Immersion and Motion

E3 is behind us and we safely say that this year's convention was dominated by two big elements: 3D and motion control. What is even more amazing is how PR and marketing decided to sell us those two things. The big buzzword was immersion. 3D and motion control will totally immerse you into the gaming experience and the gaming world.


I am not going to linger on 3D here. It's hard to judge something like this based solely on 2D images. Right now, I am more interested in the new motion control craze that is coming with Kinect and Move, but mostly the former. From what we know about our relationship with the current controllers and the Wii, how can we assume that the Kinect is going to help us be more immersed in games? What is more immersive, holding a controller or jumping in front of your television?


Two schools of thought basically go toes-to-toes here; on one side, the controller is a physical object that exists outside the boundaries of the games and it is anchoring you to the real world, but on the other, the controller is a tool that helps you take control of an avatar and puts you directly in control of the fiction. Depending on which side of the fence you are, you will see motion control in different lights.


"Traditional" motion control such as the Wii and the Playstation Move are controllers that also requires, most of the time, extra movement in the "real world" in order to control the game. Games such as Mario Galaxy requires you to waggle the Wiimote to spin Mario, and the Move will probably require that you point at the screen in order to kill something. So either you will see these extra "real world" movements as something that breaks the immersion even more, or something that helps you immerse yourself even more in the game by giving more faithful control over your avatar.


I think you can split immersion in games in two different categories: immersion in the narrative (the kind you could get watching a movie, reading a book, or playing a good narrative-driven game), and immersion in the system (feeling that you have full control over your avatar). What decides the level of immersion in both categories is mostly the game and what is the level of control the player has over his avatar.

A game like Heavy Rain will immerse the player in the narrative by creating interesting situations that will draw you inside the fiction and make you feel scared or happy for the characters. Narrative immersion can also be created by gameplay, although it will mostly capitalize on emergent narrative. A good example of this is Far Cry 2. You become immersed in the adventures of your avatar not because of your search for the Jackal, but because of the perils linked to your trip through a country that does not wants you.


Even though Heavy Rain lets you do a counter-clockwise quarter rotation of the thumb-stick to open a door, this movement has about as much to do with the real world as a counter-clockwise quarter rotation of the thumb-stick to throw a fireball from your fist. System immersion is present mostly in motion-controlled games. You will not be immersed in the narrative track of a Wii Sports boxing match (well, maybe the emergent narrative linked to punching your brother in the face), but you will be immersed in the system, the gameplay, as the movements you make in the real world will be mimicked in the game. You will feel you have full control over your avatar.

With Kinect, the game literally changes. The control is removed and replaced with more faithful body recognition. As they like to say at Microsoft: "Your body becomes the controller". What is the effect on immersion though?


I am not saying that narrative immersion will be impossible with Kinect, but system immersion will certainly be the focus for many game developers. We can now look back and see that with the Wii, games focusing on system immersion, such as party games, became third party developers’ genre of choice. Many of the game shown so far for Kinect also reflect that.


Narrative immersion also becomes harder to maintain when your whole body is the controller. If a plastic controller was anchoring you to the real world, Kinect will certainly do it even more so. In a movie theatre, you get immersed in the narrative because you are in a state of "over-perception and under-mobility"(French: sur-perception et sous-motricité). It basically means that the optimal conditions of a movie theatre will fill your field of vision with images and your ears with sounds but also keep you in your seat. When you play a game with a controller, you are still in a similar situation. You cannot move away from the television or else the action would stop, and your physical movement is limited to the movement of your fingers. Maybe it's not to the level of a movie theatre, but it certainly is close enough to watching a DVD.


With that in mind, games that would be played with Kinect (and to an extent those which uses the Wiimote and Move more actively) will rather put you in a state of "over-mobility". In that state, you become more self-aware of your presence as a player, as a controller. In that sense, you are fully immersed (Could we even say integrated?) into the system. You are in total control of your avatar. Narrative immersion, in turn, becomes harder to keep. The more complex the movements you have to do to interact with the virtual environment, the more aware you are that this whole thing is a game that you control.


It is not to say that developers who will choose to make full use of the Kinect's features won't be able to write deep, meaningful and interesting stories, it's just that I have an hard time imagining being moved by a story if I have to mimic a fight scene, or scream JASON at my television while walking around my living room. Games truly exist on multiple levels, and motion control integration is just another challenge that game developers will have to work with.

I Once Had a Ranch

Kirk Hamilton wrote recently about Red Dead Redemption’s flawed middle chapters; basically spanning from the annoying Irish to the bloated McDougal, with caricatures of the worst human beings you can have south of the border in the middle, but also its surprisingly well-developed early and final chapters. What’s interesting is that both those sections of the game take place around a certain type of location: a peaceful ranch.

After being shot in the chest, Marston is saved by rancher girl Bonnie McFarlaine and taken back to her father’s ranch. At this point, Marston’s quest for revenge is suspended for a moment. You go around the ranch hunting rabbits with Bonnie, you hurdle some cattle, you patrol the ranch at night and you play a few friendly poker games with the guys after a hard day in the sun. At this point in the game, you can also take on a few missions with Marshall Leigh Johnston in return for information about Williamson. If this game is based on the western genre, why was I more interested and invested in the daily business of running a ranch than the manly cowboy action of shooting the bad guys hidden in a canyon?

Apart from the point Kirk Hamilton makes in his piece; the characters around those missions are much more well written, I think I enjoyed those missions so much because I was free not be violent, not to be a tool in some sociopath hands (I’m looking at you De Santa). The first few missions in McFalaine’s ranch are obliviously tutorials giving you pointers on how to ride your horse, shoot a gun and lasso up horses and bad guys. By breaking those few tutorial mission with some of the Marshall’s mission, all involving shooting bad guys in the head, I found the ranching missions much more innovative. Hurdling cattle may not be the most interesting job in the world, but the mechanics revolving around those missions was novel and interesting enough to keep me hooked and actually enjoy riding behind a group of cows while keeping them in check.

You really get to appreciate those missions once you are at the end of the game. After hours of being a carpet and doing horrible jobs for even more horrible people, you are free to get back to a “normal” life with you family. This is the redemption the game is telling us about, this is the freedom you’ve earned. For a few missions, the game lets Marston, and the player, be something else than a killer. It lets you be a human being who tries to put the pieces of his life together by trying to get his ranch back up. Just like Marston, I didn’t want this part of the game to end. I would have enjoyed just living on this ranch, working everyday to make it better by taking the cattle to the pasture, get some horses to sell them back, get a little garden that the wife would take care of, go hunt with my boy and bond a little, protect my ranch from rustlers and bandits, sell and buy merchandise with towns and other ranches, just put the killing life behind I guess.

Sadly, the cruel world created by this game denies Marston and the player this freedom. It is brutally, but not surprisingly, taken away from you in a moment of violence. Marston’s redemption was short-lived. The civilized world will inevitably kill the old anti-hero of the West; the law does not forgive the criminal turned vigilante. The game completes the circle by giving us control over Jack Marston, John’s son, the boy who lost his chance at a normal life with his family. The son literally becomes the father as the player is given the same control over him and as the game is giving the same options to the player. Jack cannot be a rancher. He can only be the same as his father was during the game, a man who wanders the land in search of someone to help, or someone to shoot.

Who knows, maybe one day Rockstar will release a DLC that will let us be an honest rancher? John wasn’t able to enjoy his redemption but maybe we will be able to lead Jack to his.

A little fan wanking on my part.

So, the IGF Mobile finalists (whose header image is ironically showing a cell phone; a platform that is totally unused by said finalists) have been announced and I'm pretty happy to see one of my favourite game of the year, Spider: The Secret of Bryce manor, is amongst them.

It got both nominated for best mobile game design and best overall game.

A Fiction and A Reflection With MAG’s Beta

A double-feature born from my time with the MAG public beta. First, a fiction to give the feel of the game and then a reflection about war games and what they can give us.

A Tale From the Frontline

12 minutes left.

Our squad leader is sounding pretty confident about the mission when he tells us through his headset: “We have more than enough time to do this.” We just took objective B from S.V.E.R., mere seconds after Alpha and Bravo took control of objective A. With that much time left and a boost in confidence, blowing up objective C will be a walk in the park.

3 minutes left.

I guess he was over-confident. S.V.E.R. may be under-equipped but they can hold a base quite well. Most of the squads are scattered across the map, trying to get their butts inside the hangar, but to no avail. Our squad is focusing on the right entrance, on the second floor. I try my best to heal back my boys but there is only so much a single medic can do. Unfortunately, those tangos seem to come in endless supply. It won’t be long before we are pushed back.

2 minute left.

In a burst of hopelessness, our squad leader screams in his headset: “Come on guys, we can do this!” Is it all it takes? Sixty men (and women?) throw caution to the wind and start running toward the main entrance, zigzagging their way to avoid bullets. Only half of us make it. I get to the objective first, somehow avoiding any tangos. I start to put on the charge… and I blow up.

30 seconds left.

We are on the brink of defeat. I land without taking too much bullets during my fall and start my sprint toward an unachievable goal.

16 second left.

A miracle happens and time literally stands still. Someone, in the midst of battle, was able to set up a charge. With our hopes back up and victory in grasp way, our squad leader shouts: “Shit! We need to protect the charge!” Once again, everyone runs toward the hangar, shooting anything that moves. I make it to the objective and I see a tango making his way to the explosives; he is back to me. I line up my shot, like it was the last one I would ever have to make in my life, and pull the trigger… headshot. I saved the day and nobody will ever know it.

Valor is victorious.

We made it. With 16 seconds left on the counter, we made it. A fight that won’t go down in history, but that will be remembered by all of those who took part in it and bonded through it. This is what MAG is really all about in the end.

Thinking About War Games Through MAG.

I have been wondering for some times about what games with strong military thematic can bring to the table. Are they simple trivialization of war, deadly and sad events presented as fun and inconsequential, or are they no worse than playing “Cowboys and Indians”, fun games teaching us how to cooperate and socialize through role-play? And then again, maybe there is a bit of both.

Dropping Nukes

I wrote an article last month about Modern Warfare 2 and how ridiculous the main plot was. Michael Rousseau wrote in response to my post: “I think the multiplayer actually paints a pretty hilarious picture: a world where people run to their deaths without a care in the world, dual-wielding 100-year-old shotguns, diving from roofs without injury and calling tactical nukes down on the very land they're fighting over.”

Mr. Rousseau’s comment resumes really well what can be seen as the weakest point of most war games, their very depiction of war. Of course, we cannot ask for every single of our war games to give an authentic experience of the battlefield. It would make for a very long and frustrating experience, one where you spend more time crouched and waiting for something to happen than shoot people.

Let’s take a look at the other side of the medal by taking MAG’s emphasis on cooperation, “role-playing”, and socialization as an example of the good elements that can be picked up from a multiplayer session.

"Look out for me"

Why do we play games? Not video games in particular, but social games in general (no, not the Facebook kind). I’ve given earlier in my article the case of playing “Cowboys and Indians”, and it’s because I think that there are a lot of parallels to be drawn between this kids game and a war game like MAG, in both why we play them and what we can learn from them.

The first parallel you can draw is that both “Cowboys and Indians” and FPSs are role-playing games in the literal sense of the term. You play a role in both kinds of experience. In the first, you either play a cowboy or an Indian, and in the second you can take on a multitude of roles: space marine, cowboy, alien, soldier, MIT graduate, etc…

What do we get from role-playing? Well, in the case of young children, it helps them to acquire and develop a myriad of skills and knowledge, going from exploring their imagination to building social skills. Role-playing can even help older children in classrooms to learn through simulation.

Similar elements can be brought by war games, and MAG serves as a perfect example of this. In this game, you get to develop your own role. It lets you pick up and customize your own load-out and create the character you want to be; it lets you role-play the way you want it.

MAG focuses a lot on teamwork; in war, you can’t make it alone. The game forces the users to use their skills in a way to work with the team, and not break out on their own. Each member of this micro-society has a role and has to fulfill it order for the micro-society to function. Medics stay slightly behind to heal, heavy infantries charge forward, commandos try to flank the enemies, etc…

It also puts emphasis on the development of leadership skills. You start by following orders from your superiors and help your teammates toward different objectives, and you slowly (or quickly) gain enough experience to take on those leadership responsibilities. Once you are the leader, you will strive to lead your squad, platoon, or even company and gain even more experience, but more importantly, their respect.

This also leads us toward the concept of socialization through role-play. Kids will learn to socialize with one another through social games as cowboys and Indians. Gamers will also socialize through gaming as they talk and strategize through their specific roles. Some will develop friendships as if the situation in which they are, though simulated, is real. The game environment, even if hostile in its nature, becomes a social space where people can meet up and develop skills together.

Toy Soldiers

So, are war games good or bad? My reflection would make go toward the good side but with some reserve. Not all social games are going to give the player something in return, and a kid who doesn’t want to play along can ruin even a good game of “Cowboys and Indians”. Gaming is a conversation between a system of rules and a player. When you get multiple players to communicate between themselves and the game, a lot of thing can happen. If everyone plays along in the role-play, even unrealistic war games can teach us a few lessons about ourselves, and how we work with others.

New Year

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were filled with gaming goodness, because mine certainly weren’t, and the situation won’t go any better.

First, my brother is leaving home to go live with his girlfriend (who he has been with for only 2 months) and he is leaving with some of stuff, one of it being the HD TV that was his. I am now stuck with the non HD TV.

It really makes a difference in some games. For example, Battlefield 1943’s texts are way more difficult to read. Not that it really matter, the game is about shooting dudes, but the issue is that the enemies dudes and my team’s dudes are pretty hard to tell from one another at a certain distance; bad when you are an avid sniper.

I guess I’ll need to learn to live with it as if it were 2006 again, because there is no way I’m able to afford an HD TV in the next few months, university being a costly mistress. For a guy who says, “I don’t care about the quality of the graphics in a game, more about the style”, I guess I will have to live by my word.

Oh and he also left with the Wii. That will have to wait too, but I can live with it better.

On a related note, I haven’t played a lot of new games during the vacations. I took a break from new stuff after my little run through Modern Warfare 2 and mostly played old favorites like Oblivion and Chrono Trigger (talk about retro). I’m going to wait for the release of Mass Effect 2 to get into new games. And boy will I have to play it tight.

My console gaming time was reduced to about a day and a half, more or less. The worse is, so many great games are coming soon. Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Bioshsock 2, and Heavy Rain. And there are probably that I am forgetting. I guess I’ll need to play some mad marathon sessions to get through these.

Such is the life of an academic. I guess the good thing is, I will spend more time writing and reading about games, and watch movies. Sure, it sucks that I will have less time to play games, which is kind of the point of it, but I will live with it and maybe even enjoy it more as it will become those rare quality times spent with my favorite medium.

And then there’s TV… Oh shit.

Playing War

Children Playing War - Marc Awoday

I finally got around to play Modern Warfare 2 last week, about an eternity later than everyone else on the planet, and I can now make an informed critique about it. I didn’t touch the multiplayer for two reasons; the first is that I rarely play online games on Xbox or any other consoles for that matter (blame the kids) and the second is my fear of catching on of those crazy bug/glitch/hack that are spreading around like a bad flu.

The single player campaign took me a few hours to complete, one or two of those hours due to my bad habit of dying, and I can resume the plot with one word: ridiculous. Of course, was I to expect some Shakespearian storytelling and deep meaningful talk about the nature of war and humankind? No. But I wasn’t expecting snowmobiles and boat chases either.

Right now I must be beating a record by spending two paragraphs not talking about the now infamous “No Russians” mission. I will fulfil my duty as a blogger and give my opinion about it. Actually, let me resume my opinion first with one more single word: Bullshit.

Apart from the ridiculous setting-up to the mission where you go from being a soldier shooting rebels in Afghanistan to an undercover agent who is strangely the new best friend of a Russian terrorist (and you go from A to B in a day, can you smell the trap), what really kills me about that mission is the amazingly awkward tonal shift between it and the previous and following missions.

Seriously, five minutes before that mission you are jumping ravines on a snowmobile, something straight out of a James Bond movie, and five minutes after said mission you are gunning your way through small Brazilian streets and rooftops. And stuck in the middle of those two scenes that could come from a Michael Bay movie you are asked to “sacrifice a part of your soul” to arrest a crazy Russian (news flash, the cold war’s long over) terrorist.

The scene by itself, and with a good story around it, could have been a very poignant moment of interactivity where you are tasked to do something you would normally never do. Something that goes directly against the notion of the war-game FPS where you most avoid civilian casualties at all cost, something that goes against your very cognitive response. You could have dropped the controller afterward and ask yourself “What can bring human beings to do such a thing in the real life?” But no, it didn’t happen.

Badly handled, it became a shock tactic. Sure, it sets up the remaining of the story but at what cost? You just spent five minutes slowly walking through hell only to get killed at the end in a mildly ironic way. Great, IW took a page from Bioshock and made you feel like a puppet. What now? I’m supposed to go back into the game like nothing happened, back to some kind of high adrenaline military shooter where I shoot evil Russian soldiers and mercenaries. Oh and some Americans at the end for good measure.

This is one of the worst tonal shifts I’ve seen in a long time in any kind of medium.

That being said, if you listen to the word around the blogs and some less than scientific surveys, two out of three MW2 players will never touch the single player campaign, preferring the competitive side of the multiplayer. Fine by me. Not everyone’s into games for the same reasons.

I’ll make a quick mention of the defensive arguments some fans of the game gave to some criticisms like mine. The goldmine probably is the comments section on Tom Chick’s brilliant take on the issue at Fidgit.

I can detect three kinds of defense, the first being the now infamous “it’s just a game” defense and any of its multiple variation. I won’t go back on why this argument is completely bogus; a bunch of more intelligent people than me already did it a bunch of times already. The second is “It’s rated M so stop whining”. Being rated M is not a license to be dumb and shocking for shock’s sake. If anything, it undermines the idea of M for “Mature”.

At the last one is the beautiful “If you don’t like it don’t play it and stop talking about it”. A whole three pages post could be dedicated just to that single argument but I’ll cut it short. People can have opinion and express them. I don’t know why some gamers have that insane fear of talking about games in a mature and critical way. Maybe they are just afraid that they couldn’t keep up.

50 to 60 hours long ! Sorry but I have a life too.

You know what kind of games I used to like? jRPGs. Back in the days (10 years ago or so I guess), I loved to play those long lasting RPGs, be it FF4/5/6, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and many more. I have fond memories of those times. I was also 12.

I just saw on Kotaku that the new FF13 (confidence: I never played beyond 6) will be a massive 50 to 60 hours long to complete. How true is that? I don't know and I really don't much care.

You see, the last RPG I completed was Lost Odyssey. A great game; very touching, nice cinematography, nice classical gameplay, but a quite clichéd storyline. It really threw me back to my younger days where I would sit in front of the TV and carefully select the attacks of my characters. I guess I was a boring kid.

Do you know how long it took me to finish this monster of a game? 40-something hours. Do you know how spread those 40 hours were? Over a full university summer vacation; from May to September.

You see, I am not 12 anymore. I work, I write, I study, I read, and I watch movies. Sure, I also game, but my gaming periods are pretty much spread thin. I'm currently at the end of my term and the only gaming times I get are on Thursday when I'm back to my parents house (to refill on food and clean clothes) and when I'm not burrowed under papers.

My brother bought Assassin's Creed 2 on launch day. Most of the gamers that did the same finished the game by the end of the same week. It's been 3 weeks and I barely touched Venice. See, that's why I don't play jRPGs (or much wRPGs for that matter) anymore.

Where would I put 50 to 60 hours of game and still have time to play anything else ? What I'm going through happens to a lot of older gamers that are starting to have less time for gaming as they have other priorities or interest.

Don't get me wrong now, I still love video games with a passion. It's my domain of interest. But when it comes to leisure time, my gaming will either go to games that pikes my interest (the reason I play AC2 is because of my interest in history represented through games) or games that will give me a quick satisfaction.

What used to be a major selling point to me, as it is for most gamers, just became a sort of a warning. It's not about replayability anymore. It's about whether I will get to finish the game or not.

I'm sorry FF13, but unless your story touches the subjects of traumatic memories, collective history, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, or actual historical events, I guess I will have to pass and invest my time in writing my papers.

I just noticed the irony of writing this instead of my actual papers.