Games are trying to trap you...not really

I found the idea of “lost time” when engaging with video games very interesting when it was mentioned in lecture. It got me thinking about how games have been changing to keep a person immersed within the game world where, traditionally, there would be certain events that would break this immersion.

One of the most major immersion breakers in a game would be death, leading to a game over screen and eventual reloading and repeating of a certain section of the game. Recently games have been developing ways to incorporate player failure into the gaming world. An example I was reminded of in tutorial was in Prey, where when you lose all your health you are taken to the “spirit world” where you are able to fight spirits to regain health and mana. You are eventually sucked through the ground and placed back exactly where you ‘died’ with no loss to progress. Another interesting way of dealing with failure can be seen in the Prince of Persia series, where you have the ability to rewind time after having performed a fatal jump or manoeuvre.



Another way games make you lose track of time is through some game’s open world design such as the Grand Theft Auto series or Batman: Arkham City. In games where the player is given the choice of what they do, whether it is furthering progression or not and also when they do it gives the person the freedom to explore and not be constrained by progression and completing levels. This is particularly evident in Skyrim, where hours can be lost exploring the vast and unique landscape and discovering caves and forts that may be unrelated to the plot at the current time and as a result no game progress is made.

Loading screens are another, usually unavoidable, aspect of games that break immersion and provide a time for a player to remove themselves from a game, but again developers are finding new and interesting ways of keeping a player engaged with the game while the game does its necessary loading. One of the simplest ways can be seen in Valve’s games, specifically Half-Life 2 and Portal, where, when a map requires loading, a simple, non-intrusive, translucent “Loading” image appears over the existing game screen and disappears after a few seconds once the loading is complete, leaving the player in exactly the same position as before the load occurred. Another tactic for loading screens is to provide interesting information during this time. This can be seen in the Left 4 Dead series where interesting statistics, such as number of kills or who got incapacitated the most, from the previous level are displayed