Immersion

[eyvind]

The Asgard, a narrative by Beck

The Yukai Han, an expositon by Dusty Lens

OS&C Orinoco, an advertisement by Carlos Benitez

The official Lane Hacker player faction Skype chat


Give me more threads related to the subject and I will include them.

* * *

Imagine a giant corporation. Imagine a magnificently and corruptly awe-inspiring and massive wealth. Imagine prospective employees walking into the elaborate and immensely spacious lobby of a sprawling yet rigidly organized complex of office blocks, conference towers with corporate penthouse suites, and expansive rooms of clerk-manned cubicles. Imagine fleets of commercial ships orbited by countless escort craft, maintenance ships boring purposefully through the midst. Imagine the joy of employees as they are assigned to the crew of a capital transport. Imagine the elation and eye-glistening pride of an employee being promoted to her first command. Imagine the life-style of a commercial captain.

Role-playing allows this and anything else, but does the dialog-style role-play in Freelancer allow this?

I feel that the lack of narrative description of in-game Freelancer role-play is a major limitation in this regard. Brief line-by-line emotes, accompanied by game play and visuals, is used in place of such descriptive elements prevalent in other role-play.

Immersion is essential to any game. It can be argued that it is less important for role-playing; imagination can often make up for the lack of immersion provided by a game. Imagination is complex phenomenon, however, and if it is to be shared with other players then imaginative product must either be implied or explicated. If it is implied, one player will invariably imagine differently than every other. This can cause inconsistencies as well as present a marked obstacle to the natural flow of role-play.

It is often preferred to describe.

This does not come easy in most situations Discovery Freelancer presents players with. Encounters develop quickly, accommodation of other players' role-play is uncommon, and there is quite practically little room to employ even the most conventional descriptive role-play. Reduction to dialog takes place.

The Freelancer engine provides superb immersion. The addition of flyable large ships to this engine without any significant compensation has diluted this immersion in some aspects of Discovery Freelancer, in my opinion. Fighter piloting game-play translated to capital ships and transports is a result of technical limitation. Ideal immersion would likely only be possible through a drastic modification of the game-play of these new ships.

Are capital ships flown by a pilot, a pilot who also controls weapons? Of course that is a possibility, but it is not an assumption that provides for maximum immersion into the role of a capital ship crew.

* * *

Imagine a wing of fighters and small freighters. Imagine aging ships maintained by their pilots. Imagine the arduous road of toil the multitude of freelancers take in their aspirations of flying a spaceship. Imagine carrying your entire networth within the hull of your ship. Imagine the satisfaction of a successful mission. Imagine the gradual upgrades to your ship with every station you visit. Imagine the dismay at every setback pirates and terrorists bring upon you.

The Freelancer game engine was designed for this and pulls it off wonderfully. The immersion is fantastic.

To experience this immersion you don't need much description or narrative. Personal emotes is often enough to tell the collaborative story.

* * *

Beck's story of the BHG Core ship Asgard succeeds exceptionally in putting the reader into the situation. He manages this with powerful descriptions of perception and emotion, descriptions that are difficult to pull off well in a live role-playing environment with the circumstances of Discovery. This is most certainly a problem of accommodation.

A reasonable sentiment of accommodating other people's roleplay is crucial to the wellbeing of any role-playing environment. If one player spews line after line of speech, largely ignoring attempts by his co-player to participate there is little true roleplaying to speak of. This is a problem that shows up in many situations in Discovery Freelancer, most typically in the trader-pirate encounters.

An inescapable evil? Perhaps. An inescapable evil that has kept the Discovery Freelancer RP 24/7 server from being a focused roleplaying server. Granted, many other factors have contributed to this. Granted, it may simply be a matter of convention, definition, culture, and paradigm.

Hence, it's not the essential topic.

* * *

Dusty's exposition demonstrates another side of the coin.

(Ironically, it also demonstrates the same problems and obstacles mentioned above; it mentions the problems, but perhaps more unintentionally and indirectly.)

This other side of the coin is closer to Freelancer's original design, it is a mode of play that benefits the most from Freelancers successful immersive properties that have made the game to what it is. Not "freelancing," as such, but the road freelancers take; "the arduous road of toil the multitude of freelancers take in their aspirations of flying a spaceship."

This is a mode of play used by a number of people. It has been used in the past, it is used today, and it will undoubtedly be used in the future.

The official Lane Hacker player faction, as Dusty mentions, may be the epitome of this. LH has kept to this play style for 2 years (the 2 year mark is coming up in a matter of weeks) and the enjoyment we have experience, those of us who have gone through the recruitment, initiation, and promotion advancements, are far better off for it. Some may have forgotten and left it behind -- to you I say, "Remember!" -- but enough of us carry on the legacy, in as much as we are able.

Individual players have at least gotten a taste of it. I remember one day not too many months ago that two DSE Mastodons hired a Startracker (flown by Sindroms, as it turned out) in Pennsylvania to escort them. The trip was cut short, unfortunately. [If someone could find Sindrom's journal-like post that described that day from the eyes of his character, I would appreciate it.]

I have only been lucky enough to experience or even bear witness to the phenomenon a few times, but it has invariably been memorable.

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<span style="font-family:Agency FB">Good Morning!</span>