Immersion: fun to have and rarely spelled correctly.

Kelly Rued takes an exhaustive look at the role of immersion in online games and addresses how LoTRO handles it in this thought-provoking blog post.

In most MMORPGs you don't need a map to find the center of the world. Like the protagonist in the Truman Show, you have the awkward feeling that everything exists only as a prop for players. Every NPC in every town is just a bit part actor waiting patiently to deliver a line or item on cue. Impersonal and uncomfortably contrived exchanges can be used to great narrative and cinematic effect in a single player game, but they're more than a little unsettling in anything pretending to be a virtual world. Nothing breaks the illusion of a living, breathing world like the nagging feeling that everyone and everything in the joint are not much more salient (or important) than your backpack and armor. Who are these people that you're risking your virtual neck for in World of Warcraft?

You can read the full post at the Virtual Cultures blog.


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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