Immersion Through Video Games 3

Link:http://illumin.usc.edu/107/immersion-through-video-games/3/

Dynamic Systems

Games have always tried to move beyond the linearity of movies and novels. Techniques such as content randomization and writing stories with many paths and endings were the first attempts, and a third, potentially revolutionary method has recently arisen. Based on games like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer that play out in dynamic, storyteller-driven worlds, real time strategy and role-playing games began to develop. The real-time strategy genre relies on scripted, movie-like sequences to tell its story, whereas role-playing games often make use of complicated conversation systems. Both, however, tread on untested ground in terms of gameplay. In either genre, the player is dropped into the world and told to make of it what he will. There is always a goal to achieve--a warlord to defeat or an artifact to find-- but the means of achieving that goal are left open to the player.

This results in a tremendously complicated design and programming process, but can give rise to an unparalleled range of freedom in terms of gameplay. The player can choose from an infinite number of strategies, because their imagination is the only limit to how they can proceed. As in life, we are given a set of abilities, skills, and procedures, and we are free to use them as we will. Thus, a giant leap is made towards immersion.

The Next Step: Emergence

The steps that were taken by these two genres to bring their gameplay into existence are the very steps that are now being researched as a way of removing the narrative restrictions on all kinds of video games. The technique is called emergence, and is one of the new frontiers in game artificial intelligence. In his book Professional Game Design, Troy Dunniway describes emergence as an efficiency tool:

“ The designer . . . can code in every possibility with a simple if/then type of structure, or a programmer can come up with a general system for these problems. . . One of the interesting aspects to designing a game based on systems is that, even when you've tested the game to death, someone still comes up with a new and innovative solution. As long as this new solution doesn't break the game, it can be a lot of fun [3]. ”

Efficient game implementation is certainly a welcome side effect to emergence, but the observation that it is impossible to test exhaustively implies that the technique has far broader implications.

Emergent Systems Design

Emergence is unpredictable behavior from the computer through systemic level design, which is the process of designing a high concept of what the game should be like, and inventing rules that, when combined, result in the intended "system." The system adds consistency that would be a painful process to implement through traditional scripting. For example, if the player is hit by a fireball in a system that understands the relationship between fire and flammability, then they will be burned, and maybe even catch fire. From this, the player will determine that fire causes damage, and that objects can be set on

 fire [4]. Later when the player sees a group of powerful monsters hiding in the forest, a fireball thrown at the trees may be an obvious solution. The system knows that trees light on fire, and moments later they do. Pretty soon, the whole forest is ablaze, and the monsters are burnt marshmallows.

Immersion Through Video Games 4

LinkLhttp://illumin.usc.edu/107/immersion-through-video-games/4/

Emergent systems are more intuitive, so the player feels more 'in control," and their plans fail or succeed in reasonable ways. As a rule, emergent systems work towards the immersion of the player, rather than against it. For players, this means that future games may be more than just photo-realistic graphics and lifelike sounds. There are boundless opportunities for emergent systems to model interactions, and when these models become sophisticated enough, a person's choice to suspend disbelief may be all that is necessary.

Emergence of Unpredictable Behaviors

Before getting carried away with a dream, however, we should look at how emergence is being utilized today. For example, emergence augments gameplay especially well in the game Black and White, which bases much of its action on a deeply integrated artificial intelligence model of the human learning process. Your ten-story-tall pet implements this model in discovering its environment and you, its master. By rewarding your pet for certain actions and chastising it for others, you can sculpt your pet's actions until they are nearly an autonomous extension of your own gameplay style. Unexpected outcomes of this model abound:

“ When I was in level 1, I got the healing spell. So I thought, it would be pretty neat to teach my little ape this spell. Since [he] wants to be always kind and generous to the people, he ran to the village to try his new spell. He looked around and I guess there was no one to heal. He got pretty upset about that. So he just picked up a guy and threw him as hard as he could against a mountain. The man . . . survived. He was hurt pretty bad[ly], though, screamed like hell, and was trying to get back to his house as quick[ly] as possible. My ape of course saw that, and healed him. After that he looked at me, all happy and smiling [2]. ”

Hundreds of these examples exist, all stemming from a very simple learning model. It is easy to conclude that even the dramatic elements that were once thought to be possible only through the rigid control of narration and scripting can now be produced randomly, if the system has an appropriate way of expressing itself.

With a method of dynamically generating events, the missing piece that keeps us from creating an infinite novel or movie is a method that makes stories more meaningful by using a single emergent model that intertwines the player, the characters, and the world. The possibilities are as frightening as they are exciting; for, if a system can conjure up behaviors that mimic real life, has it finally passed Turing's Test [2]? The world will be a very different place when it does, not just in our methods of entertainment, but also in the very definition of reality.

Conclusion: PCs Can Do Improv

Even in the short term, emergent systems like these help us to better understand the way that we interact with one another and our environment; they may even help us better understand our own thought process. If they follow the computer science model, these crude systems, like binary computer language, might give rise to more readily accessible procedures. Given a sufficiently complex system, is there any interaction that is impossible to model? As on Star Trek, we once again find ourselves gazing at a possibility that seems only barely beyond reach [5].

References

• • [1] Encyclopedia Britannica 2003. "Turing, Alan M." Internet: http://www.britannic​a.com/eb/article?eu=​75769, March 13, 2003.
  • [2] S. Johnson. "Wild Things." Wired March, pp. 78-83, 2002.
  • [3] T. Dunniway,. [1]Professional Game Design[/i]. New Riders, 2001.
  • [4] H. Smith. "Systemic Level Design for Emergent Gameplay." Game Developer's Conference Web Lecture. June 6, 2002. <http://www.gamasutr​a.com/features/slide​s/smith/index.htm>.
  • [5] "Encounter at Farpoint." Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paramount Pictures: October 11, 1987. 

Immersion Through Video Games 2

Link:http://illumin.usc.edu/107/immersion-through-video-games/2/

The Perfect Medium

But the Turing Test does not necessarily apply to video games, because they operate within a much more restrictive system than that of natural language. A computer-driven character in a game can concern itself entirely with running, jumping, and bouncing off walls; if a person were to assume control of that character, the limitations of the control would confine an intelligent being to very mechanical-looking procedures. In video games, these artificially intelligent creatures are called agents, or bots, and some of the most impressive examples can be seen in the Unreal Tournament series of games. It is often said in developer discussions and game reviews that the bots in Unreal are indistinguishable from actual twelve-year-olds in their ability to maraud the other team [2].

Due to the simplicity demanded by real-time systems, video games are probably not an appropriate medium for developing candidates for the Turing Test. This expectation of simplicity, however, means that video games are perfect for creating an immersive environment because the player's suspension of disbelief is already primed. The process becomes even easier when the game does something unexpected that exceeds the player's expectations. The best video games attract people in the same way that great novels or movies do, through emotional stories, color theory, and the ebb and flow of action. Unlike novels and movies, these games take immersion one step further by specifically casting you in the leading role.

Immersion in Games

This feature comes at a price, however, because the player becomes a random element in an otherwise tightly controlled system. Whereas movies and novels can stick to a script, video games are by nature less rigid. This makes the job of a game designer tremendously difficult, since the techniques for character development and story progression that work to aid suspension of disbelief in other media are generally too restrictive for application in games. Many successfully immersive video games lead the player toward completion of pre-planned goals, just like novels and movies. Ideally, when those goals are accomplished and the player is rewarded for those specific successes, the player should feel as though it could not have been accomplished without his skill [3].

Unfortunately, this method presents a dichotomy for the player, because the elements of story and gameplay are naturally separate. Thus, when the two are intertwined in a game, the player often feels that either the story is an unwanted distraction from the gameplay or that the gameplay is a tedious drawing-out of the story. However, the evolution of video games has resulted in a new technique for integrating story and gameplay more intricately than in the past.

Immersion Through Video Games

Link:http://illumin.usc.edu/107/immersion-through-video-games/

Immersion is the process by which a media element entices a person to suspend their disbelief and accept what they are viewing on a screen or page as actual reality. Through non-linear dramatic elements and interaction between the player and the computer, a video game achieves a level of reality that demands very little suspension of disbelief and is therefore a more compelling experience. Further advances in artificial intelligence and new ways of modeling interactive environments serve to make the environment more immersive, until suspension of disbelief is no longer necessary. It is only a matter of time before the dream of a perfectly immersive environment is a reality.

Introduction: Art Imitating Life?

The past decade has witnessed amazing improvements in the field of video game production. Graphics processors can produce effects that mimic real life to an unprecedented level of detail, sound systems can enhance three-dimensional effects with startling accuracy, and modern physical interaction models are leaps and bounds beyond the scampering of the original Mario Bros. With realistic digital movies and real-time technology quickly approaching the fabled "lifelike" quality, a person's acceptance of a virtual object as real becomes an easier, if not automatic, response. Emboldened by the ability to immerse a player in a virtual environment (see Fig. 1), game developers are turning back to the first questions that were asked at the conception of virtual reality: if the player reaches a significant level of immersion, is the environment real?

What is Immersion?

Davepape/Wikimedia Commons

Figure 1: Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, an example of immersive virtual reality.

Suspension of disbelief is the literary term for a reader's decision to accept what is presented in a story as a real event. It is the first step in the formation of people's emotional attachment to fictional characters in novels, movies, and video games. Immersion is a technique of lowering a person's need to suspend their disbelief by removing the text, the seat, or the keyboard, placing a person into the scene itself. Immersion is the removal of the barriers between people and their entertainment, until it is as real to us as everyday life.

Star Trek: The Next Generation made history in its very first episode when it introduced what has become a beautiful dream of the entertainment industry: the Holodeck. The Holodeck is a computer simulation of any situation that a person can imagine. With only a bit of programming, a world can be generated that resembles any thing or place, and mimics anyone, all in an empty 30-foot cube. Although the Holodeck, an invention that creates a perfect sense of immersion, was made through narration and film, many people could not help but think that its creation would someday be inevitable. Indeed, one of Star Trek's most compelling characteristics is that it made an unreal world seem nearly within reach. And so an entire generation of video game designers and engineers came of age with the desire to create a perfectly immersive environment-- one in which a person would not be able to distinguish virtual reality from reality. Luckily, the crucial yardstick to test the success of such a venture has existed for almost 50 years. This metric is called the Turing Test.

Bilby/Wikimedia Commons

Figure 2: In Turing's Test, Player C has to determine which of the other two players is the computer and which is a human.

Invented in 1950 by the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing, Turing's Test is a challenge. As shown in Figure 2, the test involves a person sitting at a computer and asking questions of two individuals sitting at computers in different rooms: one is another person, the other is a computer. If at the end of a period of time, say five minutes, the investigator can not determine which respondent is human and which is machine, then the computer can be said to be intelligent [1]. This test applies to more than just automated chat programs, however. Any medium's ability to immerse the player through intelligent reactions, visuals, or sound is subjected to the same standards. How real is it? How immersive?

Analysis: The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games

Analysis: The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games
by Jamie Madigan


 Game discussion often revolves around "immersion," but what exactly does that mean? Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan takes a look for Gamasutra at the complex psychological concepts behind immersion with regard to video games.]

Along with "OMGDUDESOAWESOME," one of the words that gamers like to toss around when describing their favorite titles is "immersive."

But what exactly does that mean? And what makes a game immersive? Ask five people and you'll probably get 10 opinions, but psychologists have been studying immersion in various kinds of media for decades, including video games, so they could probably shed some light on those questions.

Except they don't call it "immersion." Instead, they call it "presence," which, admittedly, isn't as cool. Regardless, researchers have identified several kinds of presence in regards to how we perceive media, but it's spatial presence that I think comes closest to what gamers think of as "immersion."

Briefly, spatial presence is often defined as existing when "media contents are perceived as ‘real' in the sense that media users experience a sensation of being spatially located in the mediated environment."

The idea is just that a game (or any other media from books to movies) creates spatial presence when the user starts to feel like he is "there" in the world that the game creates.

People who experience immersion tend to only consider choices that make sense in the context of the imaginary world. Someone immersed in Red Dead Redemption, for example, might be more likely to use travel methods, like stagecoaches, that make sense within the game, instead of methods that don't (like fast traveling from a menu screen). People immersed in media also tend to enjoy it more.

A Theory of Spatial Presence (aka, Immersion)

But how does this happen? What about a game and what about the player makes her feel like she's leaving the real world behind? Theories abound, but a few years ago Werner Wirth and a team of other researchers sat down to consolidate the research and come up with one unified theory Here it is:



Woah, woah, woah. Sorry. Let's just back up and take a simplified look at the parts most relevant to us gamers.

Basically, Wirth et al.'s theory says that spatial presence happens in three steps:

- Players form a representation in their mind of the space or world with which the game is presenting them.
- Players begin to favor the media-based space (I.e., the game world) as their point of reference for where they "are" (or to put it in psychological gobbledy-gook, their "primary ego reference frame")
- Profit!

So, basically, the process starts with players forming a mental model of the game's make-believe space by looking at various cues (images, movement, sounds, and so forth) as well as assumptions about the world that they may bring to the table.

Once that mental model of the game world is created, the player must decide, either consciously or unconsciously, whether she feels like she's in that imagined world or in the real one. Of course, it's worth noting that this isn't necessarily a conscious decision with the prefrontal cortex's stamp of approval on it. It can be subconscious, on the sly, slipped into sideways and entered and exited constantly.

Researchers have extensively studied how these two steps happen, but I think it's more interesting for our purposes here to skip to the bit about what qualities of the media (i.e., game) and person (i.e., player) that they've found facilitate both of these steps and create immersion. So let's do that.

Game Characteristics Leading to Spatial Presence

Characteristics of games that facilitate immersion can be grouped into two general categories: those that create a rich mental model of the game environment and those that create consistency between the things in that environment.

Let's take the concept of richness, first. This isn't an exhaustive list, but richness relates to:

- Multiple channels of sensory information
- Completeness of sensory information
- Cognitively demanding environments
- A strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story

Multiple channels of sensory information means simply that the more senses you assault and the more those senses work in tandem, the better. A bird flying overhead is good. Hearing it screech as it does so is better. 3D may also play a role here, and we can all agree that smell-o-vision will herald in a new era of spatial presence.



Completeness of sensory information means that the fewer blanks about the mental model of the game world that the player has to fill in, the better. Abstractions and contrivances (there are no people in this town because of, uh, a plague! Yeah!) are the enemy of immersion. Assassin's Creed 2 was immersive because its towns were filled with people who looked like they were doing …people stuff.

Dealing in a familiar environment also allows the player to comfortably make assumptions about those blank spaces without being pulled out of the world to think about it. Knowing what the wild West is supposed to look like and having Red Dead Redemption conform to those stereotypes goes a long way towards creating spatial presence.

Cognitively demanding environments where players have to focus on what's going on and getting by in the game will tie up mental resources. This is good for immersion, because if brain power is allocated to understanding or navigating the world, it's not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they're playing a game.

Finally, a strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story will suck you in every time. In fact, it's pretty much the only thing in a book's toolbox for creating immersion, and it works in games too. Good stories attract attention to the game and make the world seem more believable. They also tie up those mental resources.

Turning to game traits related to consistency, we have:

- Lack of incongruous visual cues in the game world
- Consistent behavior from things in the game world
- An unbroken presentation of the game world
- Interactivity with items in the game world

Lack of incongruous visual cues in the game world is one of the more interesting precursors to spatial presence. If we were discussing the same concept in movies, I'd cite the example of seeing a boom mic drop into an otherwise believable scene. It's anything that reminds you that "Yo, this is A VIDEO GAME."

Examples might include heads up displays, tutorial messages, damage numbers appearing over enemies' heads, achievement notifications, friends list notifications, and the like. It's also the reason why in-game advertising wrecks immersion so much –seeing twenty five instances of ads for the new Adam Sandler movie while trying to rescue hostages kind of pulls you out of the experience.

Believable behavior from things in the game world means that characters, objects, and other creatures in the game world behave like you'd expect them to. It's also worth noting that the cues need to make sense and be constant throughout the experience. This is one reason that I think BioShock's audio logs kind of hurt the game's otherwise substantial immersion: Who the heck records an audio diary, breaks it up into 20-second chunks, puts them on their own dedicated tape players, and then wedges those players into the various corners of a public place? It doesn't make any sense.

An unbroken presentation of the game world means that the spatial cues about the imaginary world your game has created should not just up and vanish. Which is exactly what happens every time you get a loading screen, a tutorial, or a game menu. When that happens, the game world literally disappears for a few minutes, and we can't feel immersed in something that isn't there.

Interactivity with items in the game world could probably fit under the "richness" list above, but I include it with consistency because it's another way of giving the player feedback on actions and a sense of consistency between various parts of the environment. Operating machines, talking to NPCs, and fiddling with physics makes it seem like the various pieces of the world fit together consistently.



Player Characteristics Leading to Spatial Presence

Of course, players have some say in how immersed they get in a game. Some people just have more spatial ability and can build those mental models of game worlds more readily and make them more vibrant. And researchers have found that people have an "absorption trait" which means that they're quicker to get fascinated by something and drawn into it –something I like to think of this as "the fanboy gene."

Other times the player takes a more active role. Some players simply want to believe in the illusion, and will induce their own bias towards accepting the "I am there" hypothesis. In this state, they'll require less confirmatory information to accept that hypothesis and less disconfirming information to reject it. This is also similar to the idea of "suspension of disbelief" where players willfully ignore stuff that doesn't make sense (like thunderous explosions in space or the fact that enemy soldiers can soak up a dozen of gunshots without going down) in order to just have a good time.

Other researchers have also pointed to a concept they call "involvement" which is a media user's desire to act in the make-believe world, to draw parallels between it and his life, and to effect changes in it according to their own design. To me, this seems like an overly fancy way of saying "some people like to role-play" which leads directly to greater immersion.

So there you have it. Everybody can cite examples of things that yank them out of the game experience, and it turns out that psychologists have examined, classified, and isolated a lot of them. This isn't to say, though, that ALL games should strive to be immersive. I think games are kind of unique in all media in that this is so. A game can still be a good game without being immersive, and maybe some types of games are better if they aren't immersive. But that's the great thing: game designers have a lot of paths that they can take to good art.

References:

- Wissmath, B, Weibel, D., & Groner, R. (2009). Dubbing or Subtitling? Effects on Spatial Presence, Transportation, Flow, and Enjoyment. Journal of Media Psychology 21 (3), 114-125.
- Wirth, W., hartmann, T., Bocking, S., Vorderer, P., Klimmt, C., Holger, S., Saari, T., Laarni, J., Ravaja, N., Gouveia, F., Biocca, F., Sacau, A. Jancke, L., Baumgartner, T., & Jancke, P. A Process Model for the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences. Media Psychology, 9, 493-525.