Refining Immersion

Game developers are continuously coming up with new ways to increase the immersion of a game experience. One of the biggest barriers to an experience being truly immersive is the interface that converts physical movement into digital signals; the controller.

Most recently this endeavour for an immersive experience has led to the development of motion control technology such as Kinect for the Xbox 360 and Move for the Playstation 3. These interfaces, in my opinion, are only mildly successful in creating a more immersive environment, and the degree to which a game is immersive is very much genre specific. Dance games such as Dance Central and Just Dance are able to provide an accurate mapping of physical movement to the game environment because the nature of the movement, that it is intuitive and simple. However, games that require more complex functionality, which in turn require more complex controls, are harder to make motion controlled. When these games, specifically the first person genre, are given motion controls, the feel unnatural and clunky due to gamers being used to controlling with only their fingers. In addition to this, the motions registered to certain key actions such as reload or scope, are usually not natural or intuitive since the technology would not be able to pick up a more natural movement or simply the player would not know what this movement is.
This video demonstrating the gameplay of a Kinect version of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier at E3 shows how unnatural playing that game looks.



What I think is more of a step in the right direction, while not entirely practical for the home market at least, is technology development such as this. Where, not only the movement, but also the sight of the player is directly mapped onto a character in game, allowing for a more realistic experience.