A discussion on immersion, atmosphere, and ambiance in gaming.

Games
1

One of the intangible qualities that makes a game great is its ability to immerse you in its world. To make you forget about what’s going on around you and feel as though you’re truly in the game. It’s a quality that has long been alluded to, but rarely ever, truly, expounded upon. So let us expound.

What are the factors at play here? Sound. Graphics. Gameplay.

Sound

Perhaps the most important element, I think, is the sound. Whether that be the sound effects, the music, or just the ambient noise in the background. Several games that I would consider very immersive also happen to have phenomenal sound. The original Thief, Fallout, and STALKER, are three games that don’t really have musical soundtracks in the traditional sense, but instead employ sensational ambient scores which evoke a sense of place.

Other games, such as Deus Ex, Diablo 2, and Unreal, have musical pieces that masterfully suit their respective settings. I feel that having this music helps envelop you in the experience, blocking out external stimuli, and focusing your attention.

I believe that to this point, sound has played a particularly important role, since it has historically been vastly easier to incorporate high fidelity, seamless audio, than it has realistic, smooth visuals.

Graphics

And yet, realistic, smooth visuals don’t seem to be the end-all, be-all. How could they be, when so many wonderfully immersive games came about at a time when such things were merely a dream on the distant horizon?

But that’s not to say they don’t matter. Sure there are games like DiRT Rally, and theHunter: CotW, which utilize very realistic visuals to help immerse the player in the experience (and to great effect), but what about the aforementioned classics from the 90s and 00s?

Diablo 2 wasn’t even a particularly “impressive” looking game when it was released, but what it lacked in technical fidelity, it more than made up for in solid, consistent art and style. There were no odd textures or models or bugs that betrayed its quality. Nothing to take you out of the experience. Everything fit properly, and was implemented tastefully.

Gameplay

And then there’s gameplay. How can we nail down what kind of gameplay makes for an immersive game when there are immersive games in every genre? Perhaps it’s not an important factor. Or perhaps, it isn’t the style of gameplay that’s important, but rather the quality of that gameplay. A game that entices you to keep your eyes on the screen and your hands on the controls? A game that is constantly making you think, even when there’s nothing for your fingers to do?

I would consider a game like Dwarf Fortress to be a perfect example of this. It has a nice little song looping in the background, but no audio cues besides. It has a few characters blinking on screen, and no other visuals to speak of. And yet, the first few nights I consumed this game way back in the Pre-Z-Axis days, it consumed me. How can one be sucked into a game that offers virtually no auditory or visual stimuli? Because the quality of the game wasn’t in its technical prowess, but rather in its ability to stimulate the imagination and creativity of the player. To keep their synapses firing.

Well I’ve babbled on long enough. What are your thoughts? What are some of your favorite immersive games, and gaming moments?

2

I find myself oppositely immersed the more realistic the graphics thrive to be.
My disconnect with modern triple A gaming comes from this, I think. 3D has been in an uncanny valley for the longest time, and that pursuit of photographic-like fidelity doesn’t work at all for me.

Beyond the stimulation of imagination through near abstract art as you describe it with your Dwarf Fortress example (something I am often deeply moved by), the more there is a vision to the esthetics, the more there is a chance for someone to reject it I am guessing, but if the player adheres to it, from the get-go or over time, my belief is that it becomes part of her.
Recently I have been consumed by Monster Hunter Generations, a game using assets sometimes dating back over 10 years, and putting on display the overall lack of talent of the majority of Japanese artists for 3D. It is crude and looks frankly ugly at first. But there is a sort of coherence to it, and the 2D backgrounds to the 3D scenery featuring little bits of animated wild life, associated with the soundscape (there is no music but during some fights) and the constant meowing of the kitten autochtones found in those savage lands create eventually a strangely absorbing atmosphere.

This is another thing that counts for me: I used to enjoy music a lot in games. Now I enjoy silence and soundscapes even more, especially considering the extended session playing sometimes require.
The Shadow of the Colossus inspired Breath of the Wild was striking a near perfect balance on that regard.

As for favorite games that pulled meinto them, there are so many. I’ve cited a few.
One that totally drew was a japanese text game of horror stories for the Super Nintendo. It featured crude midi soundtrack, crude soundeffects, crude digitilization, crude (if you get what I mean) text. I played it for nights and nights, and during some of those, it got me terrorized like no game ever did. But I am cheating: it was a book that seemed to take into accounts my choice. My most immersive game is a book -_-

3

Sound

I have been listening to certain soundtracks for games, Secret of Mana, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age Origins are some examples for decades. Other memorable titles like Gemfire, HOMM3, and Mass Effect 2 had memorable tracks that keep the game fresh in my mind. If the tracks are great, it will stick with me. If they are bad, I won’t play. Seriously, I won’t. I don’t ever mute games and list to my own music while I play.

So music, sound effects and ambient noise won’t make a bad game good, they feel like they make a good game great.

Art / Graphics

This is trick for me. It’s pretty rare for any sort of artistically chosen style that I dislike initially to grow on me. If I don’t like it, it’s highly unlikely I will even play. Then there are games like Shelter, Don’t Starve and Rimworld where I was kind of leaning toward dislike, but didn’t actually hate it so when I did play I found the art eventually fitting.

Realistic. I can take or leave. It’s not required for me for most if any games. I don’t watch TV to watch beads of sweat of someone’s brow, and I don’t play video games for that either. For a game like Skyrim though, I think I would’ve felt more immersed in that impressive and huge world if the character models didn’t keep showing up to remind me how not real they were. The world though kept me glued for some time.

Gameplay

I don’t actually equate immersion with quality of gameplay myself. There are different kinds of games I play, and sometimes I want a game to have my full attention and other times it’s a relax and chat, or just sit back and enjoy some lite time affair. Everquest immersed me wholly for at least a couple of years, but it was a combination of great graphics, at the time, yes music, but also severe penalties at time if you didn’t pay attention. I would not go back to severe punishments for not playing right all the time though.

These days, when I think about being immersed in something, it’s less about full attention for hours and no pausing, and more about being able to pause, have a break but still thinking about the game after I am done playing and be excited to play again, hopefully soon. I figure that last impression and the fact I am thinking about it sometimes is a different kind of gripping experience, but still a worthwhile one.

4

Fully agree with @Penny_Dreadful on the sound and graphics, though maybe I can put some more dev perspective into it.

Sound

A great soundtrack to me isn’t necessarily an epic orchestral piece. I mean, sure, that’s great and would be something I listen to on its own on Spotify or buy the soundtrack to support.
But when it comes to atmosphere and immersion, I really think that environment sound is of the utmost importance.
The way normal, common sounds change based on where they occur. Many games totally neglect this, which is just crazy to me. A gun fired sounds totally different based on where it happens. A field, a cave, underwater, etc.

One of the problems here is actually of a technical nature as many engines just don’t have these “sound modifiers” built in. You can only add a sound and play it, but there aren’t really presets of modifiers that you can easily enable or disable - you’d have to add an extra sound for every occasion, like “gunfire in field, gunfire in cave, gunfire underwater”. Understandable why that is quite bothersome for many developers.

Last I checked (several years ago, so it might have changed), only OpenAL (specifically OpenAL-soft) featured these sound environments that automatically change sounds based on where they are fired.

In addition to this, I think it is really important that a soundscape reflects its environment well. When in a cave, you might want to hear echoing drops of water, gusts of wind, etc.
This becomes immersion breaking when repeated in the same pattern, however. Like the same water drop every 10 seconds. At some point, what creates immersion breaks immersion if the player can recognize the pattern too easily. Procedural generation can help a lot here - instead of just playing a 2-minute clip that is repetitive, spruce it up by playing some sounds more randomly.

Graphics

I really think that the only things of importance here are consistency and art direction.
Super high polygon AAA “I can see every wrinkle on a face” graphics? Irrelevant if it isn’t consistent and has bad direction.
Super low detail pixel graphics? Irrelevant if it isn’t consistent and has bad direction.

Of course, people might prefer one over the other, but that is nothing you - as a developer - have any influence over. What matters is that whatever style of graphics the developer chooses, it has to be done in a consistent manner, in which everything fits together.
That usually means that you can’t just slap together stuff from the asset store (sure, works for testing, but not more) - at the very least, you have to hand them to artists to make them consistent in models, textures and animation.
But your project will be better off with a capable art director, even if it is a small project (and the art director also produces most of the art ;) ).

Gameplay

Too broad a topic. I’d have to spend hours on this one ;)
tl;dr is maybe that this, too, must be consistent. What always takes me out of the experience is when gameplay elements make absolutely no sense in the context of the world they are in.
Cooldowns are a great example of this. Why can I only throw a grenade every five turns? Yes, balance, I know, but it still doesn’t make sense -> immersion broken. Was there really no better way to tackle the balance problem?

5

Similar to Nesrie, immersion for me skirts around gameplay somewhat. It is certainly a part but it’s on the tail end of sound/graphics/setting. And I mention setting as something you missed because I think it describes the overall design. Something might be beautiful with great sound/music but absolutely all over the place on setting and doesn’t make sense.

It’s not a secret here that I loved Subnautica. I really wish I could pull out all the, “why,” from my thoughts. For me it has many parts of what you’re saying here @Penny_Dreadful, along with a bit of what I’m trying to convey as the overall.

Graphics: Some times less is more, but some times color brings beauty. What would a nearly completely aquatic world look like? Would it be homogeneous, looking the same everywhere? Would it be Earth-like, with similar but pretty standardized flora, fauna and colors? Or would it be a slowly emergent spectacle of difference, vibrant colors, and dreamlike settings? Certainly the latter for Subnautica. From the design of the creatures to the settings of the biomes to the inherent differences of pitch black, revealing ethereal ghost-like colors set with bold and striking scenery.

Sound: Let’s be honest. I could talk about the somewhat memorable music, highlighted by the apparent spattering of EDM during some scenes. But I’d rather talk about the sounds of the game itself, of good and bad creatures that bring haunting or absolutely terrifying sounds to the game. The, skittering flee of the peepers, the, “please don’t hurt me,” wail of the gasopods. The amped kinetic sounds of the crashfish or the distant and then close roars of the reapers. The sounds in this game set the scene, introduced the characters and played the fear. Even when nearly nothing was present and the character is immersed in nearly pitch black and unable to see much, that one sound in the background made this game: the sound of sea life, the trickling sound of air escaping, the distant roar of something unknown.

Gameplay: Games should slowly introduce things to the player. I’m stuck by this as I’m recently playing through Greedfall. And as I was flustered trying to jump immediately into combat mechanics I was reminded of how Subnautica slowly introduced me to needs. Subnautica: You need food. Me: But dude, it’s dark and that’s scary. Subnautica: Hey, life’s a bitch. Let me show you what sea life looks like in the dark. And it was beautiful. Or the inherent challenge of monotonous collecting that some games that I love throw at me, compared with something like the challenge of collecting the final flora needed for Subnautica. You don’t feel that it is so much a task as it is you, trying to save the world. Sure, there was some monotony as part of base building, but I feel that even though that was the most survival part of the game, it was monotonous in that it forced the player into repeated collecting. Really, the story is the highlight. It takes the game across the wide map of a, “planet,” and introduces all the gameplay. Base building, not so much.

Setting: I’ve played games that I struggle to understand the, “setting,” even after 5 DLC’s (ARK.) I’ve played games that take their setting so seriously that when a DLC comes out that stretches that setting, it seems stupid (Skyrim.) Think of how many times you’fe rolled your eyes at a game when trying to settle into the suspension of belief that allows you to settle into the setting. So it’s the rare game that introduces its setting but does so in a way that is semi-believable and makes sense. Your spaceship crash lands on an oceanic world. What would that be like? How would you survive? I feel like I’ve played a lot of games that got the setting well. I don’t feel like there have been many that really sell it completely. And again, I feel like Subnautica did that. There were times I held so much fear I wasn’t sure I could play the game again. In VR I literally sat in amazement for nearly an hour in the same scene (shallows) that I took for granted after 3 playthroughs of the game. It has setting in spades.

I’m very glad for your perspective. Thanks for sharing it!

6

For me sound is a very important driver of immersion as well. In real life I use my ears a lot to know the world around me, especially to the sides and rear where my eyes aren’t looking. Far too often games (and games critique) only seems to focus on visuals. But the drip drip and tap tap can and should tell the player about the world.

I think SHEEEP makes a rather excellent point about consistency. A game world can be utterly outlandish and weird, but if it’s consistent in and with itself, has a firm internal logic, it can be learned. Learning a game is one way of immersing yourself in it.

This sound tells me it’s only a gasopod, but that sound is a reaper. It’s distant so no worries yet. Do be vigilant tho.

Subnautica sounds not only are atmospheric, they also play a part in the game. They tell you what’s what in a consistent manner that can be learned. Another great example is how Falcon 4.0 used (at least) two layers of sound for ambient aircraft noise. There was the sound of your engine and the sound of the wind over your aircraft. Engine noise tells you how much power you are applying. The wind sound tells you your speed, as well (iirc) as the AoA, how much ‘bite’ your wings are having.

Coming off of sims that only had a single engine drone, that was mad immersive to me. It also made me fly better.

7

Until you stated that here I never really thought about it. There are so many sounds we hear even in the monotony of something like a small plane engine. Open the side window and you can easily hear surf, traffic, birds, wind, storms, etc. And yet I can’t remember that at all from most of the flight sims I’ve played through, sadly. Even sports sims get it a bit better, with the crowd, the announcers, the coaches, the refs, (and sometimes cheerleaders.) Sims seem to drill down to rivet counting a bit too much, which we’ve discussed at length. But going outside of that a bit would really sell the experience better.

8

I think another game that uses Sound, Gameplay and Graphics to great effect for immersion is The Long Dark. If you haven’t played it, it is a survival sandbox game (With a story tacked on later). Outside of what others have posted here, I will psot what I think are a couple of observations of things the game uses its resources for immersion.

#1: I agree with @Left_Empty on the uncanny valley issue and this game’s pastel chalk graphics work very well to convey the feeling of cold and loneliness.
#2: On gameplay Long Dark uses the sites and sounds of the environment to convey gameplay mechanics, instead of pulling you out of the experience to stare at numbers on the HUD. The HUD is very minimalistic and has no real numbers on it. It just sends you visual queues to confirm that yes, your characters is really friggin cold right now. The sounds of wind and wolves, the storms, the visibility all pull you away from the HUD, and into the world which is as it should be.
#3: For a survival game where if you don’t find food, water and shelter soon you will die, it somehow STILL conveys an atmosphere of serenity, melancholy and patience. The music supports the game’s atmosphere to deliver these emotions and does it very well.

9

So there is one aspect that certainly fits for me, that may be relevant for your choice here.

The ability to use tone and silence appropriately.

For me the most immersive game ever was probably Metroid Prime. It just sucked me in like no other.

And for good reason! See the game knew how to use pacing, tone, atmosphere, sound, and environment design extremely well to create a holistic experience. You have moments of isolation, quiet, peace, and interspersed in that are frantic fights.

You are not engaging combat in every room, it is not a constant barrage of battle. You do have to fight some of he fauna, but as much because they are hostile to interlopers, but would be content to ignore you if you don’t enter your space. It creates a sense of environment and ecosystem. The creatures don’t exist to fight you, so much as they create obstacles to your mission.

There is also the sound, the glorious sound. The soundtrack was delightful, and helps sell this beautiful and lonely place. Walking out into Phendrana Drifts after leaving the Magmoor Caverns and you go from this pulsing and harsh music to his airy piano soliloquy. Which meshes with the closed and dangerous caverns opening into the large snow drifts. Long sight lines and distance ice falls with the cold beauty of the higher register and less busy song.

It sets out to create an atmosphere, and uses every tool together to do so. The beauty of when a game design is in harmony.

10

For me, it can be difficult to separate immersion from simply being enrapt by a game. The latter can be accomplished merely with mechanics (and often is). For example, one is generally not going to be terribly immersed by, say, Opus Magnum. It’s very clearly a “game”, from top to bottom. And yet the world goes away, and I focus only on the screen while playing and trying to optimize, optimize, optimize.

Immersion is something I can rarely say I’ve really felt in a game, but I have felt it. Just like with Opus Magnum, for example, I think it’s something where my attention is drawn wholly on the game, and in the game world, and one where that sometimes then trickles into the real world, even when the game does not terribly resemble reality. For example (this may be goofy), but the early Tony Hawk games - after a long session with them, my brain was looking for similar “what’s a good line?” patterns in the real world. Part muscle memory, I guess, and part immersion.

I think for a lot of things, and a lot of people, world\audio\graphical immersion comes from a bunch of little things added up. I remember the first time I saw a bunch of bugs crawling on a tree stump in Skyrim, I was blown away. I’d probably passed by that stump asset a hundred or more times, but hadn’t noticed them. At least, not consciously. There are a lot of little touches like that that often seem to go unnoticed, but are deliberately placed because it’s the type of thing that adds up over time. Reading about how the artists for Halo 3 went pretty far to get distance haze coloring and blur just right, I was reminded of this often unsung effort by devs.

For one I had some first hand knowledge of, in Red Faction: Guerrilla, there was a cool audio touch like that. Similar to what The SHEEEP said above, audio effects are often underserved by games. Well, in RFG, they made sure that audio sounded differently when in an “interior” versus out in the game world. But there’s destruction, you say! Yes, that is true. So they made sure that the engine understood how to blend in between those two states, and add appropriate effects in gradual stages based on how damaged a structure was, so that the effect was (generally) right for the place you were in. I thought that was a really nice touch on the audio team’s part.

Speaking of which, audio teams on action games are fuckin heroes. Just think - when you’re watching a scene in a film, the audio is very intentionally handled to reinforce the action they want to reinforce, supporting what’s on screen and what the director wants you to focus on. Action games are like unfiltered, undirected versions of those scenes. On the best audio teams, they’re able to turn that chaos into something that still supports the vision of Design, the vision of the tone of the title, and still keep you focused on what’s important, even though it’s happening live, and being somewhat orchestrated by the player’s actions. Talent and skill!

11

Looking Glass with Thief and SS2 is still the most immersive for me. Sound and open ended level design brings it up to greatness with both those games. Recently RE 7 was near perfect the first 2/3rds in immersion. First person is still the only mode where I feel most immersed. Evil Within 2 in fps mode is way more creepy than in 3rd person.

12

Pacing and “flow” are important aspects of gameplay that promote immersion. Or, maybe more accurately, prevent breakage of immersion. Hitting a speedbump in the gameplay gets you thinking about the game qua game (and why it’s frustrating you) instead of you gliding along to the next objective.

13

Endless Space 2 nails it (except when it comes to AI).

This a million times. They should teach classes based on these two titles.

The first 2 Warcraft RTS’s, and early Mechwarriors had the best, and most immersive musical scores

14

In no particular order:

  1. World building with a strong/good art sense. Realistic games don’t allow your imagination to participate as much, and so I find myself drawn to things that are more stylized. Wow, Subnautica, The Long Dark, even Everquest. It’s easier for me to suspend disbelief in a non super realistic world.

  2. First person perspective. I curse the day that the first Tomb Raider took off, because ever since then most games have been 3rd person. It’s the difference between being the character, and watching a character. We could have a long discussion about how mirror receptors work, which I think is actually a big part of this. I have never been fully immersed in a 3rd person game, like I have been in say…Subnautica.

  3. Quality writing/story. There are a handful of games that I actually got legitimately interested in the story, and it can make up for a lot of other faults. This can be tied to #1, as reading a great book is certainly something I would consider an immersive experience.

  4. Games that make use of your imagination. Once again, Subnautica was great for this. You would frequently hear something before you knew what was making that noise. That’s 10x scarier than anything a dev could program. It’s akin to Hitchcock using suggestion instead of overt violence.

  5. Music/sound. I’m a musician/producer for a living, and this particular category is more often than not a source of torture.

15

This is really important. It’s also why games like Ion Fury or Dusk (or any of the other ones using retro/pixelated graphics) still work so well today.
No renderer will ever be able to replace your imagination - it even has a detrimental effect, as the higher the detail gets, the less your imagination is stimulated (as it doesn’t have to fill in as many blanks).

It’s a shame that so many people have been conditioned to always go for the highest detail/most realistic graphics, they are losing out on so much.

16

I don’t think so. To each her own: some people got their imagination, others got their suspension of disbelief; everybody’s happy.

17

I don’t understand this sentence.
Imagination is something that is required for the player to create suspension of disbelief. It’s not an either/or thing, they are very strongly related.
The better your imagination, the easier it becomes to suspend disbelief. And the more often your imagination is required, the better it becomes. It is a mental skill like any other.

18

Yes. What most people call better graphics I find anti-immersion. I have never been quite sure why. Maybe it’s your explanation. Or maybe because the best game graphics come across as a movie wannabe, rather than a real world.

On the whole, though, an immersive game has a lot in common with an intense dream. An essential for each is avoiding a disruption or distraction. So many games have elements that might be immersive and then ruin it with any one of a number of things. Terrible dialogue or idiotic violence or crappy sound or whatever… So it is not just elements essential for immersion, but also avoiding things that ruin it.

However, I think there are three related things that can happen with games (or books or movies). As you play, your mind can be fully engaged. As you play, your emotions/imagination can be fully engaged. Afterwards, as you are going on with real life, flashes of the game can come back to you, offering new takes on real life.

Although I think most people mean the second of those, specifically, when they talk about immersion, I value all three, and probably value the third one the most.

19

Surely you won’t feel the same way once we arrive at truly photorealistic visuals (in VR, even)?

20

Why not?
That would mean your imagination is stimulated even less (as it really doesn’t have anything to do anymore concerning visuals). Immersion is always about stimulation, though it doesn’t have to be visual one and a photorealistic game could of course still offer the others.

In the end, if you want something realistic, just look out of the window.
If that’s what you play games for, I question if you shouldn’t find a hobby like running or travelling. Lots of quite realistic and beautiful things to see on this planet.
Truly simulating a realistic environment is interesting from a technical standpoint, but I don’t see what’s the point for gaming. When you have the possibility to do truly amazing things, why settle for “it looks real”?