Immersion

"Immersion" (like "Role Playing Game") is another term that has been flogged to death by video game critics and developers.  This term refers to the user's experience of playing: it means that the user is "totally engrossed" in the medium or experience.

In sports like swimming, this is a given.  In a video game, the term is much more floppy (even for the mighty Virtua Boy).

Take Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, for instance.  A particularly challenging level might allow me to do a great "run" of steps or notes, taking me to the limits of my ability to read and react at the same time.  This challenge short circuits my brain's ability to process the step between seeing and doing.  When I skip the cognitive phase entirely, I experience an odd heightened awareness.

Some users may report tunnel vision, time shortening or lengthening, or other strange mental phenomena.

Still, it's an accident of design.  The game Dance Dance Revolution is not "immersive".  It merely presents the user with ever increasing difficulties.  When the user finds the right challenge, immersion is a probable circumstance.  The human and the machine are intended to enter a dialog.  If this feedback loop occurs faster than the human can process, the loop breaks.  If it is too slow, the human is bored.  Either case prevents "immersion".  A sophisticated game design attempts tune this interaction.

Flow allows the user to try to create this balance manually by opting into higher difficulty levels.
Left 4 Dead's AI director dynamically adjusts dramatic moments, pacing and difficulty.
Tony Hawk games have a increases difficulty as a trick is maintained.
Games like Go and League of Legends use complex player matching algorithms to match opponents.

All of the above facilitate immersion, but they do not "have" or "create" immersion and they all use very different mechanics to create very different effects.

My plea is that game designers and critics focus on methods and mechanics that a game uses to facilitate an engaging feedback loop rather that labeling a game as "immersive".

Next Term:  Risk-Reward.

Role Playing Games

Role Playing Game:  It's a term that has been literally flogged to death by the last generation of game development.

I have no problem with it's application when used in a tabletop RPG.  Traditionally, this medium has the ability to have the player's choices affect the world in a meaningful way.  Video games typically must define stories ahead of time, rather than adjusting on-the-fly like an RPG premade module.  Video games lack a present-tense adjudicator however and they have difficulty interacting with a dynamic player.  They must limit interactions or buckle under the pressure of handling every contingency.

A good dungeon master can handle a shifting plot-line.

In videogames, the term RPG has come to mean a game with advancing statistics, but this is only one common point that these games have in common with older games like DnD which actually focus on role playing.

Furthermore, statistic advancement has bled into every genre of video-game. This term is now so diluted that it doesn't really mean anything anymore.  My take, the RPG designation should revert back to a tabletop term until videogames can catch up to a real life DM in ability to adjudicate autonomous decision making.

In Defense of Angry Birds

Over the last few years iOS opened the door for a new round of simpler games to help us continue define what successful video game are like.  Chief among them, Angry Birds has proven to be a great success.  

Angry Birds had no intellectual property or previously successes to look at, but it was a breakaway hit.  Here is a list of some of the things I think helped it become a real star.

1.  An extremely simple primary interaction mechanic.  Angry Birds didn't try to do anything crazy with the input device.  Press, drag, release.  It's important to note that games like Doodle Jump, Cut the Rope, and Tiny Wings all had a habit of keeping it simple.

2.  A motivating, but simple, level structure.  The first level in games like these should always show the simplest case that proves out the game.  Angry Birds first level is "fling the basic red bird at a pig".  It's simple, trivial, but still cute and easy.  Cut the Rope also starts with easy first levels with a single, easy to understand "tutorial" instruction.  

This is important.  

It requires the essence of the game to be distilled to a single action verb like "cut the rope" or "fling the bird".  Don't mistake this for a lack of potential complexity.  Levels become more complex as you linearly move through time.

3.  Increasing complexity.   Once you unlock the "yellow bird", the "blue bird" and the "bomb bird", you gain a form of player package complexity (namely complexity you use directly).  By this time you'll also be seeing different block and pig types to interact with.

4.  OCD Bonus.  This is a term borrowed from World of Goo, which took it very literally.  The idea is that a given level should have a "win more" condition.  This can be seen in World of Goo, Angry Birds, Peggle, Cut the Rope and many more game.

5.  Gimme Advantage.  My step-dad who works with cows and has never really played games once took my mom's iPad to beat a level she was struggling with.  Some great games like Tony Hawk never really get here, since mastering the game at an input level is impossible without holding the controller for hours at a time.  Angry birds is easy to understand by watching the person playing.