Presence

Presence in psychology is defined as the perceptual illusion that a mediated environment is not mediated [4]. This translates in the game world as what is commonly referred to as suspension of disbelief. In order to generate complex emotions and excitement in games we absolutely must have the player believe that what they are doing is real and therefore matters. In this entry I will be discussing some factors that effect this idea of presence in video games.

The Uncanny Valley

In 1970 a Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mori, published an article in Energy describing a phenomenon in which human-like robots produced a rising emotional response in people the closer the robots looked to being human. This fact wasn’t surprising, what was surprising is what happened when the robots became almost but not quite human. In this case, instead of the emotional response rising positive further, the emotional response became negative. The reason for this is largely ignored by Mori but he does speculate it has something to do with the process of dying.

By now many of you have heard about the Uncanny Valley, it is my hope that you will heed this tale when deciding for or against the latest photorealistic avatars. It doesn’t do you any good to have great looking characters if all they do is generate neutral or even negative responses. Remember that even cartoon characters have created wonderful feelings in all of us for generations. Special care must be taken when play testing your games, you will know good responses when you feel it (and if you don’t you need to change it till you do).

The whole purpose in having emotionally responsive characters is empathy. This is the greatest tool in the arsenal of game designers and the hardest so far to master. Once a player cares about even one character, a whole world of possible player button pushing can happen and that is the reason for creating a game. I will blog extensively about empathy in the future.

Expectation

In life people formulate rules about how their world operates. When these rules breakdown a person will become confused and intrigued as they attempt to either reconcile the event with their belief system or amend it to accommodate the anomaly. Unfortunately the same is not true when a person plays a video game. When a player comes across a floating coffee cup in a game they are simply reminded that they are not engaged with reality. This of course has negative consequences for the suspension of disbelief. What story tellers and film makers have known for a long time is that it is not the ‘realness’ of the event that determines presence in audience but where or not there is a believable explanation for that event. So for your game, you should always take time to provide rationales for your game reality, whether it be for ‘unreal’ events or for events that did not happen but should considering the audiences reality baggage.

One way to accomplish believability in your explanations is to take the Stephen Spielberg approach. He is famous for creating wonderful and magical worlds but there is one thing in common with every fantasy; they start out with the audiences notion of reality. As long as you begin your game in reality you can take the audience anywhere.
Expectation is also talked about in Adrian Lopez’s blog Theory and Principles of Game Design.

The following are some specific examples of expectation and the preservation of presence.

Boundary Conditions

It is understandable that game environments can not be as extensive as the world we live in. This doesn’t mean that we can put up a small fence at the edge of the map and have the player believe that they couldn’t just jump over it.

Instead of lazily using the weak and clique try creating plausible boundaries for the player. Ideally these Boundary Conditions should make sense and be consistent with the game world and story. Remember to never use a boundary if later those conditions are passable by the player. Also, if exceeding the boundary will kill the player then make it clear to the player that a boundary condition is occurring.

Control

Removing control from the player reminds them of the control itself. While in-game cinematics may attempt to further the plot they ruin immersion for the player. In any case, cut scenes are far weaker then the player controlling the advancement of the story.

Death

When people die in the real world they are gone forever. The same is largely true for the linear stories of novels and films. Video games, however, allow for death to become nothing more than a hindrance. Not only does the death of a player kill suspension it kills tension too.