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The Death of Immersive Sims?

Beowulf

Arcane
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Mar 2, 2015
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1,963
Rule of thumb: Any game where the concept of a "dialogue menu skill check" exists is probably not an immersive sim.

What if you create a Real Life Simulator and depending on courses you take in college, you unlock skills and improve them. Later on, those skills help you in dialogue with NPC's.

That would be immensely boring and unrewarding gameplay and only the most deranged developer, who takes joy form the players existential pains would create that.
Where do you get such ideas anyway?
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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Bulgaria
We need a labour simulator,a game where you carry big boxes of 20-70 kilograms each. It should come with a belt that sends painful voltage to your back at random times.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
Rule of thumb: Any game where the concept of a "dialogue menu skill check" exists is probably not an immersive sim.

What if you create a Real Life Simulator and depending on courses you take in college, you unlock skills and improve them. Later on, those skills help you in dialogue with NPC's.

That would be immensely boring and unrewarding gameplay and only the most deranged developer, who takes joy form the players existential pains would create that.
Where do you get such ideas anyway?


So you must really hate games like Fallout then.

Anyway, anyone who thinks games like DeusEx and Bloodlines are "immersive sims", probably shouldn't be writing articles about gameplay. Then again, it's RPS.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Deus Ex is. New Vegas and Bloodlines aren't. I thought that was common knowledge.
 

Ash

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New Vegas sort of is. Don't forget FO3 was co-headed/lead design by an ex-LGS designer, and Bethesda's whole design philosophy is heavily derived from Ultima Underworld. And since New Vegas is a (smarter) repackaging of FO3...there's many, many parallels. Still a notable number of differences though, it's like a blend of the LGS/Black Isle/Bethesda design philosophies.

Bloodlines definitely isn't though.
 

Ash

Arcane
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Here you go: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/30/dark-futures-part-2-emil-pagliarulo/

Covers Emil and his LGS/Immersive sim background's influence on FO3.

Date: June 2010
Dark futures Part 2: Emil Pagliarulo. Where now for the Immersive Sim?

Emil Pagliarulo started his career this side of the fence, writing for the venerable Adrenaline Vault. Since kicking his way into development, he worked in the twilight years of Looking Glass – where he was designer on the eternal Life Of The Party – before moving to work on Bethesda, where he was Designer on Oblivion (Think “Dark Brotherhood”) before becoming Lead Designer on Fallout 3. He’s optimistic about the future, will surprise you by how big an influence Deus Ex was on Fallout 3 and has enormous sympathy for Eidos Montreal…

Plenty more inside if you care to read. And of course much of this translates to New Vegas.

Lol the "muh emergent gameplay" overemphasis trend was alive and well even back then:

RPS: Looking at the late 00s, the two games most obviously in Deus Ex’s shadow are Bioshock and Fallout 3… which shows the breadth which this sort of covers. One of the themes I saw in the 00s was trying to work out a way to make games like this actually sell. Would that be one you’d agree with?

Emil Pagliarulo: I would. Certainly the types of games I was into. And for me, they represent the soul of Looking Glass Studios. What that means to me is these immersive first-person games which try to do more than just offer an RPG experience or do more than just offering an FPS experience. Again it’s that illusive buzzword “emergent”… which does mean something to some people, and is something to strive for. It’s a genre-busting sort of thing where you want to wrap the player in an experience – and first person is generally the best way to do that. To me, that’s what that represents.
.
 

mbv123

Arbiter
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Messages
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Location
Lettland
We need a Concentration Camp simulator.
Plenty of interesting mechanics, such as avoiding contact with guards to avoid beatings, managing your energy levels so you don't overwork yourself to death, snitching on other inmates for trivial things just so you can take their stuff (at the cost of gaining the wrath of the people from your barracks), stealing, smuggling supplies. Your goal would be either to escape (extremely difficult) or survive x days until you're released.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
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Messages
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New Vegas sort of is. Don't forget FO3 was co-headed/lead design by an ex-LGS designer, and Bethesda's whole design philosophy is heavily derived from Ultima Underworld. And since New Vegas is a (smarter) repackaging of FO3...there's many, many parallels. Still a notable number of differences though, it's like a blend of the LGS/Black Isle/Bethesda design philosophies.

Bloodlines definitely isn't though.

Yah, stuff like "rob the Silver Rush blind by manually carrying the display items into the bathroom and actually stealing them where no one can see you" is such an immersive simmy thing to be able to do.
 

Ash

Arcane
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Messages
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Is that sarcasm? It is "immersive simmy". It's an exploit that completely unbalances the resource economy that the devs would pass off as legitimate emergent gameplay instead of actually fixing. :D
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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Is that sarcasm?

Not at all.

There's also that memeable thing from Skryim where you could rob store owners of their display items by placing buckets over their heads.
 

Ash

Arcane
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Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,230
While it is simulated systems-based emergent gameplay, I would also argue that it is also NOT immersive simmy. Because, in the classics at least, the devs wouldn't have allowed for such a major exploit to begin with because they valued gameplay balance over that level of realism or emergence obsession. Deus Ex makes vendors give you items from thin air: when you knock them out they have nothing in their inventory and no stock to loot. Arx you can rob their wares, but you aggro the whole kingdom of Arx if you do (which is highly consequential) and you need high lockpick skill to open the chests also. System Shock 2 you can't rob value rep machines, period (though there wouldn't be anything to rob to begin with as they're replicators ofc). Ultima Underworld you kill people you can trade with, again nothing to be gained. Invisible War vendors are either locked behind glass (like gun runners in New Vegas), or again items materialise from thin air when purchasing from Omar and the like, and so on.

There is once exception: there is one vendor in Arx in the lower levels you can murder and rob with little consequence, and it is a bit problematic. You get an absolute crapton of potions, magic scrolls etc.
 
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RoSoDude

Arcane
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
727
Deus Ex makes vendors give you items from thin air: when you knock them out they have nothing in their inventory and no stock to loot.

The only exception to this in Deus Ex that I can recall is the Rock the zyme dealer, and it's because one side objective explicitly tasks you with killing him. Generally speaking they didn't want to encourage murder hobo behavior.

 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,230
That pie chart should be less retarded. Next to nothing in it applies to Underword/Underworld2/Arx, for instance. Also it's anatomical allegedly...lol. I guess that's tongue in cheek, perhaps.

Anyway, burn the "Immersive Sim" to the ground. I don't want mah prestigious classics haphazardly lumped into the same boat as walking sims, one-track expressive political statement-games, classic-imitators with like 1/12th of the depth and quality, lumped together all because they draw minor inspiration from the design of the classics here and there. Newsflash, something yuuge like 80% of games have some degree of simulated elements and/or immersive design. To be an "immersive sim" in the traditional sense, you have to be an Underworld-like.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
Who the fuck came up with the beyond retarded term "Immersive Sim" in the first place? Who branded it and why? I've never seen System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex or any of these games described as that before these Bloggers grabbed onto it to "make it a thing". What the fuck does that even mean and how does it describe any of the games that are supposedly it?

Edit: Wikipedia page seems to have been created April of 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Immersive_sim&dir=prev&action=history

Oldest Blog article seems to be this, referring to Vampire: Bloodlines as one: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/07/30/bloody-mess/

Even older in this context seems to be: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131523/postmortem_ion_storms_deus_ex.php
What is Deus Ex?

I'll try to be brief. (Those of you who know me know I'll probably fail…)

Fictionally, Deus Ex is set in a near-future version of the real world (as it exists if conspiracy buffs are right). For some real shorthand, call it "James Bond meets The X-Files." (Remember that seemingly innocent claim that Deus Ex is set in the real world. It'll come up again shortly…)

Conceptually, Deus Ex is a genre-busting game (which really endeared us to the marketing guys) -- part immersive simulation, part role-playing game, part first-person shooter, part adventure game.

It's an immersive simulation game in that you are made to feel you're actually in the game world with as little as possible getting in the way of the experience of "being there." Ideally, nothing reminds you that you're just playing a game -- not interface, not your character's back-story or capabilities, not game systems, nothing. It's all about how you interact with a relatively complex environment in ways that you find interesting (rather than in ways the developers think are interesting), and in ways that move you closer to accomplishing your goals (not the developers' goals).

It's a role-playing game in that you play a role and make character development choices that ensure that you end up with a unique alter ego. You make your way through a variety of minute-to-minute gameplay experiences (which add up to a story) in a manner that grows naturally out of the unique aspects of your character. Every game system is designed to differentiate one player-character from another, and to allow players to make decisions that reflect their own biases and express character differences in obvious ways in the game world.

It's a first-person shooter because the action unfolds in real time, seen through the virtual eyes of your alter ego in the game world. Your reflexes and skill play an important part in determining your success in combat. However, unlike the typical FPS, Deus Ex doesn't force you to shoot every virtual thing that moves. Also unlike the average FPS, in which gameplay is limited to pulling a virtual trigger, finding blue keys to open blue doors and jumping to reach seemingly inaccessible locations, Deus Ex offers players a wide range of gameplay options.

And finally, Deus Ex is like adventure games in that it's story-driven, linear in narrative structure, and involves character interaction and item accumulation to advance the plot. However, unlike most adventure games (in which you spend the bulk of your time solving clever puzzles in a search for the next static, but very pretty, screen), Deus Ex asks players to determine how they will solve game problems and forces them to deal with the consequences of their choices.

Deus Ex was designed from the start to combine elements of all of these genres. But more important than any genre classification, the game was conceived with the idea that we'd accept players as our collaborators, that we'd put power back in their hands, ask them to make choices, and let them deal with the consequences of those choices. It was designed, from the start, as a game about player expression, not about how clever we were as designers, programmers, artists, or storytellers. Which leads naturally to a discussion of having clear goals -- the first thing I think we did right.

Was it Warren Spector in an exasperated attempt to describe his game?

Was it Harvey Smith? http://www.witchboy.net/articles/th...ing-beyond-deus-ex-and-other-dated-paradigms/
As an art form, immersive games are in a transitional state, currently positioned on the cusp of something almost unrecognizably different. Future games will employ deeper simulation in order to achieve far greater levels of interaction and complexity, while simultaneously simplifying the learning curve for new players. Most game environments of the past have been based on crude abstractions of reality, limiting player expression and requiring users to learn a completely new vernacular in order to play. The games of the future will rely heavily on much more complex, high fidelity world representations that will allow for more emergent behavior and unforeseen player interactions. Taken together, these next-generation design paradigms are not simply improvements over older models, but represent a fundamentally different approach to simulating real-world physics, handling artificial intelligence and interface usability.
:lol:
Immersive Sims: Immersive Sims attempt to make the player feel as if he is actually within the game’s environment, allowing him to suspend disbelief. While true for many games, for the Immersive Sim, this becomes a primary goal of the design vision. Immersive Sims attempt to model the environment and the interactions in higher fidelity and in a less prescripted, more player-flexible fashion. A simulation allows for experimentation within the system-this is key to the sim experience.

Older references seem to be only in different contexts e.g.: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/simpark-review/1900-2533023/
Managing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Sims in SimCity 2000 seems a lot less stressful now that I've been a park ranger in Maxis' SimPark. How tough could it be, you ask? Plant a few trees, feed some animals, and put in a few hiking trails...no big deal, right? Hardly. In the Maxis tradition of creating totally immersive sim games, being a park ranger is more than greeting park visitors and collecting fees - it's work, but it's also fun.
 
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Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
97,232
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Who the fuck came up with the beyond retarded term "Immersive Sim" in the first place? Who branded it and why? I've never seen System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex or any of these games described as that before these Bloggers grabbed onto it to "make it a thing". What the fuck does that even mean and how does it describe any of the games that are supposedly it?

We've been over this:

I thought Ash was the one that popularized it. Although Spector mentioned it in some obscure
document back in the nineties you'll see some pages here where Ash uses the phrase at least twenty times. I never heard it used before the last year or so.

It's been around a long, long time, and is insider terminology. e.g see TTLG in 2002: http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61952&s=

Origin of the term: Doug Church.

If you've seen even one of their public talks, read any dev interviews etc they usually refer to their style as such.
Here it is from the horse's mouth @2:16:



And no, I didn't popularise it. On the Codex maybe, because most here are enthusiasts of Bioware (lol), Black Isle etc and meanwhile games like Ultima Underworld and Deus Ex are a Codex niche of sorts.


Look it's not hard.

Immersive sim IS a real term that was used historically at Looking Glass Studios and by figures such as Doug Church & Warren Spector all the way since the late 90s.

For most of the time since then, it was NOT widely recognized or used by actual gamers. They usually called these games "FPS/RPGs" etc as Jasede says.

The term came into common use when Arkane Studios made a bid at explicitly reviving the Looking Glass legacy with Dishonored & Prey, which sent game journalists looking through history books to find terms to describe the genre.
 

ColCol

Arcane
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Jul 12, 2012
Messages
1,731
As a random note that game (Blackout Club) is being made by David Pitman, who made quasi-immersive sim Neon Struct and also worked on Bioshock 2.
 

DalekFlay

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I don't think it's entirely wrong to diagnose complexity and challenge as one of the reasons Dishonored 2 and Prey didn't sell well, but it's taking the wrong angle. To clarify, I will recite the following mantra three times in the hopes that it will somehow make a lick of difference:

Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.
Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.
Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.

Dishonored already had nearly blind enemies on easier difficulties, and I don't think adding objectives or stealth requirements to higher difficulties would matter because these people all likely play on normal. So I'm not sure what kind of difference this would make honestly. It was cool with Thief because that was a different era, where a hardcore niche of PC gamers could provide enough sales for success, and singleplayer, immersive games stood equal with others. Outside of rare franchises like Assassin's Creed I don't think that's true anymore. I honestly think the low sales of games like Prey, Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are more about what's "in" right now being the total opposite of them. Online shared experiences, games as a service, blah blah blah. I don't like it either, but consumers gonna consumer. I just don't think games like Dishonored 2 are what light people's fires right now. They're "wait for a sale" games.

Also I haven't played Prey yet but the fact Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: MD are both worse games than their direct predecessors were probably wasn't good for their reputations either.
 

RoSoDude

Arcane
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Messages
727
I don't think it's entirely wrong to diagnose complexity and challenge as one of the reasons Dishonored 2 and Prey didn't sell well, but it's taking the wrong angle. To clarify, I will recite the following mantra three times in the hopes that it will somehow make a lick of difference:

Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.
Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.
Difficulty Settings Should Meaningfully Modulate the Degree of Challenge.

Dishonored already had nearly blind enemies on easier difficulties, and I don't think adding objectives or stealth requirements to higher difficulties would matter because these people all likely play on normal. So I'm not sure what kind of difference this would make honestly. It was cool with Thief because that was a different era, where a hardcore niche of PC gamers could provide enough sales for success, and singleplayer, immersive games stood equal with others. Outside of rare franchises like Assassin's Creed I don't think that's true anymore. I honestly think the low sales of games like Prey, Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided are more about what's "in" right now being the total opposite of them. Online shared experiences, games as a service, blah blah blah. I don't like it either, but consumers gonna consumer. I just don't think games like Dishonored 2 are what light people's fires right now. They're "wait for a sale" games.

Also I haven't played Prey yet but the fact Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: MD are both worse games than their direct predecessors were probably wasn't good for their reputations either.

You omitted my comments regarding precisely how the difficulty settings of Dishonored/Prey/Nu-DX/Bioshock fail (new emphasis added):

Now, this may seem so obvious as to not bear repeating, let alone saying once, but it hasn't been taken seriously by any of the modern entries in the genre. The systems of Bioshock are so exploitable as to render the difficulty settings nearly pointless with vita chambers allow you to endlessly lemming run every encounter without consequence, leaving those of us desperate for an actual challenge wanting. Meanwhile, Prey's damage modifiers make hardly any difference since the "correct" way to play is to stunlock enemies and beat them to death (something I continue to whine about), and the game ends up slightly more difficult than the average Bioshock player can handle. Dishonored and the Nu Deus Ex games land somewhere in the middle in average difficulty, with competent AI, resource economies, and level design that ultimately break down under the weight of overpowered player upgrades and nonsense like regenerating health and/or mana.

Enemies which vary on the spectrum from blind & impotent to alert & deadly ultimately matter little when the player can near-infinitely teleport and stop time, one-shotting them with upgraded pistols, incendiary crossbow bolts, grenades, springrazor traps, and exploding barrels and only resorting to an upgraded sword with adrenaline boosters when bored and looking to engage with the actual combat system. Stealth should bit more involved but you still have infinite teleporting so a nonlethal Dishonored stealth run devolves into endless blink + choke, especially if you get lucky RNG with the 2x choke speed bone charm on the first mission (thank god I didn't). The game isn't trivially easy (I located it in "average difficulty"), but if you're not imposing self-restrictions, it's not really that hard either.

More objectives wouldn't "fix" Dishonored. I didn't argue that. I argued it worked for Thief, because it allowed players on lower difficulties (who back in the day were willing to be challenged) to focus on understanding the stealth mechanics and make it through the levels without enforcing harsh failure or win states on them. Dishonored, as a game with "play-your-way" character building should instead go the route of Deus Ex/System Shock 2 with even remotely balanced upgrades, preferably more granular and with greater depth, and then design the difficulty modes around resource management, upgrade choices, enemy statistics, and even restricted saving (yeah, I said it). Instead, both Dishonored and Prey go the route of cranking up enemy damage numbers almost to the point of one-shotting the player. This certainly punishes your mistakes and ensures you'll play "correctly", but it doesn't make the optimal strategies any more challenging to pull off -- if you were paying attention, you'd be using them already.

I see this problem most clearly from the fact that Dishonored and Prey are designed to be completed without severe inconvenience when the player deliberately avoids any character upgrades, as shown through (/dictated by?) their achievements. You always could complete DX or SS2 without any upgrades, but boy was it nontrivial, and pushed many towards exploits. It's no easy feat to design a game with empowering yet totally optional character upgrades while still providing a fair and balanced challenge across the board, and I don't think either of these games can be said to really pull it off (Prey does better in this metric, though). I'd much rather they target something a bit more hardcore by default, so players don't have to strip half the game away with self-restrictions to design it for themselves. The difficulty can then be scaled back appropriately for players who need a leg up, rather than making me choose between sandbox godmode or gimped one-shot hell.

...but yeah, I'd agree with the rest of your comments. Haven't played Dishonored 2, but Mankind Divided left me disappointed in quite a few ways as someone who enjoyed Human Revolution despite its flaws, even with its improvements to gameplay. I don't think any of the more recent Immersive Sims have totally stuck the landing with the mass-market or hardcore audience, hence my comments about difficulty settings which ideally cater to both. But that's not the only aspect to their overall quality, nor certainly to the trends of gaming as a whole.
 
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