Weird West: Definitive Edition - top-down immersive sim action-RPG from Arkane founder Raf Colantonio

[Mauman]

It may not of coined it, but I remember the term "immersive sim" going mainstream when Gone Home came out.

As such, I have trouble taking the term seriously by association.

 

[Gargaune]

Listen to the part where he talks about systems.

If you'd bothered to timestamp it, maybe I would've, but I ain't listening to all that just for the sake of having this argument all over again. I like Spector, I like his work, but I've heard it all before. Cross-quoting my argument with Roguey, 'cause there's only so many hours in the day:

I can be grateful for Spector's work without necessarily taking his word as gospel, I'm not crazy about him using LAM-climbing as an example of emergent gameplay either, as you might remember. Authors can often misconstrue their own successes, see Invisible War for a very topical example.

Here's the thing:
- if your friend tells you he liked Thief and System Shock, you tell him to try Deus Ex or Dishonored or Prey 2017, you don't jump to Skyrim;
- if your friend tells you he liked Skyrim, you tell him to try Fallout 4 or Gothic or Ultima IX, you don't jump to Deus Ex;
- if your friend tells you he liked Ultima VI, you report him for

-harvesting.

The point is that these games have a common core of characteristics that make them easy to identify relative to one another, easy to group apart from other kinds of games. When you say "Immersive Sim" you immediately think of that first association, that particular Looking Glass school of design which I tried to encapsulate earlier (FPP, emergent gameplay, time-locked etc.) serving a particular vision ("embodiment"), whereas the second example is more effectively characterised by its own "kinda like Skyrim" open-world RPG designation. There is common ground between them, and you can even have games which tick both boxes to an extent (e.g. Kingdom Come: Deliverance), but they're clearly distinct descriptors.

The purpose of a category, genre or subgenre, is to serve critical analysis and consumer identification. To this end, it needs to be comprehensive enough to cover commonality between its instances, but also tight enough to discriminate them in the wider medium. If you roll with the idea that Immersive Sims are games where "the world feels like an actual place through the use of its systems", i.e. a diegetic sandbox, then you can include Deus Ex, Skyrim, Ultima VI, Baldur's Gate 3, Neverwinter Nights, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Ultima IX and so on, which indeed makes the term effectively useless. But in practice, the term "Immersive Sim" is validated precisely in describing games "like" Thief or Deus Ex, where design concepts such as the primacy of the First-Person Perspective, among other things, are integral.

Adding to this from the opposite perspective, since Weird West's what's plunged me down this rabbit hole, what's the value in calling it an "isometric immersive sim?" Zero, since the game can be very accurately and comprehensively described as an "isometric sandbox ARPG." The only benefit is in giving Colantonio a "sexy catchphrase" in marketing his latest title, but it comes at the cost of diluting an already fragile term designating that very niche breed of videogame we first saw from LGS.

Having a world offer verisimilitude through the use of its systems is a critical part of the Immersive Sim formula, but it's insufficient - you need to go the extra mile to put the player into it, which is why I keep pushing this Embodiment notion that dates back to Ultima Underworld. Otherwise the term Immersive Sim has little concrete value and we're left with a gap in describing the aforementioned subset of videogames. We have use for a term that collectively describes games like Deus Ex, Dishonored, Arx Fatalis etc. Whether that be "Immersive Sim" or something else, I don't mind, but we've gotten to that point where that's the one in circulation. We don't need one that associates Thief with Skyrim or Ultima VI or Weird West.

And for completion's sake, here's the "earlier" so you don't get to whine about having to look for it (like I did with your lack of timestamps):

Okay, here's the spiel - Immersive Sim designates a particular school of design in Action games that pursue a comprehensive illusion of embodiment in the fiction at the mechanical level. Emergent gameplay isn't the goal in and of itself, but rather a critical requirement stemming from that illusory embodiment. As a concrete example, stacking boxes isn't desirable simply because it opens up alternative traversal options, but because someone facing a real world problem would naturally expect to be able to move objects and climb onto them to reach that damned spider up on the wall.

Nothing is absolute, but intent is key and that core vision for embodiment is what drives many other design decisions in an Immersive Sim. Emergent gameplay, first-person perspective, time-locked spaces, diegetic UI elements etc., they're all obvious and collectively harmonious design requirements stemming from that vision.

[...]

As for Weird West - it's not so much that an Immersive Sim needs to have first-person perspective because someone wrote it down on a sacred tablet, but rather that if you've decided to make an isometric game, you're already labouring from a completely different perspective with completely different values - it could be a great game, but it won't be an Immersive Sim.

To sum up - don't hug Warren's nutsack too tightly, 'cause I think Rusty's looking for him.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

*jump on ledge to get around locked door*
Is this an immersive sim??????

 

[Roguey]

It may not of coined it, but I remember the term "immersive sim" going mainstream when Gone Home came out.

As such, I have trouble taking the term seriously by association.

Gone Home was referred to derogatorily as a walking sim, never one ever said it was an immersive sim. It's an adventure game with no puzzles, no systems to interact with.

 

[Gargaune]

Gone Home was referred to derogatorily as a walking sim, never one ever said it was an immersive sim. It's an adventure game with no puzzles, no systems to interact with.

I think he just meant he noticed the term going mainstream around the same time Gone Home's release traumatised him, not that the two were related. At least I hope so.

 

[Child of Malkav]

If you'd bothered to timestamp it, maybe I would've, but I ain't listening to all that just for the sake of having this argument all over again. I like Spector, I like his work, but I've heard it all before. Cross-quoting my argument with Roguey, 'cause there's only so many hours in the day:

You can't watch a 14 minute video? And yeah you keep posting the same shit over and over. *reads in chipmunk voice*"S-s-s-s-systems are the core but first person perspective is more important. Therefore if a game has a different perspective but has systems aplenty somehow it's not an imsim." - you.
Believable world is also achieved with the existence and use of simulated systems, interaction between them and NPCs as well as the player character, emergent gameplay being the natural result of this, perspective doesn't and shouldn't matter.
I'm done wasting my time on this. It'd probably be more productive talking to a wall. Or a stop sign.

 

[Ryzer]

You can't watch a 14 minute video?

Nobody wants to listen to the guy responsible for Underworld Ascendant.

 

[Child of Malkav]

You can't watch a 14 minute video?

Nobody wants to listen to the guy responsible for Underworld Ascendant.

It wasn't him if I remember correctly. It was Neurath and the other guy, Stellmach.

 

[Infinitron]

It may not of coined it, but I remember the term "immersive sim" going mainstream when Gone Home came out.

As such, I have trouble taking the term seriously by association.

Gone Home was referred to derogatorily as a walking sim, never one ever said it was an immersive sim. It's an adventure game with no puzzles, no systems to interact with.

I think the term "immersive sim" was mainstreamed by Arkane Studios fan gamejournos who thought it would be a useful buzzword to explain how Arkane's titles were different from other first person games and thus worth paying attention to. As we can see, their fanboyism hasn't been very successful.

However, the developers of Gone Home did use the term for their game: https://fullbright.company/2012/09/28/a-non-violent-immersive-sim/

Meanwhile, one of the earliest Arkane puff pieces I can remember, Polygon's "The Mirror Men Of Arkane" published that same year, actually contains no mention of the term "immersive sim".

 

[Roguey]

Codex lore: the first time the terms "immersive sim" and "immersive sims" were used here was February 2009, quoting some RPS cringelord talking about Bloodlines of all things (which isn't an immersive sim, thus showing how dumb and ignorant journos will just use words without properly understanding what they mean) https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/bloodlines-we-may-never-pass-this-way-again.29782/

I was one of the earliest posters to use it, because I had read about it in Warren Spector's Deus Ex post-mortem where he both used it and described what the term meant https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/has-deus-ex-3-silenced-the-codex.63575/page-5#post-1771121 https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-i-am-actually-playing-dxhr-thread.63468/page-25#post-1784611

 

[rusty_shackleford]

further proof that "immersive sim" doesn't exist
interacting with the world is not a fucking genre

 

[vortex]

further proof that "immersive sim" doesn't exist

Proper term for codex is Imershun sims and yes they do exist. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/on-locales-characters-and-imershun.27657/

 

[rusty_shackleford]

further proof that "immersive sim" doesn't exist

Proper term for codex is Imershun sims and yes they do exist. https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/on-locales-characters-and-imershun.27657/

"doing RPG things like you're supposed to do in an RPG rather than simulating dumb QTE shit" is not a genre, stop being retarded already

 

[Gargaune]

You can't watch a 14 minute video?

I'm not gonna spend a quarter hour on something you should be able to explain in two minutes. I don't see Spector hanging around this thread, if you agree with an argument you should be able to carry it yourself.

And yeah you keep posting the same shit over and over. *reads in chipmunk voice*"S-s-s-s-systems are the core but first person perspective is more important. Therefore if a game has a different perspective but has systems aplenty somehow it's not an imsim." - you.

NO! What I'm saying is that embodiment is core, that the rest (emergent gameplay, FPP, etc.) flows from it, and that that's the value of the term "immersive sim." And despite having said this shit "over and over", you still manage to miss the point and fall back on "believable world", even though I specifically addressed that above.

I'm done wasting my time on this. It'd probably be more productive talking to a wall. Or a stop sign.

Stick to the wall, the stop sign has writing on it.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Stick to the wall, the stop sign has writing on it.

At least I can read what says on the sign without having to invent some stupid shit.

 

[Excommunicator]

I would be worried if I were Wolfeye. It's really missing the mark on convincing players who the game is made for. I don't see it selling well even if it turned out to be great.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I would be worried if I were Wolfeye. It's really missing the mark on convincing players who the game is made for. I don't see it selling well even if it turned out to be great.

The fate of all immersive sims. None sold well. Cult classics but commercial failures. That's why the industry is where it's at. Great games always fail.

 

[Excommunicator]

I would be worried if I were Wolfeye. It's really missing the mark on convincing players who the game is made for. I don't see it selling well even if it turned out to be great.

The fate of all immersive sims. None sold well. Cult classics but commercial failures. That's why the industry is where it's at. Great games always fail.

This is even worse. Even immersive sim fans aren't being properly appealed to here.

 

[Child of Malkav]

I would be worried if I were Wolfeye. It's really missing the mark on convincing players who the game is made for. I don't see it selling well even if it turned out to be great.

The fate of all immersive sims. None sold well. Cult classics but commercial failures. That's why the industry is where it's at. Great games always fail.

This is even worse. Even immersive sim fans aren't being properly appealed to here.

From what I've seen on other forums people are at least curious about this if not excited. Except here. This place is.... special.

 

[Terenty]

I would be worried if I were Wolfeye. It's really missing the mark on convincing players who the game is made for. I don't see it selling well even if it turned out to be great.

They should have put some immersive NFT in there that would do the trick, but alas

 

[Morgoth]

And Weird West will neither be a cult classic nor a commercial success. It reminds me of this Seven game. It did nothing wrong, but didn't do anything special either. It simply vanished.

 

[Gargaune]

The fate of all immersive sims. None sold well. Cult classics but commercial failures. That's why the industry is where it's at. Great games always fail.

That's a myth, probably fed by the public's fascination with the "troubled artist" trope. Deus Ex and Thief sold well, they weren't blockbusters in their day, but they weren't flops by any means. LGS didn't shutter because Thief 2 bombed, but because its cash came too late to save it, if I recall correctly. I dunno about System Shock or Prey 2017, but Arkane certainly seemed to do well on Dishonored.

This is even worse. Even immersive sim fans aren't being properly appealed to here.

Well, gee, maybe if it had... Oh, fuck it.

 

[SpoonFULL]

I guess you can't be "immersed" into the world if you are not in first or third person perspective.

 

[Child of Malkav]

That's a myth, probably fed by the public's fascination with the "troubled artist" trope. Deus Ex and Thief sold well, they weren't blockbusters in their day, but they weren't flops by any means. LGS didn't shutter because Thief 2 bombed, but because its cash came too late to save it, if I recall correctly. I dunno about System Shock or Prey 2017, but Arkane certainly seemed to do well on Dishonored.

Only Dishonored 1 had any kind of success, all were flops before and after it. If a game doesn't sell enough to keep a company afloat, then it's a commercial failure. DX1 sold a million copies in what 10, 20 years? That's probably a raging success according to you.
Btw, stop replying to me you bug.

Spoiler

 

[Gargaune]

Only Dishonored 1 had any kind of success, all were flops before and after it. If a game doesn't sell enough to keep a company afloat, then it's a commercial failure.

Dumbass, publishers don't tend to fund sequels to "commercial failures", especially not back when LGS and ISA were still operating. Deus Ex sold around a respectable 300k units worldwide in its first year and got us Invisible War, Thief got The Metal Age and after LGS shuttered, Eidos still tried to bring it back with Deadly Shadows just a couple of years later. Fast forward to the modern day, Deus Ex: Human Revolution was received well enough to bankroll Mankind Divided as well as a tentative "Deus Ex Universe" brand from Eidos, with books and mobile fodder tie-ins. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided did underperform, sadly, though the general perception is that fault lies with Square's business plans, and Thi4f bombed because it was shit. And on the Arkane front, Arx Fatalis is certainly a cult classic, but Dishonored got a pretty mainstream reception.

Immersive Sims don't tend to be runaway money printers, but they're not starving artist material either. They have a sizeable and proven market capacity and if they didn't, no one would ever bother trying to make them anymore because they're expensive affairs.

DX1 sold a million copies in what 10, 20 years? That's probably a raging success according to you.

Just over a million by Square's acquisition in 2009, but "raging success" and "commercial failure" aren't the only two options. Maybe you're too young to know, but back in 2000, six-figure volumes were none too shabby, and Deus Ex did perform well on its own merits (that it wasn't enough to save the black hole that was Eidos's finances is another matter):

According to Computer Gaming World's Stefan Janicki, Deus Ex had "sold well in North America" by early 2001.

Btw, stop replying to me you bug.

No.