
I imagine a persistent sentience in these worlds, long after I’ve exited the game, shut down my PC and gone to bed. Do they really cease to exist when I’m gone? When the heroes and villains are no longer in play. Am I the only catalyst of, and witness to their existence? There’s something so sad to me about the idea of such beauty left unseen. Such stories left untold. Held in some kind of digital stasis. Permanent pause. NPC’s like old mannequins in a forgotten clothes store warehouse. Architecture slowly degraded by the weather of disinterest.
Where do uninstalled games go to die? Or does the Bioshock clown juggle for eternity?
