Starker on 23/5/2017 at 14:10

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I did not mean active or passive in the sense of viewer engagement, I meant it as active participation. In a video game, the player is a co-author to a degree that goes beyond reader-response theory.

For example, if a character makes a moral choice in the movie, the viewer can empathise with them, but in a video game, the player is directly responsible. Video games can create a direct sense of guilt or accomplishment that books and movies can only allow to experience vicariously.

Also, watching a movie or reading a book, the viewer/reader does not refer to the world as if he was a participant there, whereas in a video game, players often say things like "I dropped my sword" or "I can't jump there" or "I died" instead of referring to the character.

Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 15:10

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A lot of these tangential arguments are getting silly.

One might argue that having four legs is a defining characteristic of a dog. Are there dogs with fewer than four legs? Yes. Are there other things with four legs? Yes. Do either of those facts mean that discussing dogs as being four-legged is completely meaningless? No!

Starker is saying that verisimilitude is a hallmark of immersive sims (and I think Starker was correct in saying it's a better alternative to "realism"). That assertion is in no way an argument that Uncharted is an immersive sim, or that a photograph of a dog is an immersive sim, or that a very stereo-typically tree-like tree is an immersive sim.

"Immersive sim" is a label for a collection of things that are a very specific kind of immersive and a very specific kind of sim, along with a lot of other specific facets that aren't explicitly included in the label. People still seem to be arguing at a very basic level that it's not possible to make a somewhat rough classification for things and then narrow down the classification through additional criteria. See again my examples of "Science Fiction" and "Western." There is debate over exactly what falls into those categories and what does not, but that does not make them completely meaningless.

Sulphur on 23/5/2017 at 15:54

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Of course it's getting silly. I don't agree that Thief has verisimilitude to the real world because a lot of it is implausible, unless your definition of verisimilitude is adherence to a certain set internal logic (i.e., truthiness to itself), but I'd call it immersive-ish, sure. The same with Amnesia, and MGS, and a bunch of other games that a random sample of people here will be unlikely to give the same amount of latitude to.

The point is immersive sims can be non-immersive while at the same time also not being hardcore simulators. The entire name is a catch-22.

And I still don't get why everyone's throwing themselves at defining immersion, which is a thing that means different things to different people, but hey, whatever floats your boats.

Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 16:24

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Maybe a better description of the AI would be "reactive AI." Most of the AI in games is very rudimentary in the grand scheme of artificial intelligence, but there are definitely degrees of sophistication. Immersive sims, if designed well, will have AI that can react to the player doing various "unexpected" things. Ideally, in an immersive sim, AI characters in the middle of a conversation will stop their conversation and react if the player interrupts. There are plenty of games where that's not possible. There is still a small degree of unpredictability that can be relevant as well. If guards in Thief have random variation to their patrol routes, that means the player needs to assess a situation and find a solution in the moment, rather than (always) finding or memorizing one "best" and/or "intended" solution.

I do think that "immersive sim" is an ideal that hasn't yet been fully realized. I would say the games that people associate with the term are just the ones that come comparatively closest to that ideal, even if they all fall short in certain ways (often because of technical limitations). I think a lot of it has to do with the perceived intent of the developers. If it seems they tried to meet the ideals and fell short here and there, they can be forgiven for it. When games are excluded, I think it's often because it seems that the developers made creative decisions that are contrary to those ideals.

I think Thief might still be the best example of an immersive sim, and I wish that other games would do all of the things that it got right (and improve on them). Some of the things I mean:
-Sound propagation allows the player to hear where things are in the world without needing to see them.
-Mechanisms such as switches and buttons are often small and/or hidden (even though there is the concession of red levers) rather than being over-sized and prominent.
-Doors with locks can be locked and unlocked, using the associated keys.
-Where the limited technology of the time allows it, buildings have interiors and exteriors. They have front, back, and side doors. They have roofs. They have windows that can be opened.
-The player can pick up lots of objects, both useful and (relatively) useless. It's often up to the player to decide how useful a particular object is.
-AI characters are reactive to lots of different things the player can do, and they will also do things that are unrelated to the player's presence.
-The player can lean, crawl, run, and climb on top of things.
-Fire and water react to each other (as part of a larger stim system).
-In-game maps are varied and realistic. They have varying amounts of detail depending on who (what character) created them, and you often know who did create them and why. Conversely and more importantly: if there's not a reason for them to exist, they don't exist!
-The player's objectives are varied, are all given to the player up-front when appropriate, and make sense in context. The player often has to use investigative skills to determine how to accomplish the objectives (as opposed to following a GPS cursor to a glowing circle). There is often some flexibility in how the objectives are accomplished. There are also negative-condition objectives (such as "don't kill anyone") and other complexities.
-Violence is possible but not required. There are repercussions to violence. There are alternatives.
-Secrets and hidden locations are hidden in realistic ways. When they are pointed out to the player, they are pointed out in realistic ways.
-Readable material is written in a realistic way and important information can be hidden within.

There are other games that do these things, but I don't know if any other game does all of them, or does many of them as well as Thief. Many games eschew these kinds of things in order to be more accessible to the player, to be easier to play on a TV, to fit controllers with limited buttons, because of technical limitations, or simply because they're complicated or difficult to do well.

Most of the things that I wish Thief did better (including instances where it deviates from the list above), I realize were restricted by the technology at the time. Many of them could be improved on now.

With other games that I consider to be immersive sims, they hit many of these points but invariably fall short in a few of them.

-Besides System Shock 2, where the level design makes it a lot less relevant, I don't know of any game that does sound propagation as well as Thief.
-In Dishonored and Deus Ex, buildings rarely feel as complete or realistic as in Thief. They almost always feel like they have too few rooms in them, and secret entrances or alternate paths are usually way too large or prominent.
-The level design in System Shock 2 often feels very unrealistic and artificial. I think it does well with small areas in isolation, but the way areas are laid out and connected is strange.
-Many games streamline the use of keys, so that the character automatically knows what key goes with what lock and uses it automatically.
-Readables and NPC dialog in Dishonored are repetitive and often seem artificial (even when the quality of the writing is good otherwise).
-Many games highlight secret or hidden objects artificially to help the player see them.
-Many games don't allow the player to pick up any object that isn't useful.
-I think Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a pretty good fit but is pulled in other directions by the third person perspective, limited vocals, and occasional cartoony aspects (such as the animation for cooking). It does do very well in terms of making the player figure things out and come up with their own solutions to problems.

It's entirely possible (maybe even probable) that a game that met the ideals even better than Thief did would not sell very well. We may never see it. I'm hoping that VR will make it more likely, though, as a lot of these things are more natural or more expected by the player in VR.

Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 16:56

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Is there anything wrong with that? I think it's an ideal that we could come pretty close to achieving, especially as VR improves.

Actually, it might make more sense to define things in reverse. In the end, the ideal might be an experience that is indistinguishable from reality (except by being a work of fiction or being in a fictional setting). Maybe the term "immersive sim" up to this point really just means "the high-water mark for what can / has been achieved, in the direction of this ideal, on a computer screen, with existing technology / control methods." The measurement for comparison has to do with how much a game reminds the player that it's artificial. The more obvious these reminders are, the further the game is from the ideal.

Getting back to verisimilitude, I think it's ok for the experience to involve science fiction / fantasy elements, which are not "realistic" but can still feel realistic. I would say "reminding the player that it's artificial" has to do with making technical limitations or "lazy" design obvious to the player, rather than having to do with presenting things that the player knows are imaginary.

Edit: If VR becomes a thing that people do all the time, the balance might shift. Any game genre could be played within the virtual world, in a way that fits these criteria. At that point, I might describe the distinction like this:
An "immsersive sim" can be any kind of experience in that virtual world.
Almost any other currently-existing game genre would simply a "game" or "toy" played within that virtual world. A third-person game is somewhat like controlling a puppet or a remote control car. A sports game (as we know them now) is like a sophisticated foosball table. Turn-based strategy is like a board game. The concept of "first person shooter" as a distinct concept might go away, and simply be replaced with "an intentionally violent and antagonistic experience."