Immersion

Video Games, the new white meat? Part 2!

Oct 19 2009

In this sequel to my first blog, "Video Games, the new white meat?" I would like to talk about why I personally think that video games are one of the better methods of telling a story. Without further ado, that reason is immersion.

What immersion is in terms of narratology and story-telling is how into the story the recipient becomes, such that they really get sucked into the story. At least, that's the way I see it. To show how video games are more immersive than other mediums, I'll talk about how they do it first. A book shows the reader words on a page, leaving the reader to imagine what happens themselves on their own levels of personal detail. Movies show exactly what happens in the story (or happened/will happen given the usage of ana-/prolepsis) as it happens and leaves nothing to the imagination. Comics have a similar take on it as movies, albiet there is no sound and the method is somewhat different given the seriality of most comics. In video games, the player literally controls what happens, and most things aren't set in stone.

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