It Feels So Real! (Immersion in Video Games)

I’ve been playing video games since I was 10 years-old, and I almost play every single night for about 2-3 hours, which I should probably shorten now that I’m in college and struggling with getting papers done, but I can’t pull myself away from something that enjoy. My family members have asked me many times before, why I like video games so much? My answer would usually be “cause it’s fun” or “it’s like watching a movie or reading a book, but you have a say on what’s about to happen next”, but now (as I type this post) I begin to really think of the reasons as to why I’m so enthralled with video games. I could’ve been obsessed with style/ clothing (fashion), or sports, or comics, or manga/anime, or anything that people my age are enchanted by, but why games? Well, after looking over my previous posts on my blog, it’s safe to say that I love a good game with an awesome story and games that offer the player the chance to play the way they want to play (hopefully that made sense), but is there anything else? After carefully looking over the games that I currently possess for my Xbox 360, I realized that most of them have a feature where they allow players to become immersed with the gameplay in games. So for the sake of this post (and myself), I’ll be exploring more about ‘immersion’ and how it relates to video games. 

What’s Immersion?

The actually definition for immersion is “the state of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption.”[1] So since I’m trying to connect this concept to video games, it’s basically the state of when someone is completely focused or submerged in the reality that’s taken place in the virtual world provided by a game. 

Courtesy of www.gamedesignideas.com

“The idea 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.”

-Jamie Madigan

Jamie Madigan, author of Getting Gamers: The Psychology of Video Games and Their Impact on the People Who Play Them, has written a very interesting article called The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games, where he talks more about immersion or “spatial presence” and the many different characteristics that cause this presence to activate in the minds of gamers, such as multiple channels of sensory information, completeness of sensory information, cognitively demanding environments, and a strong and interesting narrative, plot, or story.[2]

 

For more info on what these things are, check out the link up-above.

My Overall Understanding of it All

I’ve been lately playing this game called Mirror’s Edge (I absolutely love it!) that I feel makes me really understand and experience what it’s like to be really immersed in game. 

You play as Faith (the protagonist), a Runner “living off the grid on the rooftops of the city” that makes a living off the fast lane by “working as a burglar, courier and corporate spy.”[3] As you play the game, you don’t see Faith, but you play and see the world through Faith’s eyes, which can further enhance the experience of feeling that you’re in the game. Here’s a video to see what I mean:

Alrighty! That’s the end of this blog post! Keep Calm and Game On!

Courtesy of DeviantArt User: kerokid

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[1] "immersion". The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 28 Nov. 2015. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/immersion>.

[2] Madigan, Jamie. "The Psychology of Immersion in Video Games." The Psychology of Video Games. 27 July 2010. Web. 29 Nov. 2015. <http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/07/the-psychology-of-immersion-in-video-games/>.

[3] "Experience the Rise of Faith." Mirror's Edge. Electronic Arts Inc., 15 June 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015. <http://www.mirrorsedge.com/news/experience-the-rise-of-faith>.

Time to Grow Up: The Importance of Character Development

What’s Character Development?

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, character development “can refer to either the task of sitting down and creating a character (working out their appearance, history, mannerisms, and so on), or it can refer to the change a character undergoes during the course of a story.”[1]

And to help show how it plays an important function for a game’s story, here’s a video that I believe shows a great deal of well-established character development in the Assassin’s Creed series. 

(Warning: Spoilers! Watch at Your Own Risk!)

I realize that the video contained a lot of information and was a bit fast-paced (I was having difficulty remembering the different names of people and places, and I’ve played the games before), but it did contain the key components that were used (earlier in this post) to define character development. When it came to appearances, each assassin (Desmond, Altair, and Ezio) had a different clothing style based on the culture and time they derived from. Altair’s assassin attire looks to be somewhat similar to the description of the robes men wear in Syria (this is my opinion, and I could be wrong), Ezio’s assassin attire is almost similar to what men wore during the Renaissance, and Desmond’s attire is consists of our everyday attire. 

Altair (left), Ezio (middle), Desmond (right)

Altair (left), Desmond (middle), Ezio (right); Courtesy of DeviantArt user: RubinFreddy

The history they all reside from relates to the cultural setting and era that their stories take place, which seemed to have had a huge affect on their personalities, and can really help portray who they are to the player. For example, Altair is more cold-hearted and serious, while Ezio is more charming and social. In Altair’s case, he grew up in an order of Assassins, where he learned to show no compassion and devoted most of his time toward the perfecting his skills as an assassin, and became the highest rank in the Brotherhood, which he achieved somewhere in his mid-twenties.[2] In Ezio’s case, he grew up during the Renaissance era (the most romantic and artistic period of history) with his family and was quite the ladies’ man and very social because of being a nobleman.[3]

Assassin's Creed Time-line: Atlair (upper left corner), Ezio (upper right), Connor (lower left; wasn't mentioned in this post), Desmond (lower right); Courtesy of Mr. Whaler (Ali)

 

And last but not least, each assassin undergoes dramatic and life-altering changes that act as the beginning or central part of the game’s story. I won’t go into too much explanation about this because the video above summarizes it a lot better and clearer, but all three protagonists (Desmond, Altair, and Ezio) experience a sudden change that causes them to grow and develop into a completely different person than they were in the beginning. For example, Altair was at first stripped of his highest rank to a novice (because of his arrogance and rebellion behavior) and had to work his way back to the top, where he learns and uncovers dark secrets about the order; Ezio was ripped away from his life as a nobleman to an assassin seeking justice and revenge for the death of his family, which were killed by the Templars; and Desmond was just an ordinary guy that worked as a bartender, but was suddenly engulfed into the a 100 year war between Assassins and Templars. 

Courtesy of DeviantArt user: TheBruceZero

Why Is It Important?

Personally, I feel that it’s important for a character to undergo these changes because it plays a vital part toward capturing the audience’s attention, which then pulls leads them to focus more on the story that’s unfolding around the main character. Once players are reeled in, they follow the protagonist throughout his/her travels and witness his/her times of hardship and prosperity, and each moment allows the audience to see how the character evolves from being naive and ignorant to wiser and understanding. It’s through this process that players begin to feel more of a connection with the fictional character after following them on a long and personal journey, and allows them to fully understand the reasons for his/her thoughts and actions in certain situations.  If we weren’t able to see a character develop or experience any type of hardship, it would seem as though the fictional character were standing on a high pedestal that no one could reach or ever achieve. We need to see character make mistake because we only grow and learn after making mistakes, and by having a video game character not be perfect can make them appear to be more relatable and favored by players.

Well, that’s it for this post! Keep Calm and Game On!

Courtesy of DeviantArt user: PeaceRaccoon

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[1] "What Does Character Development Actually Mean?" - Writers Stack Exchange. 2 June 2011. Web. 22 Nov. 2015. Definition given by Craig Sefton

[2] "Altair Ibn-La'Ahad." Giant Bomb. 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.giantbomb.com/altair-ibn-laahad/3005-48/>.

[3] "Ezio Auditore Da Firenze." Giant Bomb. 21 Feb. 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.giantbomb.com/ezio-auditore-da-firenze/3005-10269/>.

What Is Love?!?!?!

Things that I Look for in Games

When it comes to video games, I tend to be very picky and selective about the games I play, and there are a multitude of things that I take into account so that I know for a fact that I’ll enjoy everything the gameplay as to offer. I look for games with a detailed graphics and art style, intricate dialogue, character customization (weapons and armor or character’s appearance), and etc, but there’s one thing that every game should have before I purchasing it, which is to tell a great compelling story. Most people tend to assume that there’s only one story being told and that it can be seen in the plot-line, but there are multiple stories being told through a number of different factors that are seen throughout the game’s entirety. For example, the story can be seen in the dialogue, the environment, the characters, the clothing, weapons, and much more. 

So for this particular blog post, I’ll be focusing on one of these factors that has the ability to tell a story, and the type of story it tells branches away from the main story toward more of a mini-story: the romance between characters in video games. 

The Missing Piece: Romance

In one of my previous blog posts, I talked about how the ‘decision-making’ aspect in games offers a great way for the audience to connect more with the story, and in the last blog post I mentioned how side-characters are able to pull in the players’ attention to both the story-line and the protagonist, but there was something that I forgot to add in the last post about side-characters and how they’re able to win over gamers in a way that most games have yet to incorporate and further understand: in-game relationships. 

Created by Ahitagni Mandal

            Now, some of you are probably thinking “in-game relationships? Like romance?” and yes, that’s exactly what I mean! It may seem a bit odd for a game to provide a type of feature that allows the player to become romantically involved with a fictional character, but it isn’t completely unheard of or rare. 

Bring Forth the Virtual Romance

In games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect (created by Bioware), they allow players to have a romantic experience with NPCs that are important to the context of the story. Not only do these games provide the interactive experience, they also provide a more realistic and modern setting to the romances that can be done in these virtual worlds. For example, if someone were to play as a female, they have the option to romance a female NPC, instead of romancing a male character, and vice versa. 

Romance Options from Dragon Age Series (moodyrebelmage.tumblr.com)

 

Romance Options from Mass Effect Series (kotorcomics.tumblr.com)

In both game franchises, there tend to be 6 romance options (the characters that can be romanced) in the game that are available to both male and female main characters (depending on whether the player plays as a female or male protagonist), and each romance contains different dialogue, cinematic cut-scenes, and endings. These romances tend to either start somewhere near the beginning of the game or about halfway into the gameplay, and with the large amount of hours that are still left toward completing the game, the game writers and developers probably thought it best to create these ‘romantic characters’ that could be discovered by the player that contained their own unique stories of trail and hardship, such as trying to survive a devastating war with your ‘loved one’ or helping your ‘lover’ overcome certain challenges, that can branch off into becoming side-quests.

Well, this is where I leave off for this post! I'm gonna play video games now, bye!  

queen-berry.tumblr.com

P.S. For those who have tried to romance the Iron Bull in Dragon Age Inquisition or Garrus in Mass Effect, it took forever for them to actually take the hint! (Damn those calibrations!)

Video Game Side-Kicks: Who the Hell are You?

Growing up as a video game addict, I was completely enthralled with the stories that were intricately woven within the game’s plot-line, and I’ve always dreamed about becoming a writer to help create these awe-inspiring tales. I can’t necessarily say what the job of a gamer writer consists of because they are consistently collaborating with artists, designers, and programmers to create many important aspects that help with the game’s plot line, such as the protagonist’s story, character dialogue, where the game takes place and why, etc. But one thing that I’m really fascinated by is the stories and personalities of the ‘side-characters’ that travel with the protagonist to fight the evil that threatens them all. And this brings an important aspect to the game that makes the audience interact more with the story being told. 

The Purpose of Side-Characters

            Side-characters (also called supporting characters) in all forms of story-telling, such as novels, TV shows, and movies, serve as great allies to the protagonist and are very well-known for the large amount of loyalty they show for the hero or heroine both on and off the battlefield. However, when mainly focusing on the video game aspect, they play two vital roles when it comes to capturing the audience’s attention in order to keep them fully interested in the story and events that the game. The first role, which is absolutely critical in RPGs (Role-Playing Games) that allow the player to make decisions, is to give advice or their input about a certain event or situation. By providing important key factors (that the player may have forgotten about or hadn’t considered), the supporting characters help gamers to take everything into account so that their decisions are carefully made and bring them one step closer to the ending they hope to achieve. The second role is that they establish very interesting connections with the audience by adding having unique personalities and captivating personal stories, which can make them appear to be very relatable and amusing in cut-scenes. 

 

            A good example of how these qualities intermingle with one another to create an unforgettable playing experience would be the companions featured in Mass Effect series:

(2 things that I must add before video is played: 1) spoilers! 2) there are a lot of companions that can travel with the protagonist, so the video only shows the top 10 companions in the game)

Why Is This Important?

            If there weren’t any side-characters or supporting characters, it would just be the protagonist (and maybe the antagonist, but I’m not sure if they as supporting or main characters), and wouldn’t you get bored if you had to listen and look at the same character for over 90 hours of gameplay?

…………………….. Yes, you would………………………………………….

            Supporting character's are important because they have the ability to complement the protagonist and the story by revealing key factors in the plot-line and giving the audience more insight on the main character's personality and way of thinking. Each one has their own story to tell, and listening to stories that are a part of a larger story makes it so much easier to escape from reality and dive into a world that seems more real and life-like.