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We need technology that is less immersive, not more

filiph.net

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Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#181

Post by filiph »

ranprieur wrote: post #108

Photorealism does not equal immersion. Immersion happens in the mind, not the eyes. The games I've been most immersed in were made in the 90s, when the graphics were not as good but the gameplay was better.

Something I should have probably addressed in the article but didn't get to it for brevity: there are at least two kinds of immersion, and people tend to conflate them. (I'm not immune to this.)

There's intellectual immersion. Flow. You can be intellectually immersed reading a book or playing chess.

Then there's sensory immersion. Put a VR on, you're immersed this way.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#184

Post by CatWChainsaw »

htk wrote: post #123

There's always someone complaining about good things being too good and people lose on the rest because of it. What about letting people have some personal responsibility? Instead of complaining about games being too immersive, doom scrolling being too addictive etc, how about reminding people to make conscious decisions on how they spend their time and attention? We're living in the era of external responsibility, e…

I think you realize how tone deaf you come off when you ignore the fact that social media and gaming companies have spent the past two decades hiring the greatest minds in psychology and engineering to hack minds and get them addicted to their products, but yeah, the problem is totally a lack of bootstraps.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#185

Post by CatWChainsaw »

ranprieur wrote: post #108

Photorealism does not equal immersion. Immersion happens in the mind, not the eyes. The games I've been most immersed in were made in the 90s, when the graphics were not as good but the gameplay was better.

I've said before, that immersion is not the same as investment.

I don't want to be immersed in Amnesia The Dark Descent just because it would be "more realistic", I can already shit realistic-enough bricks without drowning in the sensation of "I'm going to die".

I want to be invested in Link's journey to save Hyrule or my party's progress in Baldur's Gate and investment's worked fine before headsets were a thing.

I can just imagine the abuse headsets will enable for microtransactions. Got my popcorn ready to go.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#186

Post by trealira »

ComposedPattern wrote: post #148
massysett wrote: post #47

"I hope you’ll agree that humanity has a variety of important engineering problems to solve, and nicer-looking graphics is quite low on that list." I used to sneer at the social value of entertainment. Then covid lockdowns hit. I spent a lot of time playing Factorio. When professional sports resumed playing (in empty stadiums, with fake crowd noise on the broadcasts) I was happy to sit on the couch after work and wat…

Games certainly have social value, but I'm not convinced that better graphics contribute all that much. I've not played Factorio, but looking at screenshots it seems not to have particularly advanced graphics. Indeed, I still get a lot of enjoyment out of 20-year-old games and often wish that modern games had less sophisticated graphics so they would run better.

To some extent, graphics are important because with extremely primitive graphics, like the graphics of the NES, it can get difficult to tell what things are represented by the image, and the limited color palette presents a challenge in making the game look aesthetically pleasing.

A game doesn't need the most advanced graphics to look aesthetically pleasing, though. It can be made up for by using an art style that doesn't need powerful hardware, e.g. modern pixel art, or the simplistic, cartoonish look that 3D Nintendo games use. Mirror's Edge still looks great due to its art direction and use of techniques like precomputed lighting.

However, different people have different standards. I've been really enjoying playing the game Crypt of the Necrodancer, and I think the pixel art is also pretty good and aesthetically pleasing, but when I showed the game to my friend to see if he might like it, he rejected it because "the art didn't speak to him." Evidently, compared to me, he has a higher minimum for graphics in order for a game to be fun for him.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#187

Post by trealira »

Nevermark wrote: post #177
paulddraper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How things look is important. Not as important as how they function, but still important. People, software programs, buildings, landscapes... appearance is information, about quality, about professionalism, about creativity, about attention to detail.

> How things look is important. Could someone tell UI designers? It is deeply troubling how much effort goes into manipulating people, or just pleasing managers who’s checkbox includes “flat design, because?”, and how little effort goes into actually making interfaces visually effortless to understand, features easy to discover, and with flexibility to be really usable from a user’s perspective. Our bicycles for the…

I think it'll be hard to ever move away from flat design, because everyone else does it, and it's associated with modernity, while skeuomorphism is associated with old software.

I don't have hard numbers, but I think flat design really became a lot more popular after Windows 8 was released. For a while, Windows 8 was heavily criticized for its UI design (and not just because it was flat), but they stuck with flat design the entire time, and I believe they had a great role in popularizing it.

I guess we'll just need someone else to make their UIs more realistic and 3D, like the old ones used to be, and stick with it no matter what others say, and the style may become popular again if their UI is in wide use.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#188

Post by trealira »

atorodius wrote: post #73
massysett wrote: post #47

"I hope you’ll agree that humanity has a variety of important engineering problems to solve, and nicer-looking graphics is quite low on that list." I used to sneer at the social value of entertainment. Then covid lockdowns hit. I spent a lot of time playing Factorio. When professional sports resumed playing (in empty stadiums, with fake crowd noise on the broadcasts) I was happy to sit on the couch after work and wat…

This comment made me sad. I would hope we aim for jobs that don‘t invoke the feeling of „trudging“ and the need for „entertainment“.

Not all work is fun. I don't really like washing the dishes or vacuuming the floor where I live, but it's necessary work. A lot of jobs are the same way. Even when a job consists of a fun activity, doing it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week might again invoke the feeling of trudging. I've heard art jobs are like this, and programming jobs. I don't think this is something we'll ever really solve.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#189

Post by throwaway4aday »

trinsic2 wrote: post #173
throwaway4aday wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could really say this about anything, the only moral to the story is that people have to work to pay the bills and the work that pays is the unglamorous stuff that needs doing. I believe this has been true throughout human history. The greatest artists and thinkers throughout history have earned their keep by providing services to the wealthy or teaching paying students (also often wealthy). There are upsides, th…

This made me think of Mural Art in the ancient past. Yes they were commissioned to do that art, but it still stands today in cathedrals and churches. Advertising comes and goes, nobody will notice when its gone. Thats a problem with art today, IMHO.

In a way, mural art in churches and cathedrals is advertising. It's advertising for that religion, showing you the promised benefits of subscribing or the terrible things that will happen if you don't sign up now during this limited offer.

Re: We need technology that is less immersive, not more

#190

Post by trealira »

> The gaming industry has hijacked human play. Instead of an evolutionary learning and relaxation tool, it’s so immersive now that people get sucked into spending hundreds of hours playing games that don’t teach them anything valuable about the real world, and don’t relax them at all. I’m a gamer, and I of course enjoy immersing myself in a good AAA video game, but I had to admit to myself at one point that, long-term, playing video games for any extended period makes me physically miserable and dumber.

I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with having played a game for 200 hours. Before video games, we had toys like Lego, Lincoln Logs, board games, etc. that children (and even some adults) spent just as long playing.

Video game addiction seems like what he's worrying about, but addiction doesn't require immersion. People get addicted to Tetris, and it's not because Tetris provides an immersive experience.

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