Immersion Gamers and the Makers

Hi, Rod here.

Just continuing on a question I put to Kevin and Mark on Friday. Surely the Makers of the games are very interested in immersion and how to achieve it on a continuing basis. By this I mean of course that the Makers must constantly "up their game" to match the highly evolving skills, wants, desires, (should I say it) needs of the Gamers. After all, the more the engagement with the game on more detailed and complex levels, makes for a more quasi-real experience for the player.

I argue that Makers must be researching and trialing new ideas to an exorbitantly high level in order to create the ultimate level of immersion possible at the time before a new game is released-why? Because it will bring more Gamers to buy the game, pure and simple.

I would also argue that the game may not necessarily be a vortex of complex levels with multiple players and a matching matrix of options in order to achieve immersion in a Gamer (albeit be on the dieagetic or situated level) . Donkey Kong with its limited conventions more than proved itself in 'hooking' the Gamer to stay in the game for long periods.

If I am right on this point, I am guessing that the Makers are extremely interested in ideals like Agency, Structural incoherence, Gaming literacy, obviously Emergent behavior, the Uncanny valley theory, and pretty much all of the other ideals, theories and terms we have talked about since the beginning of the course.

To quote further terms; Digital Natives and Immigrants must also be covered if you wish to cater to a wider market, and I think that the Wii does a wonderful job of bringing a more physical component to the games so that even newbies without much experience in the gaming world can bring learned actions essentially foreign to the gaming world and have a agency level with the game that some experienced Gamers used to conventional controllers may not.

I am not sure if what I am saying here has the relevance to the course that I think it does, but this is the slant I want to look at for my own assignment. If anyone has any comments it would be appreciated. See you in class.