Immersion. It's the key to a great book, a fantastic movie, a can't miss TV show, and especially to a video game. It's also one of the hardest qualities to achieve. There are so many breakers in a typical game, what with load times, saving games, poor AI, graphical (especially clipping) issues, and the biggie, death. To find a game that can pull you in on the story/gameplay combination alone is unusual. Finding one that can do that, while overcoming the aforementioned inherent properties of gaming, well, that happens far too rarely.

But happened it has in 2008, with the release of Fallout 3. Despite playing fewer games this year than in the past, I was thinking of not even bothering to award this title to anything. But after the initial play session lasted ten hours, it was clear that not doing so would be a disservice. This game is good. Real good. Fantastic. If you haven't played it, you need to do so. Please. Hurry.

A pair of blog entries, along with my own Fable II experiences, got me thinking today, and that's never good for my loyal readers. You can start by reading this (the Fallout 3 entry) and this before continuing.

The question these two articles presents is: how responsible are we as gamers for the enjoyment we get out of the games we play? Both authors noted how they had to shift their views of the game in order to fill in something that was missing for them. Is this a consequence of some lacking in the game's design? or is it an opportunity for the game makers to make the worlds they truly want to create?