thread: 2005-06-02 : Immersion
On 2005-06-07, Eric Provost wrote:
I'm glad the blood has settled a bit. But I've got one more thing I've gotta say. It's been keeping me up all night. I've crawled out of bed and to my lappy to say it.
It's a damned shame.
What I'm seeing here is that someone who might just have a grand bit of insight into regular immersion isn't willing to admit that there might just be the possibility of better immersion. As if admitting that means admitting that his game sucks. Maybe that's not what's going through his head, but that's how it looks from my side of the screen.
And the shame of it is that, if he were to open up that possibility in his mind for a moment, that it's possible to improve on something good, then maybe he could share that insight with the master rules designers that reside around here. Now, maybe no rules that ever interested him would come about. Certainly is possible. But then, maybe, just maybe, a rule would come to mind, become carefully honed, and expertly implimented, that would rock his world. Open up whole new qualities and quantities of immersion. New worlds to see and lives to live.
What really boggles me is that anyone who's spent any time around here can for a moment believe that any gamer at any time can achieve a 'no rules' state of being. I don't believe that can ever happen. Not for a minute, a moment, and instant. In the deepest most intense moments of immersion, one is still locked into a complex set of rules. They just aren't there in the front of the brain. They've settled back to a comfortable spot in the subconsious, still ruling things, but being quiet and unobtrusive. If the rules we notice between moments of immersion are like commericals, then the rules we don't notice are like product placements. Sometimes we notice them, and sometimes someone has to point them out to us.
So, if we take a moment to imagine those quiet rules in the back of our head operating like a quiet little machine, guiding and forming our game, then it's not too hard to imagine the ability to rebuild that little machine in earnest, with the intention of making it take us where we'd like to go.
If the master calamari chef could acknowlege the mastery of the cheesemaker and open his mind to the possiblities, then we might all have a tasty plate that much sooner.
Sleep well all,
-Eric
