/vr/ - Retro Games

it's akin to IDM ("intelligent dance music")
pretentious descriptor but still accurate
...mainly because all "immersive sims" are clones of deus ex

It's a retarded term because it says absolutely nothing about the genre. Is Eurotruck Simulator an immersive sim? Flight Simulator? Desert Bus?

>>7805470
I agree but it still tells you what kind of game it is. You know, the kind of game with man-sized ventilation shafts next to keypads that you enter passcodes inexplicably contained in emails or discarded PDAs into or that you can hack with inexplicably single-use tools.

>>7805459
No, and yes.
>>7805470
This. Any fucking game that holds your interest is an "immersive sim". Fucking Tetris is an immersive sim. "Immersive sim" is to Warren Spector what FULL REACTIVE EYES ENTERTAINMENT is to Yu Suzuki.
>>7805507
>but it still tells you what kind of game it is.
Nope
>You know, the kind of game with man-sized ventilation shafts next to keypads that you enter passcodes inexplicably contained in emails or discarded PDAs into or that you can hack with inexplicably single-use tools.
Bunch of scifi RPG bullshit. PDAs might as well be diaries or scrolls and single use tools are basically lock picks. T

>>7805459
It's pretentious as a term because it's describing its own success. I would put farm and trucker games in that category by the way, not fucking Deus Ex, that's silly. The games I described are simulation games. Deus Ex is just a choice-focused RPG.

>>7805682
>>but it still tells you what kind of game it is.
>Nope
you're being disingenuous on purpose

Worst genre title since "intelligent dance music".

>>7805682
>Fucking Tetris is an immersive sim.
Tetris isnt simulating anything lmao

>>7806012
There's nothing wrong with the term. Are you butthurt by it because you listen to regular edm? Well don't be. I like edm as well and it doesnt bug me. It's just a subgenre, and that can be important for people who are seeking something similar to what you're currently listening to.

>>7805996
And you're a born retard who falls for buzzwords.

>>7806026
>you're butthurt because the name's vague and made up but i like it
Learn to substantiate an argument that isn't "well I'M not mad unlike YOU"

>>7806039
>>7806047
autism

It's a stupid term. I would never have guessed it refers to games like Deus Ex if I wasn't told.
I always called them stealth sandboxes.
Granted, original deus ex isn't much of a stealth because everything is fucked, but that's beside the point.

>>7806229
Deus Ex is stealth. That's the aspect of your abilities you always have, and all your missions are infiltration. You can play the game like a stealthless action game but that's the failure state. Deus Ex doesn't have one intended playstyle but all routes keep stealth supported.

>>7805459
It works as an idiom, you say immersive sim everyone immediately knows you're talking about an offshoot of systemshock, deus ex, and thief, you ask for a contemporary company that makes immersive sims you think arkane.

>>7806529
>you say immersive sim everyone immediately knows you're talking about an offshoot of systemshock, deus ex, and thief
If by "everyone" you mean "absolutely not a single soul besides me" then sure.

>>7805459
It seems redundant to me. A well made sim should be immersive almost by definition.

>>7805459
It's somewhat vague.

>>7806571
yeah, you want to feel superior to fedora nerds but you know I'm right.

>>7805459
just as stupid as jank and clunky

>>7806529
except people also lump in very superficial and barely interactive games like Bloodlines or walking sims in. while actual RPGs that offer way more immersion, choice and simulation are arbitrarily disqualified because no FPP. linear scriptfest like Bioshock counts, but STALKER very rarely gets brought up. etc.
shit phrase pushed by gamejourno retards.

>>7805470
Pretty much.

>>7806598
You straight up imagined a description of german sim games as something other people would somehow think of Deus Ex from dude. It's delusional, you lack introspection.

>>7806642
both objective categories that exist

>>7805459
It's not pretentious, but it is lazy. I hate it when shitty terms get popular because they sound catchy and cool to people rather than because they're descriptive. Sure, it's a "good" term if you're a marketer. It's not good if you actually care about analyzing and describing video games. But that goes for several genre terms that got popular so it's a losing battle.

It wouldn't be important if people would talk about mechanics instead of looking for buzzwords, but lol @ the chances of that getting more popular than repeating catchy phrases

>>7805470
yes

>>7806026
if someone says IDM and your first thought is that it's meant to be a contrast to "EDM" you are ignorant about electronic music history, I'm sorry

IDM was a term long before any marketer decided to push that "EDM" silliness, and it was a dumb term them and it's a dumb term now. also not a very useful one since barely anyone uses it and if they do they're always talking about the same 4 acts so they might as well just say "yeah I like Aphex Twin" and leave it at that

>>7806663
This

I don't really use genre terms unless I'm shopping. If I ever need to describe what flavor of game something is I'll usually just say "it's like X", which is what an increasing amount of genre names nakedly are.

Except I do like calling things "Halo killers" because it's such a perfect name to gently mock them all with.

>>7805459
It describes a design principle. Immersive sims are games where:
>design is systemic rather than scripted or contextual. So less cutscenes and scripted events, more natural emergent interactions. These rules are set in stone and violated as little as possible, and NPCs follow the same rules as the player - for example, you can one hit headshot enemies in Deus Ex, but if you play on Realistic, the same can happen to you if enemy has a sniper rifle
>worlds are immersive and interactive. Unlike the shallow interactions of 90's FPS like Half Life and Duke Nukem where you could piss into toilets and use vending machines, in immersive sims interactions with the world are key to progressing the game loop - for example in Thief stealing loot and putting out torches are key gameplay mechanics, and in Deus Ex throwing props is a very important stealth mechanic for distracting enemies
> finally 'realistic' immersive worlds are also achieved via level design, which are non-linear and allow at least two - often more - ways to achieve the same goal. In addition, every level is a 'mini metroidvania' where player can use their tools (collection of tools will vary between players) to access extra goodies or content
>0451 door code lmfao
That, to me, is what 'immersive sim' means.

>>7806229
Uh, no. System Shock 1 and 2 have no stealth elements, but they're still immersive sims.

>>7806026
No, I actually listen to """IDM""", I just feel like a twat using the term because it implies that there's also non-intelligent dance music and that I consider myself a superior person to fans of other dance music.

>>7806026
No, I actually listen to """IDM""", I just feel like a twat using the term because it implies that there's also non-intelligent dance music and that I consider myself a superior person to fans of other dance music. Also """IDM""" isn't dance music to begin with, it's listening music. I couldn't dance to half of it to save my life.

>>7806026
Fuck you both, ebm is where it's at.

It was good. Deal with it. Theres a reason its still played annually to this day.

>>7805465
>all "immersive sims" are clones of deus ex
Am I a joke to you?

>>7807953
not an "immersive sim"
"immersive sim" is a buzzword spector invented to describe deus ex

>>7807792
>he doesn't dance to Venetian Snares or Access To Arasaka

>>7807961
the biggest mistake imo is that everyone always associates electronic music with dance

>>7807962
You're right btw, I recently discovered Hecq with his track "Dayout", and while I absolutely love it, I don't see how is it called dance music.

>>7807959
It was invented by Doug Church, lead programmer of Ultima Underworld, System Shock and Thief: The Dark Project. You can find multiple interviews from the late 90s and early 2000s where Church describes his games as 'first-person immersive sims.' Even long before that Ultima Underworld was described as a 'dungeon simulator' because it was that far ahead of every single other dungeon crawler on the market (i.e. Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder etc.)

There's multiple interviews in which Warren Spector talks about how much he hates the term immersive sim but admits he's stuck with it. Moreover he himself has credited Doug Church with inventing the term. You are referring to the Deus Ex postmortem by Warren Spector in which he described Deus Ex as an immersive sim but if you actually read the fucking thing you'll notice that he's describing immersive sims as a genre which already exists.

>>7808015
From:
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-dishonored-bioshock-2-and-deus-ex-swap-stories-about-making-pcs-most-complex-games/3/

>PC Gamer: I was actually going to ask, I don't know if it's common knowledge where the term came from. Was it a Kieron Gillen-coined term, or if it predated his writing on the genre.

>Warren Spector: I think Doug Church was the one who came up with that, isn't he? He's the first person I ever heard use it.

>Harvey Smith: I don't know, I remember a conversation with Rob Fermier, I think on Twitter, where we were trying to figure out where that term had come from. I think Rob's conclusion was that he first heard it from Doug, as well.

>Warren: Yeah, and we all hated it! It fell out of favor for awhile and recently it seems like it's come back. It's really odd.

>PC Gamer: Has anyone come up with a description they like better?

>Warren: No.

>>7805459
it puts me off because i'm a simulator autist so when you use the word "sim" i think "spend 3 hours flying a cessna straight and level in pitch darkness", not "an fps where you play as a cybernetic robot on mars who is trying to stop an alien invasion of the chocolate mines, but the design philosophy gives the player a huge range of player choice."

Can an immersive sim be almost exclusively action focused?

Something like Half-Life, but far less linear.

Yeah I would never call a straight story with a beginning and end a "sim" of any kind unless I lived in a world where every single video game starring a character was called a sim; you're not "simulating" any more than another game of that extremely broad description. If you're living the everyday life of a cybernetic peacekeeper it could qualify, but that's not what Deus Ex is, it's the story of one case that turns into an adventure and you never go back and simulate JC's life or job, you stick to the plot and finish it. Just like Die Hard isn't a simulator or cop simulator, it's one very exceptional situation involving a cop.

>>7805459
Useless word salad like most western genre names.