Suspension of Disbelief

#1 I see immersion and suspension of disbelief as two distinct but overlapping features. Immersion is about allowing the player to forget that they are in this world. This can, in extreme circumstances, lead to starving people in Korean internet cafes, but in the usual sense, it makes us forget the world around us. There are very, very few games that I have ever played that have done that to me. I played Jet before Microsoft Flight Simulator, and the 3D graphics, rudimentary as they were, gave me a sense of depth (in this case, literally) that most games did not. Every 3D game after that has been a simulation of that experience, no matter how pretty the world gets of how fancy the shaders are. And usually, they as a bad simulation immersion-wise (which is entirely different than being bad games).

Suspension of disbelief, both as Coleridge intended it and as we have come to understand it today, is an allowed active engagement with something, whether it be a ballet, a theatrical piece, television show, or videogame. The suspension of disbelief is an acceptance of the premise that a circle with a mouth can consume small dots while running from ghosts and also consume special dots which lets him eat the ghosts. I suspend my disbelief every time I play a game, even a baseline simulation which attempts as best it can to mimic reality. In Dead Rising, I can suspend it to knock zombies around with a baseball bat.

The overlap occurs because immersion is only possible is one can suspend their disbelief and engage the material. Once they have made that leap, they can lose themselves in the music, performance, or game. The immersion factor is how far they can lose themselves without being pulled out of what they are doing. I can close my eyes and listen to music and let myself wander back into my mind, my memories, caught in the rhythms. But I rarely can do such a thing in games. I am constantly aware that it is a game and that I am performing precise maneuvers. I, however, can find myself lost in an IM discussion and not realize that time has gone by, just like a face-to-face verbal discussion, though in most IM discussions, familiarity or distinction in conversation and personality are more important that suspension of disbelief. IM'ing and role-play in a virtual fantasy does, however, require suspension and immersion.

I'm going to look at your list and give a couple of thoughts on how I see the topic and the games which I enjoy or do not enjoy which seem to fit (at least in my strange mind, that is).

1) Adaptive gameplay can be both immersive and distracting. It can be immersive on the one hand because things change to suit the way you play. It can be distracting on the other because many adaptive schemes are skeletal to the point of being simple ramping systems or AI triggers. Racing games and fighting games are a good example of adaptive schemes that often have a severe ramping technique applied to the difficulty as you play. In the course of a race or a fight, the AI can go from extremely difficult to horribly insipid depending on the way the developers interpret your playing style (and the algorithms they have implemented to categorize how you play, how well you are doing, and make the opponents act accordingly).

2) Amazing graphical representation is nice, but I think that it is far from necessary in terms of immersion. Consistent graphical style and presentation, on the other hand, would be something that I would agree with more. I find the fantastic and beautiful world of Kameo much more immersive than the realistic rendering techniques used in Oblivion. Oblivion is a beautiful game, but sometimes "realism" in graphical technology just reminds me of how unreal the world I am playing in really is.

3) Captivating audio. I would agree with this, though not necessarily as a requirement (your mud example is wonderful in this arena). But having audio which matches the visual environment is immersive because it creates an aural sensation that feels right to the eyes and ears. Todd Pickens' new environment pack is an excellent example of this. I find the way that sound works in Oblivion to be very effective, even if I question some of the sounds such as gravel which sounds like their foley artist sat on the microphone.

4) Persistent world. I don't find this to be a requirement at all for immersion. A persistent world gives a feeling of constancy, but I find the world presented in Resident Evil or Devil May Cry to be much more immersive than any MMO persistent world that I have ever played or huge environments like Oblivion. MMO and Oblivion environments feel empty to me. Populated by players and NPC's and enemies but devoid of life, even if the art direction is spectacular. I, however, can ignore this seeming emptiness when the social aspect comes into play.

5) Social networking. MMO's to me have always felt like a glorified chat engine, and when listening to people role-play inside of them I often would feel like I was watching Shakma (and yes, I now own it). Networking is a wonderful thing, but it seems that entirely too often, there are people who can't network but who are constantly trying. I have strangely rarely felt that in the mud/mush world. But in a MMO, people ferret me out. People who remind me of a guy who walks up to random people in Walmart and asks if they want to taste his farts. He looks like a perfectly normal good-looking guy until he opens his mouth. I see him in Blockbuster all the time, too. He finds me. They find me. And sometimes the people I find online scare me. But I do love social networking in games as well. But I also like extensive ban and ignore lists.

6) Residual Cause and Effect. I'm not sure quite what you're going for here unless it is a modification of adaptive gameplay or a prestige system where effects are real regardless of how large or small the action was and the integrity which the waves ripple.

Oh hell, I've typed way too long. Just some thoughts. Most of them probably are so far out of context that they won't be useful, but it gave me a distraction while waiting for a computer lab to restore. Sorry to brain-dump in your topic.