David Bowman
Co-President and Creative Director, Artifact Entertainment
Horizons
Immersion is one of the words most often overused in our industry (followed closely by dynamic). It's often used when the speaker is trying to indicate the realistic nature of a particular game as in "The darkness of the night gives the player a real sense of immersion." But since the player has no kinesthetic sense within the game world, and the audio doesn't provide them sufficient directional sound, the darkness only frustrates many players who are forced to turn up their gamma on the monitor to allow them to play the game. All of which combines to force them out of the sense of being in a different place, and instead reminds them they are sitting on a folding chair in their bedroom with stale pizza and a lukewarm diet vanilla Coke.