Narrative and the Immersive Sim

If mechanics are the message, what does that mean for the Immersive Sim? What kinds of themes and narratives work well with the genre?

What makes an Immersive Sim special as a genre is how it shares authorship. Both the player and creators play a pivotal role; the designers ask questions and the players create answers. And that answer informs the next question, creating a form of Socratic dialog in the form of a game. The game is not a sandbox where the player is allowed to do whatever they want nor is it a theme park where they are taken for a ride. The designer meets the player where they are at and respects their agency as a co-creator in the experience. The designer provides the set of tools and the premise/scenario (consistent game systems and levels with open-ended goals) and the player approaches it with a certain intelligence and intent. The designer is ready to respond to the decisions and interactions of the player and together they craft a reactive experience. It's very similar to a DM in Dungeons & Dragons; Dungeon Masters provide a premise and the players engage with the adventure and they both improvise back and forth to have a session.

This dynamic greatly empowers the player but in some ways reduces the control a designer has over the experience. Many designers and directors of Immersive Sims constantly reiterate that it's not about designing what happens next or creating a puzzle; it's about creating a situation or a problem for the player to navigate. The player 'immerses' themselves into the consistent rules of the 'simulation' and finds a way they can proceed (not the way they must proceed). And this creates a big change in the narrative of the world. Anything could be a tool to the player so they carefully interrogate the game, including narrative details. They are scanning documents for codes or hints about how the scenario works. They can become uniquely engaged in the fiction and scrutinize things in greater detail than in other games.

A scene from the TV show Community
The character Abed takes an exceedingly
 rational approach to a horror story*

But not all narratives are really meant to be held up to this level of scrutiny. Have you ever watched a slasher movie and thought "Why doesn't everyone just stand back to back with improvised weapons at the ready?" Surely that would prevent anyone else from being killed. Of course we all know that if the characters did that then there wouldn't be a story to tell. Also the characters don't know they're in a movie and most of the good slasher movies tend to at least give a tacit explanation as to why everybody acts the way they do. There is always some bravado, panic, or transgression that keeps the characters from just calling the police*. This can work well for a movie about horror and tension; but in a videogame where the player has agency (and can reload their last save) this narrative structure becomes unideal.

Since the Immersive Sim is a collaborative experience between the designer and the player, special consideration has to be taken with the narratives. The player is the audience and this can collapse a lot of common plots and even entire story structures. Just because the character the player controls is motivated, that doesn't necessarily mean the player is motivated. The player knows what kind of game they are getting into and they have certain expectations. And especially with an Immersive Sim, the player will play like it's an Immersive Sim. If there are boxes, they will stack them. The players are trying to understand the simulation. If the plot depends on unreasonable behavior or things the player could avoid, then the believability of the narrative will break. This all adds up to a lot of stories not necessarily being suited to an Immersive Sim. And potentially, certain stories can be more aligned with evoking the Immersive Sim experience.

In order to find what narratives are best for Immersive Sims let's look at the recurring structures. The genre expects certain kinds of interactions and systems that support player agency and encourage players to exert influence on the game world. Usually there are levels that allow for multiple approaches and the levels have a sort of steady state that the player can then manipulate (sometimes without any extraordinary abilities). Boundary transgression features prominently in many Imm Sims and it's sort of expected in a game about bending and breaking rules. These and the other constraints of being an Immersive Sim tend to pull the premise and scenarios in a certain direction. Stealth features are prominent as they were featured in many foundational Immersive Sims. The player's character occupies a social space with an unusual amount of agency. Immersive Sims are about thinking outside the box and they gravitate toward protagonists who do so. I think this all leads to a particular type of story that is unusually compatible with Immersive Sims.

I know they say don't judge a book by its cover
but if they are going to, get John Harris to do the cover.

I think it's important for Immersive Sim designers to be aware of the Rationalist Fiction sub-genre of (mostly) internet fiction writings. The more mainstream examples of this writing would be like Ender's Game and The Martian. Basically these are works of fiction featuring an intelligent protagonist who uses reason and exploits understandable patterns in an internally consistent world. This action is analogous to what the players do in an Immersive Sim. So the Rationalist Fiction story becomes similar to the result of designers and players interacting to create the experienced story of an Immersive Sim. Recognizing this similarity between genres might be helpful in informing what sorts of narratives work better with Immersive Sims (or might be a better jumping off point for inspiration). But I don't want this to be a limit to what is possible (Immersive Sims even predate the definition of Rationalist Fiction; and Rationalist Fiction is sometimes humorous and I have thoughts about that). In a more general sense, plots that rely on competence and making informed decisions will work better when writing for an Immersive Sim. The fiction of the Immersive Sim is similar to that of Rationalist fiction, the protagonist is intelligent.

So what I would direct writers to pay attention to in Rationalist Fiction is how protagonists and antagonists determine their actions. The fiction establishes clear and exploitable rules of cause and effect with the expectation of adaptation to the extraordinary scenario. It's more about the ingenuity of the protagonist and their antagonist in a logical and steady world. A few characters are plotting, experimenting, and thinking about each move they make. And then there is a sort of chaos when these forces meet. For the hero it is often quick thinking and improvisation more than the 'heist going off without a hitch'. While there might be plots and scenes of emotional drama, but it's more about the protagonist intelligently moving through scenarios.

An intelligent story respects the player
and that respect is core to an immersive sim.

I think Rationalist Fiction is an overlooked source of potential for Immersive Sim narratives. But the writer needs to understand that it is only a starting point; the real magic is the shared authorship of the story. The mechanics of an Immersive Sim are all about acknowledging the intelligence and decisions of the player. The fuel for that is the worldbuilding the author provides, and they can take satisfaction in knowing that their details will be examined by the players. The Immersive Sim creates a unique canvas for writers. Sometimes it's giving clues in newspapers and item descriptions, other times it is interacting with NPCs. It's a canvas where authors can ask thought-provoking questions and let players finish the details with their own answers. It's about an intelligent narrative that the player can converse with and reflect back on.

* OK, if you are standing back to back with improvised weapons with a mad man on the loose, calling the cops into your residence is incredibly dangerous. Police are trained to be incredibly risk adverse and may.

A serious look at silly games

I'm going to say it. I don't like humor in games. I understand the hesitation to stand against humor, games are supposed to be fun after all. Some of the most memorable moments in games are the levity injected by a well-placed joke. There are even games entirely built around humor. It's not inherently bad, but jokes are dangerous to add to games. Comedy has many pitfalls that need to be respected before humor is added to a game.

Inherently there is something a little unserious about games. It doesn't take long for most players to recognize that games are an imperfect simulation. NPCs have limited dialog and reactions to the player, often repeating things or ignoring what should be bizarre. Should the player try to test the boundaries it gets more absurd. Jumping on tables during conversation, putting buckets on NPCs' heads, monstrous results from a character creator all pull back the curtain. If it's the player bringing this to the game then it isn't really a problem. It's a voluntary action by the player to expose the fictitious world. But when the player decides to play along and the game can't seem to simulate its own fiction without drawing attention to its inconsistencies and unreality, then it starts to become an issue. It is so hard to create that believability; and misplaced humor can puncture that veil.

That's the secret to all this. I actually don't mind humor; what I really don't like is the inconsistent tone in the world. The premise and setting need to be able to serve the scenarios of the game. Many games that seem funny are actually built on a very serious world. Disco Elysium has a very silly protagonist but the world he inhabits and the task he is given is actually very serious. VtMB has a lot of silly characters; but the World of Darkness is a dark world. When you look at a game like Skin Deep, a fundamentally quirky world, it keeps its absurdity consistent with most of the characters being rather serious. All of these games keep their sincerity. When a world violates its own sincerity everything starts to fall apart. It doesn't reward a player's investment, it mocks them for caring. What might seem like a good joke is actually poison for the game.

This is a pivotal story moment in Skin Deep.

Skin Deep is a good example of a funny game that remains sincere. It's very consistent with itself. All the scenarios are a little bit funny and everything is a little bit off-beat. The player is much more likely to think ‘of course it works that way’ instead of noticing any logical inconsistencies. It's also a very short game. It doesn't try to add deep philosophical quandaries or emotional moments. It keeps it consistently funny, and keeps things tight.

There is always a risk with humor. Jokes create an emotional separation from the scenario as players are looking for the punchline. Players don't want to feel stupid for starting to take something serious and have the rug pulled out from under them by a joke. That just trains players against emotional investment. Remember the Charlie Chaplin* quote "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." Humor builds emotional distance and asks the player to observe the scenario. But emotional scenes where players are to feel drama and a connection to characters become harder when this distance is built. It's hard to make that context switch and especially hard in games when players can initiate scenes on their own accord. It's not that humor or drama can't mix but it's hard to mix. And games are hard enough to build as it is.
*Charlie Chaplin may not have actually said this.

The medium of games has unique challenges. A good joke is all about timing but players set the pace of a videogame. Players can walk away or be distracted when NPCs are setting up a joke and then get involved in combat during the punchline. Also due to the limited number of dialog lines and players' tendency to quick-save and quick-load things can be repeated a lot. Jokes become stale or unintentional. Often games don't need help making humor when there are enough funny ragdoll positions and emergent behaviors causing bizarre things to happen. Games are already a little bit unstable and trying to add comedy just makes it more difficult to keep everything from falling apart.

I was not quite as enraptured with
Disco Elysium as most people seem to be.

I can be funny sometimes, but when I travel, I don't tell jokes. It's very hard to localize humor and most people won't get my jokes. Worse yet, it's easy for a joke to miss if it feels dated. Some comedy can also become inappropriate as time moves on. Making an out of setting reference or being preachy can take players out of the experience. It breaks the immersion and pulls back the curtain, making it feel like the character stopped speaking and the author has started proselytizing. It breaks the verisimilitude of the fictional world.

A parody is probably the worst kind of game for these issues. It requires the player to know what you are satirizing, recognize the satire, understand what is being broken, and then actually find it funny. All the while you are dodging the question "is this a joke or is this just bad"? A real parody requires mastery of the subject matter. You have to know it better than the creators of what you are satirizing and then competently execute on that vision. Why do something so difficult? And do you think anyone wants to sit through a 40-hour parody?

If a player decides to participate in the fiction of the world that investment should pay off for them. If the humor is respecting the player and accepting them into the shared fantasy of the game it can work well. But it's not easy, even for the funniest people, to make a game based around comedy. I would be very cautious to use humor as anything more than a garnish in a game because it's too easy to mistake trying to be funny with actually being fun.