The Daily Grind: Do you consider immersion the highest ideal in MMOs?

    
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A while back, when I was doing a first impressions piece about Aloft, I was writing a section about how the wind was surprisingly key to immersion in the gameworld, to lending the game world believability and credibility and verisimilitude. But even as I was putting down the words, I was struck by how often we throw around the term “immersion” and treat it as if it’s the only thing that really matters when we know it doesn’t.

For example, just in that session, I had gone out of my way to disable camera shake. I had switched from first-person to a third-person view. I was flopping down crafting stations in random places up in the air. I threw myself off a cliff to see what would happen. All of these things greatly improved my enjoyment of the game, my physical immersion in the game, if you will, but definitely not my emotional immersion in the game’s world. And that suited me just fine.

To me, immersion has become this annoying buzzword that has morphed and twisted and reduced until it just means “pretty” and doesn’t take into account any of the other ways people can be immersed in games. My god, I can be immersed in Balatro. And I’m not sure that kind of “this is a real place and I live here” immersion is really what I’m after in MMOs anyway.

But I know it is for some people, so into the article went that observation about wind anyway. How about you – do you consider immersion the highest ideal in MMOs? And if not, what is?

Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
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