Put aside ninety minutes and watch this movie. And never trust Albert Brooks. You look away for two seconds and he’s like “BAM! I’m totally stabbing your guts with a butcher knife!”
Read the full story »
Maybe you’ve seen the Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim trailer by now. Maybe you haven’t. If you haven’t taken the three minutes it takes, I’ve embedded it here for you. The trailer inspired this post, so it’s best you see it first.
Okay, with that out of the way, I want to talk about game immersion and use that to make an argument for vocal interaction with video games. I want you to see the Skyrim trailer first, because I plan to use that game as a touchstone for this post.
Even if …
Previous Episode: Brave New World
Next Episode: BLOOD
Archives
The third part of Josh Forman’s 3 part series on gamasutra about storytelling techniques inspired this post, although it’s not required reading. Still, it might help to read his ideas about medium before reading this. Here’s a link.
Anyway, to point:
Games are built on abstractions, both from the design standpoint and the player standpoint. There’s no point in “real life” where pressing X makes a person perform a jump, or a kick, or whatever. It’s an abstraction. Game designers provide a world where players connect the relationship between pressing X and …
