The VG Resource

Quote:Psychology of Immersion

In psychology, immersion is known as “spatial presence”. In order to become immersed, one must perceive a media, like the world within a videogame or book, as reality. As a result, the individual experiences a sensation of actually being there. In videogames, characteristics that lead to spatial presence are richness and consistency.

Through a rich environment, the ability to become immersed happens easier. Richness involves using multiple channels of sensory information, completeness of that information, cognitively demanding environments and a strong narrative (the only technique a book can get its reader immersed). Multiple channels of sensory information help create the rich mental model of the game world. If an explosion visually happens alone, then adding the sound of an explosion would be a great improvement. If the T.V. or book also explodes, then you’re golden. Completeness of sensory information simply means there are fewer gaps in the environment that the player must fill in. The fewer blanks to fill in, the better it is. For example, a town is empty of people but lacks a good believable reason why. Cognitively demanding environments forces the player to pay attention and make decisions based on the context of the game. This pulls them in especially if the player is in a complex and difficult situation when focus is the key to success. If the game or book has a successful and strong narrative, then the individual forms a bond and begins to really care about what actually happens. However, richness isn’t the only factor in creating immersion.

Moving on, consistency is like bubble wrap. It’s there to make sure the fragile mental model that the consumer has created doesn’t break or at the very least shatter. Consistency depends on the lack of odd visual cues, believable behaviors of entities, an unbroken presentation, and interactivity. Inconsistent visual cues involve things like the HUD, or heads up display. A believable behavior means that the world and its inhabitants act like one would expect. Npcs, or AI, talking, interacting and working is believable, however, every Npc just standing idle all the time for no reason obviously isn’t. Presentation breaking factors include things like the loading or menu screen. They remind the player that they’re just playing a game. Interactive environments are really effective. For example, the player can do just about whatever they please. Want to start a new life on the Sims? Go ahead. That game is a great example of interactivity, although it includes many incongruous visual cues.

Immersion not only depends on the characteristics, richness and consistency, but it also depends on the individual. People have an absorption trait. It’s how quickly one can get fascinated and drawn into something. This trait is known has the fanboy gene. However, some people just want to believe in the illusion. This makes it much easier to become immersed as these people ignore inconsistencies.

To summarize, immersion depends on the richness and consistency of a chosen media. It also depends on the individual and their mood- some just want to believe.

Dimension 2:

The background clouds don't move at all.
It would help if they scrolled subtlely independent of the camera.
A better cloud background without an outline would help too.

There's no sfx for light landing.-breaks consistency.
- The landing roll is nice and helps the richness.
- You can move as soon as you "Heavy" land. How about experimenting and momentarily disable movement for a few frames?
--that should complement the idea that you landed 'Heavy".

That "Well, here's some smooth jazz until you decide" message doesn't help at all.
-Theres no death sound when falling off stage

Ghost enemies are terrible. They don't give off any intention of actually being dangerous. The way
they move towards the player also doesn't make it seem dangerous at all. They're "attack" is simply touching me.
I knew it was an enemy, but theres nothing that sells it as one. A ghost is literally just moving in circles around me.
-it might help to fade in "battle" music when enemies come near? However, that might not work out
if enemies are generally around in a small game.

The player can hold a pretty large and long Halberd with one hand? How about making 2 handed weapon
animations? If you can't, then how about limiting weapons to look like they're able to be held with one hand?

The change to delta mode is pretty good. The background music volume decreases. The ambient delta mode
sound comes up. Background fades. When you place blocks, theres visual effects + sfx. Pretty good. oo I just noticed
that animations don't stop, they slow done.-Nice.

Maybe add in alternative sound effects. For example, the sword slash is quickly getting tiring and repetitive.

You might have a memory leak? The game began running really slow. It might just be my computer tho. This was
during the first segment of the 2nd dimension. No enemies, just me and some tiles. I did place tiles and died
a few times previously tho. When I restarted, the game ran fine again.

I noticed that there are no sound effects at all for menus which gives off an empty unfinished
feeling. For the inventory, it might help if there was a sfx tied with hovering your mouse over items.

Yeap, delta mode starts to noticebly slow down after placing tiles. You might have a memory leak or something.
I dunno how it works internally, but you can try to cache instances of delta mode tiles.

*Note* make sure actions and triggers have more depth to them than just the action result. -Add sfxs and visual effects to add more depth to them or something

It might be a bug, but you can ledge grab onto contingent blocks if they are different (grass/metal? blocks)