In what ways are games immersive and what improves immersion in games?
Games are forever drawing users in from the 90s when the first consoles came out to now days 2019! technology has developed so much since the first bit games, even with modern consoles trying to remediate their old products to allow the fans to relive their childhood memories.
The meaning of Immersion:
Immersion into virtual reality is a perception of being physically present in a non-physical world. The perception is created by surrounding the user of the VR system in images, sound or other stimuli that provide an engrossing total environment.
Such modern games as Witcher 3 and the Skyrim open worlds are well known for their detail to the surrounding world in the game with additional expansion packs, generating even more of this imaginary environment for the user to explore. Creating a character to represent you, exploring the world pretending you are living their life, slaying dragons and monsters for example!
Skyrim has taken this to a whole new level of immersive gaming with creating a mod for the user to use a Virtual Reality headset. This would allow users to completely remove themselves from the real world. With a full headset over your eyes, controls in your hand the user would be submerged into this virtual world to be able to fight, walk and create in the Skyrim world. This could be Playstations way of radical reformulation yet with Skyrim.
The Playstation's VR headset and controls completely remove you from the real world and into the VR world.
Here is Some of the VR play-through footage of the Skyrim VR:
Skyrim VR is rather safe, you're unable to push through the boundaries of what could really be done with VR. We imagine VR allowing us to move our whole bodies through a virtual world, whereas Skyrim still kept us sat in a chair.
I have been lucky enough to try a far superior game called Superhot VR, This got my whole body moving, ducking, weaving and accidentally punching a wall while being unaware of the real space around me. I am just glad the footage of my real body playing the game cant be found aha.
Superhot VR is a slow-mo action game where the player freezes time, and, using their body IRL, grabs weapons in the virtual world to counter attack the creatures coming towards us.
The games design wouldn't have the same effect on any other platform making it super unique for the VR systems.
' VR’s real breakthrough won’t come until a full experience (game or otherwise) has created its own style of immersion and can offer something platform-specific. Superhot VR which allows you to dodge and weave and move around a room as you participate in a slow motion ballet of violence might be the best example of where virtual reality experiences should go.' Sidney Fussell, 2017.
On the terms of film the IMAX Cinemas try to offer an immersive view towards the film and although it's a greater experience of the film, you are still aware of your surroundings. Unlike VR headsets where you're dropped into the world you're exploring. Although it's wonderful the technology that has been created around IMAX its not as personal for a larger audience compared to a one on one basis.
When I watch an IMAXfilm(or a 3-D film, for that matter), I am acutely
aware of the fact that I am not only watching a movie, but also watching the
technology that made that particular movie- and its attempt to produce a sense
of full immersion into the world of the film- possible (Tryon 2009, 70).
Bibliography
Sidney Fussell, Skyrim VR Is Everything Wrong With Virtual Reality Right Now, 2015
Tryon, Chuck Reinventing cinema:
movies in the age of media convergence Rutgers University Press 2009
