Maybe this post is a little too old now for me to start talking of its original purpose (:P)

Perhaps the biggest issue with Suspension of Disbelief came when playing Crysis a few months back.
The developers clearly had created one hell of an engine that could recreate 'reality' to the best degree yet seen, and to their credit, that game looks amazing.
What bugged me about Crysis though, is that after having made such a fabulously real-looking game, they chose to populate it with aliens and saucers. I remember thinking that if the world had looked less real, I may have been less affronted by the presence of extra-terrestrials on that island.

Anyway, that's my two pence worth...

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Original post by Argus2 Quote: Original post by Telastyn Quote: When I read a Warhammer 40k novel and imagine that I am that stalwart brother-sergeant defending humanity with my ancient bolter and mighty chainsword... is that unhealthy? No. And I respectfully disagree. I'd say your definition of health is clearly unhealthy. Those who can't empathise are literally psychopathic.

I think there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and imagining you are somebody. Imagining you are someone else is also a factor in several types of psychosis.

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Original post by partthethird Maybe this post is a little too old now for me to start talking of its original purpose (:P)

*gasp* How dare you bring up the original topic!

So, we have some vastly differing views (mostly about the level of Role Play). I think the SoD does indeed come down to how seriously you take the role-playing in a game.

Excluding the concept that anyone actually tries to believe that they ARE the character, there are two types of role-playing that I can see:

1) You make the character act as you would if you were in that situation.
2) You make the character act in whatever way is interesting to you. Just like acting a villain in a play, you might find it fun, but you aren't actually evil in real life.

I consider it to be just like a play. Role-playing is just acting, and if your cell-phone keeps ringing in the middle of Shakespeare, it can break an actor's immersion. More importantly, it breaks the audience's immersion. It all depends on how seriously you take it.

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Original post by Kylotan Quote: Original post by Argus2 Quote: Original post by Telastyn Quote: When I read a Warhammer 40k novel and imagine that I am that stalwart brother-sergeant defending humanity with my ancient bolter and mighty chainsword... is that unhealthy? No. And I respectfully disagree. I'd say your definition of health is clearly unhealthy. Those who can't empathise are literally psychopathic. I think there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and imagining you are somebody. Imagining you are someone else is also a factor in several types of psychosis.

For the record, I don't really imagine that I'm someone else. I'd say that what I do is more like imagining myself being somewhere else. Typically, I toss out the hero character and take his place. Rather than steal his identity, I steal his life, and overwrite his identity with my own. I guess the concept is something like Quantum Leap.

Some games seem to be built to allow this. Such as most role playing games, like Fallout and Oblivion. Other games make it more difficult. I had a difficult time imagining this way with Deus Ex, for example. For characters that are well defined like J.C. Denton, which also don't allow me to assert absolute control, I can't really become them, so I just control them.

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Original post by Kylotan I think there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and imagining you are somebody.

No, there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and believing you are somebody. Imagination should never be a problem. How do you empathise with someone without (mentally) putting yourself in their shoes?

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Original post by Argus2 Quote: Original post by Kylotan I think there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and imagining you are somebody. No, there is a difference between empathising with somebody, and believing you are somebody. Imagination should never be a problem. How do you empathise with someone without (mentally) putting yourself in their shoes?

I agree that the same imagination skills are put to use for all of these tasks, but I think empathy is more about accurately absorbing someone's environment, rather than assuming their identity. If Jack is angry because someone stole his car, I imagine someone stealing my car to empathize, rather than imagine that I am Jack. To absorb Jack's thought patterns correctly, I would need to emulate his loss as accurately as possible in my mind. I can do that most effectively while remaining myself.

It's still imagination. Having the ability to imagine you're someone else obviously doesn't imply health problems. Actually imagining yourself as someone else also doesn't imply health problems. Doing it to escape your own identity implies something negative about your life. But that something negative can be as simple as boredom, or a fear of death.

OK, so if someone for some reason, has the desire to imagine themselves as someone else, like, its what they would love to do for fun, and they still want to remain functioning parts of society, would not the video game be the perfect means for them to do so?

I dont really see how its unhealthy, in fact, Id view it as healthy. Sure some people might start behaiving violently and whatnot, but I believe if thats the case, the violence would have come up in some other form anyhow.

There would also be the extremeists that kill themselves over video games. Moot, people kill themselves over all sorts of redonculous things, look at Romeo and Juliet. Redonc.

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Original post by Humble Hobo Suspension of Disbelief...Where do you fall on the spectrum?

I get the strongest feeling of it from movies, so...

The Chronicles of Riddick and AlienVsPredator vs The 300 and Gladiator fight scenes. Riddick, even though they spent millions on stage and performance, was plagued with some guy's idea that blurry and confused is supposed to convey something. It just yanked me out of the movie and into the theater. AlienVsPredator did a somewhat better job of imparting an image of confusion, but maybe not such a good thing in the end. The 300 fight scenes were captivating, as were the fights in The Gladiator. They said it's a film, but aren't we great at it? Made me wanna cheer and watch it again.

I, Robot: At the start of the movie, we're introduced to the huge globe AI thing in the middle of the building -- and suddenly I was in the theatre going 'aw crap, they're just gonna blow that up at the end of the movie'. The odd thing is that Star Trek(4?):The Whale Hunt they outline the plot at the beginning, but it didn't suck to watch it afterwards.

Star Trek:The TV Shows sometimes used corny plot devices like failed tricorders but hand-held flash lights. It was like 'how many times do we gotta watch someone almost slip in a cave?' But there was an episode of DS9 where they invented a sniper rifle with teleporting bullets, that was kinda fun. Also, ST:Enterprise did one where they wrote more about the Orion slave girls. That was interesting, because they added to the lore.

I don't know why these examples captivated my imagination or spurned it, but they seemed related.

[Edited by - AngleWyrm on June 10, 2008 3:16:46 AM]

I think this comes down to acting versus ENacting. I was reading an article not long back in preparation for my dissertation that talked about the differences:

Players, rather than acting as a character, are enacting through that character - they influence the actions in a way that reflects the way they would act in that situation. So basically, you're always vicariously living your own desired actions through that of an avatar, as opposed to becoming that character on some psychological level.

How does this relate to SoD? Personally, I think that SoD in this instance corresponds directly to how well we can relate to the character in question, rather than the game-world (I may be contradicting my previous post here somewhat...). It doesn't matter WHERE we are killing the minions of evil, it only matters WHO we are pretending to be when we do it. SoD hinges entirely on how strongly we care about the character.

A well-designed character will reinforce SoD much more strongly than a well-designed world, simply because that is who we ARE when we play.

I hope that makes sense - these text box thingies put me off...

(oh, and I think the article was written by Anders Lovlie, I could be wrong)

I can't remember, but I believe there was a study recently about acting.

Actors can pull almost the exact same mental and physical reactions as a character they are acting. For instance, a person who was abused would sit in front of a camera and explain what happened, and then an actor with the description would do the same.

The only difference was that the actors could stop the trauma at any time and go back to their normal selves.

Now I suppose that suspension of disbelief doesn't really apply in this way to most people. Most MMO players have never role-played in their lives. I think that Most MMO players treat the game like... a game, and not necessarily a world. The achievers and killers make up this bulk. They have a high tolerance for immersion-breaking.

That's probably why immersion isn't ever a major feature of an MMO (although everyone claims their game has it).

Killers and Achievers just want to play the game. -> High tolerance
Socializers and Explorers are the ones focused on immersion. -> Low tolerance