Immersion vs Numbers: Do numbers break immersion?
Immersion vs Numbers: Do numbers break immersion?
Editorial - posted by DarkUnderlord on Thu 20 November 2008, 02:04:18
Tags: BioWareSomebody gave Brian Kindregan ("Senior Writer on the Mass Effect franchise, and wrote on Jade Empire") of BioWare fame access to the company's blog. He used it to make a few posts about whether displaying numbers in an RPG breaks immersion or not. You can read it in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Here's a carefully selected snip chosen through an extensive market research process:
Would you rather know that the ancient and dread chant summons a massive lava spew from the ground that will hurt many of the zagoid ships, or that the spell in question will do 100 to 300 damage to all enemy units in its area of effect? Would you rather know that Grim-mages are very crafty when dealing with flying opponents, or that the Grim-mage unit gets +6 to defense when fighting airborne units? Now we’re forming up on opposite sides of a line in the sand. (Let’s fight! Just kidding – the numbers guys would put a +4 beat down on my team.)
I want to be immersed, I want to feel that this is real. And real life does sometimes have numbers to help you. Often times it does not. This car may get better mileage than that one, but which one will make you feel safer/faster/sexier? This piece of fruit may have a longer shelf life than that one, but which one will taste better later this afternoon? There’s lots of guessing, intuition and dumb mistakes.Gaming versus LARPing? You decide!
Spotted @ GameBanshee
Would you rather know that the ancient and dread chant summons a massive lava spew from the ground that will hurt many of the zagoid ships, or that the spell in question will do 100 to 300 damage to all enemy units in its area of effect? Would you rather know that Grim-mages are very crafty when dealing with flying opponents, or that the Grim-mage unit gets +6 to defense when fighting airborne units? Now we’re forming up on opposite sides of a line in the sand. (Let’s fight! Just kidding – the numbers guys would put a +4 beat down on my team.)
I want to be immersed, I want to feel that this is real. And real life does sometimes have numbers to help you. Often times it does not. This car may get better mileage than that one, but which one will make you feel safer/faster/sexier? This piece of fruit may have a longer shelf life than that one, but which one will taste better later this afternoon? There’s lots of guessing, intuition and dumb mistakes.
Spotted @ GameBanshee
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