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 you’ve never played any of the Elder Scrolls games (or the new Fallout games, which are similar), if you’re into gaming at all you should know the basic idea – open world role-playing, single player, immersive as possible. Each new installment in the series brings a face lift, better AI, and improved mechanics, for the most part. But have we reached a place where those things alone aren’t enough for a truly new gaming experience?

Say what you what about graphics and AI upgrades, they’ve been improving long enough that we take these upgrades as par for the course. Better graphics help improve the experience, but each new level of graphical prowess isn’t enough anymore to improve the immersion on the same level as the first treks into three dimensional worlds and the first improvements over the 32-bit era of gaming. It’s been awhile since gaming took a new step into immersion. This is in despite 3D technologies, which are a good step, but these technologies are only graphical upgrades. Motion controls have been the only immersive experience upgrade in the last ten years, but they haven’t really been exploited in serious gaming experiences, not to mention that they are only available on consoles. The PC gamer is still sitting in a chair using a keyboard and mouse.

Now, since you’ve watched the Skyrim trailer by now, you’ll notice, right after the narration ends, the shout the character gives (around 1:10 in the video). Shouts are supposed to be an integral part of the game, from what I understand the character gains shouts as the player slays dragons. Shouts give the player upgrades and new powers. This isn’t anything groundbreaking from a game mechanics standpoint. It’s just a player upgrade path, so there’s nothing really new there.

But what if Bethesda took the chance to offer the player a new level of immersion if the player wanted it? What if players could actually say activate the shouts by saying them aloud, using a microphone, rather than equipping and using them through a menu as the mechanic is sure to actually function? Wouldn’t that raise the level of immersion to a deeper place?

Now, using vocals in a game isn’t a new concept by any means. Games have used vocal commands in the past. SOCOM on the Playstation 2 is the best example that comes to mind. The game shipped with a USB headset that the player could use to give commands to the NPC squad. SOCOM wasn’t the first game to use these commands, and it wasn’t the last, but voice control in general is not a common feature.

From my understanding, lack of good technology is the major hurdle. In SOCOM, players used commands to issue orders to their military squad mates.  Commands like “Fireteam Bravo move to cross hair” had to be said into the headset to get teammates to respond. Although this worked for some players, many players experienced two major negative outcomes: the speech recognition was terrible, causing teammates to just respond with “I don’t understand you.” Other players found that once in a hectic firefight, voice commands were too unnatural, formulaic, and convoluted to give quickly and efficiently.

Depending on the task, the margin for error for speech recognition software can be as low as 1% and as high as 50%, with some military application studies noticing a remarkable increase in errors in a stressed voice. In a game like SOCOM, a military simulator of sorts, the voice would certainly be stressed during firefights. This, combined with the formulaic nature of the commands, made issuing commands difficult. I don’t know about you, but I would get sick of saying “Fireteam Bravo move to cross hair” over and over on a good day, let alone every time I wanted to reposition a squad a few feet to the left.

Although vocal commands seem like a natural fit for a squad shooter like SOCOM, the complexity of the commands certainly introduces errors, which ruins the point of the system. However, a fantasy game like Skyrim has more opportunities for simpler vocal commands, limiting error and increasing player immersion.

Games like Skyrim would most likely use speech recognition for several things and the magic system is the first obvious choice. Chanting a spell through a microphone could be a powerful immersion tool. Fantasy games in particular are uniquely suited to utilizing this effectively because the commands can be nonsense. There are certainly some syllable and consonant combinations that are more recognizable to speech recognition software than others.

While SOCOM had to use commands like “Fireteam Bravo, move to cross hair,” a fantasy magic system could use nonsense words that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else in the command list. I don’t know much about the technology, but certainly, if the command list was only 30 single-word spells, words could be picked with enough to differentiate between them that the software could have a low margin for error: “Light” “Icelance” “Fireball” “Open” – fun ways to immerse you in a game, limited chance for errors.

A magic system is obvious, but there are other places in a role-playing game where speech recognition would add important layers of immersion to a game. Animal mounts, for example. Being able to say “Woah!” and “Hyah!” to a horse to slow or increase speed would allow the game designers to add quirks to the gameplay that made riding different animals actually feel different. Some horses could be more spirited and need more talking to keep at the right speed.

Horses in games currently feel like vehicles. They may as well be motorcycles that only do what the player wishes them to do. The addition of voice control would allow a layer of abstraction between directly controlling the animal with the keyboard and having no control at all. This would make animals feel more like animals and less like extensions of the player. It could be a powerful technique and wouldn’t require speech recognition that was very powerful. Imagine having only your voice to slow your spooked horse as it sped toward a cliff. Yeah. You’d be immersed.

Another obvious aspect that could be improved by vocal commands would be simple additions to a conversation system. Certainly the ability to fully parse sentences is beyond the current technology level, but even the addition of “Yes” and “No” and other simple commands would be a welcome addition. If an NPC asked you to save her family, surely telling her “Yes” vocally would inspire more of a sense of immersion and give rise to more emotion than just clicking a choice in a menu. Beyond that, greetings could be important. Imagine being out in the world and seeing an NPC in the distance you’d like to talk to – you could yell a greeting to get the attention of the NPC, who could approach you as you approached him.

Next, the stealth system could be enhanced. The player could use voice noises to attract guards and peel them away from the group to take them out. Or the game could monitor noise levels when the player was trying to be stealthy. Loud noises could give away a player’s position and attract unwanted attention. The immersion would certainly be increased if players were forced to actually be quiet when trying to be stealthy in the game.

Certainly you can think of other ways simple voice commands could enhance a game. Feel free to leave them in the comments below. In the meantime, let’s move on past ideas for enhancements and talk a little about how the system could be implemented.

The thing about speech recognition software is that the larger and more complex the command list is, the closer the chance there will be like-sounding words, and the more likely errors would occur. However, games are unique compared to other speech recognition applications – players don’t need access to the entire command list all the time like they would in something like a speech-to-text application. The chance for error can be limited by keeping the command list small and dynamically scaling the command list based on the activity the player is engaged in during the game.

For instance, when a player is not mounted on an animal, the animal commands could be removed from the available list of commands because there is no reason to say “Hyah!” and “Woah!” unless a player is on an animal. The same could be said for conversation commands like “Yes” and “No.” They aren’t needed out in the field when the player isn’t involved in a conversation, so they are removed from the list. Similarly, if the game doesn’t allow mounted combat, the magic commands can be removed from the list of recognizable commands when the player is mounted.

This scaling keeps the list small, dynamically scaled to the activity the player is engaged in, and limits the possibility for error. This is important, since nothing breaks immersion more when the technological limits of a system break open and reveal their guts.

In conclusion, a system like this doesn’t have to have tons of commands or be overly complex to vastly increase immersion for the player, and certainly a system like this would do much more for increase immersion than the standard graphical facelift every game gets. I’m certain, that as awesome as Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is going to be, it would be much more immersive with some voice commands. When 11/11/11 rolls around and you’re playing the game: think about that.

I know I will be.

Of course, not all gamers are pissed about DLC. Some like it, because it means their favorite games receive more updates than they probably would have if the developers weren’t still making money from the game. It also goes without saying that developers like it. After spending months (years?) developing the tools to easily add content to a game, they can take those tools, after the game is out, and pipe out some hot new content to players. In terms of time investment, it’s a pretty sweet gig.

But there’s no doubt, DLC is changing the face of gaming, both the way gamers and developers see games. Whether it’s good or bad remains to be seen.

To show how DLC is changing gaming, let’s pretend we’re the Prince of Persia (from The Sands of Time iteration) for a minute and do a little rewinding into the past. For you older gamers who remember the original Super Mario Bros. (yes, on Nintendo), I’m talking to you.

Think back to the first time you played Super Mario Bros. Don’t worry, I’m not going to romanticize it and talk about the awe you felt or anything cheesy like that. Nah, SMB is just an easy game to pick for this example because it’s iconic and most of us played it when we were young.

So when you think of playing SMB, what do you think of? Strip away all those years of playing games and think about what it was like to play SMB. Think about the first level. You start out, run out of the castle – kill that first goomba, get the mushroom that makes you big, jump over the first pipe, and so on, jumping and squashing enemies until you get to the end of the level.

The thing about the original SMB is that the first level never changes, no matter how many times you’ve played the game, or how far you’ve gotten – you always start by killing that first goomba and getting that first mushroom.

There are a million things that made SMB a great game and I don’t want to list them all here. Instead, I’d like to say that there were two main things that made it a great game: good mechanics and good level design. It’s easy to see that now.

But what about when we were kids? Back then we didn’t separate mechanics from level design. We didn’t see them as two different things. We saw them together, as Super Mario Bros. Mario always jumped the same when you hit the button and the first level was always the same. That first level was SMB. Mario jumping was SMB. The whole package was the game.

Well, technology has progressed a lot since the old NES days, and gaming has changed, too. But DLC could be one of the biggest changes yet. It’s a big deal because it gives gamers the clear distinction between game mechanics and game content. It helps gamers separate Mario jumping and shooting fireballs from SMB level 1, stage 1, with that first goomba and first mushroom.

Let’s go back to that SMB game for a minute, but add DLC. Now, after you beat all 8 levels of SMB, you can download another 8 levels – a whole new adventure after you beat the first story. A new super-power: the raccoon tail. A new main character to play as: Yoshi. Or whatever.

Suddenly, that first level of SMB doesn’t seem so iconic, does it? It’s the first level of the first chapter, but there’s also a first level of the DLC chapter. And maybe another one after that. And maybe his fireball attack doesn’t seem like the ultimate weapon anymore, since the raccoon tail is more powerful. And Mario is great, sure, but Yoshi jumps higher and can eat people and spit them out again.

It’s not the same game anymore. Now SMB is a set of mechanics and levels, powers, and characters are just content to go with those mechanics. They are separate entities. They don’t seem to hold together as well as a cohesive whole.

Well, that didn’t happen to SMB. So let’s go back to the present now, where DLC exists. Right now a gamer buys a game from the shelf and plays it, beats it (or doesn’t), and then heads to the Internet to get some DLC. Another fifty levels, or a new area, or a character outfit – whatever, it doesn’t matter.

But once that DLC is added, the player is able to see the split between mechanics and content more easily. The game ceases to have iconic scenes since it is no longer a complete and finished masterpiece, an immutable thing that can be conquered and finished, but a ball of digital clay that can be changed at any time.

Because here’s the thing: DLC always either feels tacked on or it completes a game that should have been complete when the player bought it, with the possible exception of episodic gaming. But the game was either purposefully short and cut so that DLC could be added – or, the DLC is an epilogue, an extra mode, a thing separate from the whole experience. An afterthought. And afterthoughts can never feel as iconic as the original experience.

But they can ruin the original experience, by demonstrating to players that the collections of content and mechanics and graphics and music that make up their favorite games are just that – collections. They aren’t highly polished masterpieces. They aren’t carefully collected and arranged. They’re whatever made the shipping deadline.

Coz the rest just got slapped into DLC.

And even if that’s not true, if the original game release was a full experience and amazing and all the DLC’s were great an worth the money – it doesn’t matter. DLC changes games so they are no longer static things, but fluid things.

20 years from now, will gamers be looking back and saying, “Man, that 4th DLC for Jimbo and the Rocket Whale, man, that’s what sealed the package for me. That game was great” or will they still be holding up the old classics because the old classics were easier to define as complete?

I’m not sure. Because it’s easy to say what Super Mario Bros is. It’s a guy who jumps. It’s that first level with the goomba and the mushroom and makes you big. But what is Fallout 3? Is it the mechanics? The original release? The game of the year edition? The DLC? The feeling the game evokes? That screenshot of the Brotherhood guy standing there with a gun looking all menacing? Who really knows?

I’m not saying DLC is good or bad. And it’s been pretty successful monetarily so it’s probably here to stay. But it makes games different. It turns games from polished, completed art, into mechanical systems separated from their content. It makes them fluid. It makes it hard to define what’s “cannon” and what isn’t.

And I’m not sure how I feel about that. I want to like it because the potential for great things is there.

But I’m just not sure how.