Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 17:24
Quote Posted by Thirith
I'm sorry, but I think this is bullshit. It's akin to saying that "The sonnet is the high water mark for what can be achieved in poetry" or "Impressionism is the high water mark for what can be achieved in painting." However we define the immersive sim, it's not inherently *better* than every other genre. It may be more complex with respect to a specific type of complexity, and it may be your personal preference, but there's nothing inherently wrong with either artificiality nor with razor-sharp focus. If you define the genre as what you personally like best, you're talking about yourself first and foremost, not about the genre. The word 'masturbation' has been mentioned before in this thread, but if you're going to conflate definition, judgment and personal taste like that, you're well and truly spanking the monkey.
Sorry, let me clarify. I should rephrase the high-water mark statement:
The term would represent the "high-water mark" for what can currently be achieved
in the direction of this ideal.It definitely is about personal taste. It's like Realism, the art movement. I think other art movements have analogs in gaming as well.
Starker on 23/5/2017 at 18:14
I wouldn't say that there has to be some sort of a platonic essentialist ideal of an immersive sim to make the concept usable.
Here's a relevant bit by Wittgenstein that talks about it:
Quote:
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http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw65-69c.htm) http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw65-69c.htm
(
http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw70-75c.htm) http://users.rcn.com/rathbone/lw70-75c.htm
How should we explain to someone what a game is?
I imagine that we should describe games to him, and we might add: "This and similar things are called 'games' ". And do we know any more about it ourselves? Is it only other people whom we cannot tell exactly what a game is?
— But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary — for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! (Except for that special purpose.) No more than it took the definition: 1 pace = 75 cm. to make the measure of length 'one pace' usable. And if you want to say "But still, before that it wasn't an exact measure", then I reply: very well, it was an inexact one. — Though you still owe me a definition of exactness.
#[Someone says to me: "Show the children a game." I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order?]
"But if the concept 'game' is uncircumscribed like that, you don't really know what you mean by a 'game'."
— When I give the description: "The ground was quite covered with plants" — do you want to say I don't know what I am talking about until I can give a definition of a plant?
My meaning would be explained by, say, a drawing and the words "The ground looked roughly like this". Perhaps I even say "it looked exactly like this." — Then were just this grass and these leaves there, arranged just like this? No, that is not what it means. And I should not accept any picture as exact in this sense.
One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges. — "But is a blurred concept a concept at all?" — Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need?
Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it.
— But is it senseless to say: "Stand roughly there?"
Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand — as if I were indicating a particular spot.
And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way.
— I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I — for some reason — was unable to express; but that he is no to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect means of explaining — in default of a better.
For any general definition may be misunderstood too.
The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word "game".)
Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 18:19
That all seems very applicable to this conversation!
N'Al on 23/5/2017 at 18:34
Can we please get back to talking about MacGuyver!?
Sulphur on 23/5/2017 at 18:36
If we need to get into philosophy and, in a roundabout way, semiotics and epistemology, it's fair to say we've lost the plot a bit. A general explanation of what a game may appear to be like is good enough for the concept of a game in general; to however go into how different kinds of games are classified, your boundaries need to be clearer, else everyone could just agree, 'these different kinds of activities that we perform in these prescribed notional frameworks, these are most probably games' and end the conversation.
We don't need an ideal. We just need an umbrella to dry all these soaking constructs under. Yes, 'immersive sim' is perfectly usable, and it's perfectly ineffable too. It's a kludge, and it describes almost nothing of what it's meant to. A far better term would be Systemic Exploitation for games whose experience is based on player agency interacting with underlying simulations (whose level of faithfulness to simulation is indicated with a sliding scale to borrow Thirith's idea), and throw a diegetic framework in there if you want to describe its adherence to an 'immersion' ideal.
Weasel: self-verisimilitude is an acceptable thing, but IMO let's not muddy waters by throwing in gradations of adherence to reality.
Starker on 23/5/2017 at 18:42
The immersion part goes farther than just an adherence to diegetic elements, though. It's also things like level design and worldbuilding. Besides, if you go too far in that direction, you'll end up in Trespasser territory.
Sulphur on 23/5/2017 at 18:43
N'Al: lo siento mucho :(
[video=youtube;bBB8xJTpyj4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBB8xJTpyj4[/video]
Sulphur on 23/5/2017 at 18:49
Quote Posted by Starker
The immersion part goes farther than just an adherence to diegetic elements, though. It's also things like level design and worldbuilding. Besides, if you go too far in that direction, you'll end up in Trespasser territory.
I'm open to finding something else to call it, then. The point is diegesis is not necessarily going to be immersive, but it's a set of things can lead to whatever each person's subjective threshold for immersion is.
Sulphur on 23/5/2017 at 19:19
I hope you guys realise I've been working really hard at this diegetic systemic exploitation thing, because what I really want to do is end this thread with a DiSys Ex pun.
...shit, I jumped the fucking gun there didn't I
Weasel on 23/5/2017 at 19:40
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I hope you guys realise I've been working really hard at this diegetic systemic exploitation thing, because what I really want to do is end this thread with a DiSys Ex pun.
...shit, I jumped the fucking gun there didn't I
It's not too late to edit your post so that you don't give away the game, as long has no one has quoted it in a reply yet.
