In the past couple of weeks both Evizaer and Wolfshead have featured articles on the topic of immersion in video games, however neither writer's definition of the phenomenon rang particularly true to me. As a term, "immersion" is bandied around by gaming pundits when discussing games to describe a mash-up of factors that range anywhere from a "realistic game world" to an "extremely engrossing gaming experience". The two aforementioned articles illustrate these usages wonderfully:

Immersion is a state when the player or spectator (in the case of plays and motion pictures) temporarily suspends their disbelief and willingly transports themselves into the realized world of the creator. The difference between films and virtual worlds is that the players are not mere bystanders — they are active participants with a purpose.

True immersion is really a holistic mindset or philosophy of art, design and user interface that when combined should influence all aspects of a virtual world rather than just a few features in isolation.

And:

But gamers want to take the concept of immersion farther. Now immersive games have to be games where the world is more real. This doesn’t mean that the world has to be more superficially like ours (though that’s what many developers seem to want it to mean)—it means a world that has a similar level of detail to our world, at least as far as the player would naturally examine the world. Players think immersion requires that the game include small details of the real world that have no mechanical reason to be in-game.

While these definitions sound reasonable on the surface, both rely heavily on aesthetics without delving into any of the other aspects of video game design that go into forming an immersive experience.

To further explore this issue, consider three separate games that are immersive for entirely different reasons.

Case one: Mirror's Edge
Mirror's Edge is a realistic-looking first person action game that puts you in the shoes of a "runner" (a near future courier who traverses city rooftops while avoiding the law). Graphically the game is stunning and contains all sorts of incidental details that bring the game world to life; birds roost on ledges and startle when you come near, planes cut lazily across the skyline, pedestrians go about their business oblivious to the player on the streets below, and so on.

Mirror's Edge - click to enlarge

While these details may help players ease into the virtual world, they are not the primary reason that Mirror's Edge is so engrossing.

The game grabs you by the throat and hauls you in by virtue of the sense of immediacy, panic, and danger that is created from the very first moments of the opening mission. As you dash across the rooftops you are being chased by officers - often unseen - who are shooting to kill, and since you have no weapons at your disposal your only option is to run as fast as you can. The cityscape unfolds before your eyes as you leap huge gaps, slide through tight spaces, and hurdle obstacles. As a player, my heart was pounding during the most intense sequences, and I caught my breath in sheer terror on many occasions when I missed a jump. This is immersion in its purest form: when I am running I feel like I am there, and I physically respond to the on screen stimuli as if I were the one falling to my death.

Mirror's Edge also provides an excellent example of how to break immersion. Dying in the game sets you back to the last check point that you passed, and they are never very far apart. During particularly challenging sequences you will die - a lot - and thus constantly reload to repeat a mechanical challenge. This destroys the fluidity of the game, and strips away all sense of immersion revealing the core of the experience to be somehow more hollow then it felt mere moments before.

Case two: Dragon Age
Bioware's fantasy epic, Dragon Age: Origins, is a role-playing game that is played primarily using an overhead camera. The graphics, while pretty, are not nearly as realistic as many modern titles and the world is extremely artificial and gamey. As much as the artists went out of their way to make Ferelden look lived in, the developers hem the player in at every turn and tightly control movement.

Dragon Age: Origins - click to enlarge

Despite the aforementioned constraints, Dragon Age is an incredibly immersive game. Instead of realistic freedom of movement and game play, character development and plot-based interactions are used to make the player feel like they are a part of the world.

From the very beginning a Dragon Age player is encouraged to meld with their on screen avatar; the very first task in the game is to customize a character's appearance and background. Every little tweak that is made will be rendered on screen, and for sixty-plus hours the player will get to watch their creation live out a grand adventure.

More important to the immersive experience than character customization is the dialog system that forms the core story-telling mechanism in the game. Dragon Age is full of conversations: from banal merchant greetings, to diplomatic brinksmanship, to intimate relationship building. Each of these interactions takes place using a dialog tree in which you listen to an NPC speak and then select from a menu of possible responses. Crucially, your chosen response is not voiced; instead Bioware has left it up to the player to speak their character's words in their own mind. This simple choice has enormous implications for immersive roleplaying - not only does the player have full control over their character's looks, but also their voice.

The types of choices that players are asked to make, and the rewards (or lack thereof) for making them, also aid immersion. Dragon Age's morality system is one of the most well-realized and realistic that I have had the pleasure of experiencing to date. By removing most of the rewards from the system the player is allowed to respond to a situation in a more realistic manner. In Dragon Age it becomes possible to mentally justify a course of action beyond "I need X more evil points for my next level, so I'd better kill that kitten".

Unfortunately, like Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age: Origins is not a completely immersive experience. The moment a player enters a battle the illusion dissipates, and the core game mechanics are revealed for what they are.

Case three: Sid Meier's Civilization
Released in 1991, Civilization is by no means a realistic looking game, and yet it is easily one of the most immersive games of all time. The graphics are designed with a function-first mentality, and while they looked good enough in their day they were certainly not cutting edge.

Sid Meier's Civilization - click to enlarge

Civilization is an empire building game than incorporates nearly all of the aspects of modern members of its genre: exploration, diplomacy, commerce, and warfare. A player becomes the leader of a fledgling nation, and struggles to game prominence on the world stage, and eventually achieve dominance.

Game play takes the form of managing the actions of all units and settlements on a turn by turn basis, which can be done with a keyboard or point and click with a mouse. The business of being a world leader is completely engrossing, and most players quickly slip into a trance-like state and they are drawn in the simply-drawn yet intricately complex world. Time literally melts away as a game of Civilization wears on, and hours can disappear at a time.

This total immersion is not unique to the original Civilization game, but is shared by all of the best members of the turn-based strategy genre. Key to keeping a player's focus are intuitive controls, a streamlined user interface, and constant feedback from the game world.

Putting it all together
All three titles discussed above contain extremely immersive sections of game play that have the ability to snare a player's attention, and make them feel a part of the game world. From the graphics and intensity in Mirror's Edge, to the strong personal connection to a character in Dragon Age, to the deep strategic mechanics of Civilization, each game demonstrates a different form of immersion.

It is this diversity of experiences that makes the term so difficult to pin down.

Video game immersion is not as simple as realistic graphics, it is the ability to draw players into the experience, and make them forget that they are playing a game. An immersive game does not feel like a game; it is just as natural as breathing.

If a player is forced to stop and think about what they should be doing, then the illusion will be shattered. When Mirror's Edge forces you to repeat a section a dozen times it is impossible to think that you're actually a runner leaping over rooftops. When Dragon Age turns from a brilliant exploration of morality and character into a tactical combat simulator then its magic spell is broken.

All of the graphical details and high fidelity renderings of people and places are moot if game mechanics obstruct the core package. Sometimes a game just needs to know how to get itself out of the player's way, and let them at the meat of the experience. Immersion is truly difficult to create, which is why it is so highly priced when it finally turns up in a surprise hit game.