The Comeback of the Immersive Sim | Game Maker's Toolkit

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New games in the System Shock, Ultima Underworld, and Deus Ex franchises are here, marking the surprise comeback of the "immersive sim". But what are these games, and why should we care that they're making a triumphant return? Follow me on Twitter - https://twitter.com/britishgaming Follow Game Maker's Toolkit on Tumblr - http://gamemakerstoolkit.tumblr.com Support Game Maker's Toolkit on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/GameMakersToolkit Quote Credits Rock Paper Shotgun: "Dark Futures: Clint Hocking" https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/07/13/dark-futures-part-5-clint-hocking/ Gamasutra: "Postmortem: Ion Storm's Deus Ex" http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131523/postmortem_ion_storms_deus_ex.php Gamasutra: "Why Warren Spector is making games again" http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266210/The_Comeback_Why_Warren_Spector_is_making_games_again.php GAMBIT: "Looking Glass Studios Podcast" http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/ Reddit: "I am Warren Spector, AMA" https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/34fdjb/hi_i_am_warren_spector_a_game_developer_from/ Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance): Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Eidos Montreal, 2016) Dishonored 2 (Arkane Studios, 2016) Prey (Arkane Studios, Unreleased) Ultima Ascendant (OtherSide Entertainment, Unreleased) System Shock (Nightdive Studios, Unreleased) Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (Blue Sky Productions, 1992) Wolfenstein 3D (id Software, 1992) The Elder Scrolls: Arena (Bethesda Softworks, 1994) System Shock (Looking Glass Studios, 1994) Thief: The Dark Project (Looking Glass Studios, 1998) Deus Ex (Ion Storm, 2000) System Shock 2 (Looking Glass Studios, 1999) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, 2009) Rise of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics, 2015) The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) Thief (Eidos Montreal, 2014) Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009) Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2012) Infamous Second Son (Sucker Punch Productions, 2014) Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2008) Dead Space (Visceral Games, 2008) Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studios, 2008) BioShock (Irrational Games, 2007) S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Game World, 2007) Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Eidos Montreal, 2011) Dishonored (Arkane Studios, 2012) Hitman (iO Interactive, 2016) Alien: Isolation (The Creative Assembly, 2014) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Kojima Productions, 2015) Dangerous Golf (Three Fields Entertainment, 2016) Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions, 2014) Until Dawn (Supermassive Games, 2015) Note: Blue Sky Productions was later renamed Looking Glass Technologies (and then Looking Glass Studios) Music used in this episode: 00:00 - Icarus (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) 00:55 - Background Music (Deus Ex GO) 02:18 - UNATCO (Deus Ex) 06:16 - NYC Streets (Deus Ex) 07:59 - Wan Chai Market (Deus Ex) 10:07 - Icarus (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) 10:51 - Title (Deus Ex) Clip credits Arsonall: "Thief (2014) First 15 Minutes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mushldyN_rw ZephyrMantis: "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl PC Gameplay" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POTfEhWCnKw UnfairPlus: "Barrett - Director's Cut Boss Fight - Deus Ex: Human Revolution" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxnfPmd4itc Stranger Things © Netflix

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Breath of the Wild is fitting the criteria really well so far it seems... Interesting
Looking Glass Studio was the best video game developer that ever was and ever will be....No one will even come close
Probably the dumbest name for a game genre ever
What a delightful video, Mr. Brown. :-) As an enthusiast of this design philosophy, you get a thumbs up from me.

I often like to encapsulate this design philosophy as not being about dropping players into a level they need to clear, but into a whole little world to explore and understand and interact with at their own leisure.
This is what always burned me about games from the 7th gen onwards. Here we got these hardware systems capable of advanced graphical and mechanical simulations... and AAA devs are balls deep in these pseudo-interactive heavily scripted hollywood envy corridor shooter games like Call of Doody, Uncharted, The Last of Us, Gears of War etc. etc. For hardware that was sold on its capabilities, devs couldn't be less interested in programming mechanically rich simulations. Heck even Skyrim, from a series and developer famous for Daggerfall - a game that boasts a depth and breadth of mechanical simulation almost exclusively unmatched in any game - released Skyrim, a shallow bare bones mechanically desolate rpg that eliminated the vast majority of the systems of its immediate predecessor and stripped the remainder to the absolute barest minimum.
Event though I am somewhat on a binge of your videos, I avoided this one a bit since I haven't played most of the games this is about. However, after giving it s chance, I have to give you major props for making your videos as accessible and interesting as they are while being quite educating. I really enjoyed it.
I think the new Zelda may be kinda like that
What's the game at 8:42?
Wouldn't really say they ever disappeared or are now making a come-back, as virtually any rpg is an immersive sim, according to your definition. Maybe if we exclude rpgs, strategy games and, to a certain degree, metroidvanias?
I'm surprised you didn't mention Breath of the wild. It seems like it'll be more like an immersive sim as well.
My main beef with the 2012 XCOM revival is the wholesale jettisoning of the simulation side of things - UFO and Apocalypse were simulations with a thin layer of plot and some interesting things for players to do; Enemy Unknown took the devs' favourite memories of playing UFO and put them on a timer - so where in UFO you would sometimes face the situation where you had two or more missions you could take on and had to decide how to prioritise them (or just do them all because you had more than one Skyranger, or plan your interceptions to avoid near-simultaneous crashes, or just not find out about one of them because you haven't extended your radar network, or...), EU twice a month presents you with a list of 3 missions and tells you to pick one and abandon the others, despite having a barracks and armory with enough troops and gear to send out three squads if only you had more than one single transport plane...

Or take base defense - in UFO, base defense is what happens when you allow the aliens to discover where your base is, and don't have good enough defenses to block the attack, and takes place on a map determined by your choices in the simulation in a fairly obvious way. In EU, base defense is what happens once, at once particular point in the game, on a map that has nothing to do with any of your base construction choices, always features the same waves of enemies, and only if you have the right DLC to unlock it.

That's not to say that scripted gameplay is all bad - forcing players down a relatively narrow path at a relatively constant speed means you can design much more accurately for players' capabilities and knowledge at any given point, and be sure of serving up those memorable moments that might never emerge in a simulation. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an example of an entirely linear, heavily-scripted game and I enjoyed it a lot. The problem with using scripted events to mimic emergent ones is that it only works until the player penetrates the illusion - in a simulation, when things go horribly wrong, it's the player's fault; in a scripted game, it's the developer's fault, and that lack of responsibility for the situations you face makes them less meaningful...
I feel a Deus Ex reinstall to be imminent. Miss JC Denton and that wonderful soundtrack
I'm honestly shocked to see that the video completely ignored the most immersive, and bestselling, game in history that allowed divergent storytelling. Even the comments are focused on talking about how players are less interested and become lost in those games.

Minecraft

Minecraft is an immersive game where the player creates their own fun, their own stories, and builds their own world. I would argue that it's a more unique and unrefined example than games like Thief or Deus Ex because it gives significantly more control to the player. This is not a small or niche game genre or even mechanic. This is literally the second best selling game in history that has been adapted for educational use, building, player developed minigames, modded worlds, player made stories, role playing games, and a host of other things.

Immersive Sims are the future of gaming because Minecraft is the game that future designers will be heavily influenced by.
Hmm...I usually agree with you on most things, but this one I have some issues with. Namely, how you're defining these games. The tenets you're outlining really just summarize the concepts of dynamics, organic interaction and level design,, and emergence which exist in many games that don't fall into the category of "Immersive Sims," or rather, that the definition is so open that it can include many different games of highly variable style.
If consistency in rules is the standard of this kind of game, then how does the Dark Souls franchise hold up, where anything that moves can die from NPCs to titanic beasts, even if there is incentive in impracticality preventing you from attempting to kill everything you can?
The most interesting part of these games for me is that the mixing systems is usually seen as a bad thing for developers, because it could bring unforeseen (if sometimes ridiculous and hilarious) results. Here the developers had to be aware to an extent of the systems' limitations and how the interact, as bug fixing would be a nightmare otherwise.

They put the game experience over the effort to make the game. And that is awesome
I never thought Immersive Sims have a name... I thought they're just well designed games : P
But seriously now, I love simulations and sandboxes. I can appreciate well designed linear games like Portal or Limbo, which are complete opposites of the sandbox idea, but the best games I ever played, obsessively.. for much longer than I should have.. are games like Minecraft, Mount & Blade, Path of Exile.. all games that give the player a significant amount of choices and agency.
It's painful these are the kind of games are the ones I love to play and want to make but working alone are just to much for me. I have so many great ideas and game mechanics stored away because I know I will die penniless before I could passably finish them to the scope these kind of games need. My kingdom for a large number of level and kit designers that would work for free. sniff sniff
Ah, so that's that thing I love so much. Good to have a definition. For years now, my design philosophy for the ideas I've had has been based on this principle. I suppose you could call it 'Anticipating Emergence' as you put the variables out there that the players can openly manipulate at their will and see the results. One thing I dislike so much in games these days is how 'closed' they feel in regards to the experience. It's like they have a vision and don't want any input (or agency) from the player that might change that. They want you to play the game how it was 'supposed to be played' rather than letting you play with the mechanics. It reminds me of the whole 'Death of the Author' question and makes me wonder how players should approach a game, whether or not emergence was intended. I don't tend to go out of my way to exploit or experiment with a game (at least not the first playthrough or before I become very familiar with it), but I really dislike when I feel as though I'm being artificially limited by the game instead of rewarded for my ingenuity.

The Comeback of the Immersive Sim | Game Maker's Toolkit

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