
Originally Posted by
Bled
I do not know why you think Immersion is subjective but here i will quote myself back slew of pages with what psychological gaming immersion is.
Immersion aka Spacial Presence
Completeness of sensory information (aka visuals) means that the fewer imperfections about the mental model of the game world that the player has to fill in, the better like big arrows for quests, and instant teleports with no travel time to speak of. Abstractions (there are no people in this town because of, uh, a genocide!) 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, actual daily tasks. Dealing in a familiar environment also allows everyone to comfortably make assumptions about those blank spaces without being pulled out of the world to think about it like copy pasting areas over and over again in FF14. Knowing that the world is not a copy paste but rather a different piece of a puzzle allows you to be more immersed in the game.
Cognitively demanding environments where you stop and think causes the player base 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 the brain is used for understanding or moving around in the world, it’s not free to notice all its problems or shortcomings that would otherwise remind them that they’re playing a game like instant teleport forces on people.
Finally, a strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story will suck you in every time no matter who you are. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing in a book’s arsenal for creating immersion and look at the long running of books! 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 I spoke of earlier in avoiding notice of other game flaws.
Your aspect of immersion you keep bringing up "ideling" is a portion of time were you are taking in sensory information allowing you to use more of those mental resources. Today's crowd of gamers is so impatient, so greedy, and so ignorant that they cant help but not appreciate immersion; does this lack of patience and appreciation of quality come from something outside of the gaming world, yes i do believe so... i pin this on American culture.
I just don't understand how a person of your intellectual prowess could think that immersion can not be measure and defined aka subjective. I do not agree with your statement "Content can add immersion. Immersion for immersion sake is not content", Content does not all ways add immersion for instance insta porting is content and yet creates no immersion. yet you are correct immersion is developed in a game through content so you can not have immersion without content; Immersion is a product of content, however content can have no immersion.
they don't need to be balanced, mechanics breed immersion. Like i said mechanics do not always breed immersion.
there is a communication breakdown here and I should've been more descriptive. yep i agree with that.
I'm taking the photograph of the earth with the hubble telescope. You're taking a photograph of the place you live. i do not agree with this and again maybe this was a result in a communication break down. I am advocating IMMERSION! in Final Fantasy 14 not the whole game, in this discussion. When i stated you are not looking at the big picture i meant you are disregarding a legitimate game mechanic (immersion) all together by stating it is a subjective mechanic.
You can't, you'll have losses. I'm okay with these losses as an open game will be conducive to more people's interests as they'll be able to access it more. Yes and when you open your self up for more interests you can shut everyone out at the same time. It is just not smart marketing to try and target every demographic and expect to even please half of each demographic thus resulting in profit, that is just not realistic. "We got a rushed product, not a half assed one." It was half assed because it was rushed, but even still how do you define rushed seeing as Hiromichi Tanaka had 5 years to develop the game.. and a previous game under his belt. When you target to many demographics you are more apt to create a sloppy product. Simple marketing strategy you play to your strengths and you develop a product that has a target demographic not all demographics...