Immersion in Different Game Types

In Laurie Taylor’s reading on Immersion, she mentioned that in certain games made up of party characters (specifically Final Fantasy VIII) the way the player cycles through the characters means that they never directly identify with any one character.

I thought this point was interesting, mostly because I don’t really agree. For one thing, in the example she specifically mentioned, for the majority of the game the player is actually playing as one character (Squall), and the other members of the party are only controlled during battles. Therefore, there is a certain sense of identification with the main character.

I also think that in the type of game that Final Fantasy VIII is (RPG with many characters) the plot, involved dialogues and slight distance from the characters actually gets the player more involved in the story. While the player might identify with Squall more, there are other characters in the party that the player might like more, or enjoy playing as, even if it is just in battle. The way that the game sets up the characters and story and game play means that while there are places where a certain amount of distance between character and player is created (battles, more of a ‘God’ view during certain segments), this gives the game more of a scope and makes it seem ‘bigger’ than just one character running about the world map, which in my opinion actually increases the immersion that a player can experience.

I really feel that as long as the way the game is set up works for that type of game, there is no difference between the amount of immersion a player can experience in games where they are ‘closer’ to the character (first-person, one character games) and games where they aren’t (many characters, ‘God’ POV games).