Immersion vs. Interaction: conflicting gamer tastes

[swyggi]

FJ-Warez said:

swyggi said:

 

 I wasn't referring to the HD consoles as being more immersive because they had great graphics.  It's the feeling of being lost in a game as opposed to being aware of what you're doing.  Many people would agree that you can be more immersed in the gamecube version of TP than the Wii version of TP BECAUSE there are no motion controls.  It's the concept of being in the game vs. interacting with it.

 

You are right however in saying that Immersion and Interaction are not mutually exclusive because they can be combined in ways.  However, the more interaction that takes place the more immersion is taken away.  Ex: MP3 is immersive and relies on controls for interaction while keeping immersion in check most of the time, but Wii sports' controls make it too obvious to what you're doing because of the amount of movement in comparison to MP3 taking away from immersion and giving more to interaction.       

 At this point you are more into a movie type of game, and how many games are like movies???

I don't think the same,  the most immersive games featured heavy interaction, even if it was just a button masher...

 

This has nothing to do with movie type games or whatever you're implying.  When a gamer is more into the game ITSELF, rather than having to think about what he/she is doing on the outside and the connection into the game is very strong, he/she has become deeply immersed.  Playing a game in a relaxed manner with a joystick is enough to get someone immersed, heck games have been like this for the past 20 years.   If you're interacting by moving your hands like shaking it or something, you will become tired (no matter how little tired, you wouldn't be tired at all if you didn't move your hands).  Thus making the gamer aware of what he or she is doing and taking away from the subconscious feeling you get while playing the game even if very subtle. 

 

Think of Immersion as the subconscious and Interaction as the conscious.

 

To your last sentence: that's just it though, pressing buttons is not very much interaction at all.  Pressing a button isn't the same as swinging a sword, but you pressed a button thus making Link  swing a sword.  When you use a Wii-Mote to move your arm and swing the sword it becomes more obvious because your arms get a feeling of tiredness regardless of how relaxed you are.  So instead of focusing on the game as much, you have to focus on what you're doing on the outside in order to make the game do what you want it to do on the inside.  There are an infinite number of ways to swing your arm, but there's only one B-button.