Games4Learning: The Immersive Power of Creative Worlds

~I attended a lecture & discussion today titled, "The Immersive Power of Creative Worlds" by Dr. Brian Sturm, a professor in my school at UNC. It was part of the "Games4Learning" initiative, which is the same program that ran the "Exploring Haptic Devices" event that I went to last semester.

During today's lecture, Dr. Sturm spoke about his own research into immersion, what can enhance it (by pulling a person into a story), and what can break it (by jarring them out). At some point, we've all been pulled into a good story, be it a book, film, game, or a story someone tells us. The focus of this lecture/discussion was how games can be used for learning, so we discussed whether or not immersion is desirable in eductation, how it can increase or decrease recall of information, and so forth.

I said quite a bit during the discussion, as I am a gamer (albeit not as much as I used to be thanks to constraints on my time). For example, one of the issues we discussed was whether the presence of other people in a game (i.e. a multiplayer game) increases or decreases immersion. I think that this depends on the game; certain games are built for multiplayer, and are more fun that way. However, I felt that other people in computer role-playing games greatly detract from immersion.

That's why, for example, I can't stand (and don't play) online Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft. Having some clueless new player with an absurd character name speaking in abbreviations about unrelated things does not immerse me into the story. Discussions of optimizing one's character to increase their effectiveness is boring. Worst of all, I don't want to spend time completing a major section of the game, only to have other players tell me about how they already completed it. In an MMORPG, you're never the hero; you're one among thousands (or millions, in World of Warcraft). You can't save the world; you can't even change anything. What's the point of playing? I guess people play it as a form of social interaction, but I prefer to see real, live people.

I did disagree with a couple of points that Dr. Sturm brought up. He mentioned several qualities of a game that increase immersion; most of them made sense, but I took exception to the idea that if you fail in a game (or get killed, or whatever), it's essential to be able to quickly reload and not be too far behind. Compare this with the genre of games called roguelikes, adventure games with very simple graphics (often only ASCII text) in which you can save your game, but if you die, the save file is deleted! In these games, unlike most RPGs, decisions have real consequences. When your character in Rogue walks into a room and sees a capital J (for Jabberwock, one of the most dangerous opponents), your pulse rises and you get scared...because if you don't deal with it properly, it's over, and back to the beginning.

I also brought up the case of "Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem", a brilliant horror survival game for the Nintendo Gamecube, which includes a special "sanity meter". As your character faces horrors, the sanity meter decreases, which results in on-screen vertigo: the screen blurs, hallucinatory sounds play, the size of objects become distorted, and so forth (a similar sanity mechanism is used in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth). These kind of effects, as Dr. Sturm agreed, increase immersion by having you experience what the in-game character is experiencing.

Where Sanity's Requiem really shines, however, is that when the sanity meter gets low enough, the game starts to mess with not only the character, but with the person playing the game. Examples of this include the word "VIDEO" appearing in the screen as it blanks out, as if you had accidentally hit the wrong button on the remote; or a (fake) error message saying that the controller has been detached; or a (fake) volume bar that appears and goes up and down, along with the sound in the game; or when attempting to save, the game refuses to acknowledge and says that you have chosen not to save. Normally, these kind of jarring effects would, according to Dr. Sturm, decrease immersion, but I think that the opposite is true. Instead, they add to the confusion and horror of the game and pull you even more deeply into it.

Obviously, I enjoyed the discussion. I've registered for the next Games4Learning event on "Alternate Reality Games", and I might even take one of Dr. Sturm's classes next semester.