An immersive sim (simulation) is a
video game genre
A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than Computer graphics, visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting (fiction), setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed ...
that emphasizes player choice. Its core, defining trait is the use of
simulated systems that respond to a variety of player actions which, combined with a comparatively broad array of player abilities, allow the game to support varied and creative solutions to problems, as well as
emergent gameplay beyond what has been explicitly designed by the developer.
This definition is not to be confused with game systems which allow player choice in a confined sense or systems which allow players to easily escape consequences of their choices.
Immersive sims by definition allow for multiple approaches, and typically incorporate elements of multiple genres, including
role-playing games,
stealth,
first-person shooter
First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...
s,
platform games and
survival horror. Although they typically have smaller worlds than
open world games, they also generally allow for
open-ended gameplay, allowing the player to progress in any order and pursue side missions alongside any main story missions.
Immersive sims are generally compared to games developed by
Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios, Inc. (formerly Blue Sky Productions and LookingGlass Technologies, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Paul Neurath with Ned Lerner as Blue Sky Product ...
. The first such game generally considered an immersive sim is ''
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss'', and other examples include ''
Thief'' and
''Thief 2'', ''
System Shock
''System Shock'' is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space s ...
'' and ''
System Shock 2
''System Shock 2'' is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during product ...
'', as well as the first ''
Deus Ex''.
The term "immersive sim" may also be used to describe the game design philosophy behind the immersive sim genre, which uses interacting, reactive and consistent game systems to create emergent gameplay and a sense of player agency.
Concept
Immersive sims typically task the player to make their way through levels and complete missions, but do not enforce the means by which the player does this. A common example would be where the player-character must get past a guard. The choice of how to do this would be up to the player: they may attempt to sneak around; use
parkour
Parkour () is an athletic training discipline or sport in which practitioners (called ''traceurs'') attempt to get from point A to point B in the fastest and most efficient way possible, without assisting equipment and often while performing a ...
or other similar abilities, aided with some equipment, to slip around them; find small passageways that allow them to get around the guard; create a distraction that draws the guard away from their post; convince or bribe the guard to ignore them; or simply attack and kill or disable the guard directly. The choices may be limited by the player-character's abilities and current inventory, and there may be consequences of the player's choice. For example, killing or disabling the guard could leave the guard's body to be found later, raising the alert level of other guards. However, this element of consequence can be seen as a negative to players if taken throughout the game. For example, ''
Dishonored'' introduced a "chaos" system that adjusted how enemy guards would behave due to how much violence and disturbance a player had done earlier in the game, which discouraged players from trying different tactics to avoid making future encounters harder. This system was removed for ''
Dishonored: Death of the Outsider'', as well as the addition of optional quests to encourage alternate approaches to missions.
Warren Spector
Warren Evan Spector (born October 2, 1955) is an American role-playing and video game designer, director, writer, producer and production designer. He is known for creating immersive sim games, which give players a wide variety of choices in how ...
, part of
Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios, Inc. (formerly Blue Sky Productions and LookingGlass Technologies, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Paul Neurath with Ned Lerner as Blue Sky Product ...
, said that immersive sims create the feeling that "you are there, nothing stands between you and belief that you're in an alternate world".
Many of the key developers of immersive sims compare them to tabletop ''
Dungeons & Dragons'' games hosted by a good
gamemaster, or to
live action role-playing games, in that there are a set of rule systems to keep it a game, but the game will react to the players' actions rather than force the player to conform to a specific action.
Spector is credited with the term "immersive sim" in a
post-mortem
An autopsy (post-mortem examination, obduction, necropsy, or autopsia cadaverum) is a surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse by dissection to determine the cause, mode, and manner of death or to evaluate any dis ...
he wrote on the development of ''Deus Ex'' in 2000,
although Spector himself attributes it to his Looking Glass colleague
Doug Church
Doug Church (born November 16, 1968, in Evanston, Illinois), is an American video game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the late 1980s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based im ...
instead.
Mark Brown of the YouTube series ''
Game Maker's Toolkit'' identified that a key differentiating feature of immersive sims is that they do not readily use scripted or fixed events. Instead, they use a consistent series of rules and systems throughout the game. These consistent systems then can be exploited by the player to complete objectives in unique and unpredictable ways, with the game reacting to the player's decisions.
Brown uses the example of being able to fire rope arrows (to climb on) at any wooden surface in the original ''
Thief: The Dark Project'' (1998), while the 2014 ''
Thief'' game limited what locations these could be used, removing the immersive sim elements.
Rick Lane of ''
PC Gamer
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
'' noted that while earlier games in ''
The Elder Scrolls'' series were not immersive sims, ''
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'' (2006) transitioned the series to an immersive sim.
![Gone Home - Bedroom](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Gone_Home_-_Bedroom.png)
The concepts of immersive sims are designed to have the player imagine themselves are part of a consistent world, and games using immersive sim philosophies need not have gameplay systems normally attributed to immersive sims. A notable example is ''
Gone Home'', a narrative exploration game that has the player examine the state and objects in a home to piece together a story of events that happened there previously, but has otherwise very few game mechanics. Steve Gaynor of
The Fullbright Company
Arbor Hill Productions, LLC, trade name, doing business as Fullbright (formerly The Fullbright Company, LLC), is an American indie video game video game developer, developer based in Portland, Oregon, best known for their 2013 title ''Gone Home'' ...
which developed ''Gone Home'', compared their approach to Looking Glass Studios' games, stating that "It’s really about this feeling of being in a place and the designers trusting you to progress through it in a meaningful way".
History
Warren Spector considered ''
Ultima VI: The False Prophet'' (1990) the first game to have an immersive sim mentality as while played from a top-down view, it relied less on events and planned-out puzzles, and instead provided the rulesets and systems through its living world to allow players to craft their own solutions to situations. Spector described one playtesting example from ''Ultima VI'' that he considered the genesis of the immersive sim genre, in which a playtester lacked a magical spell needed by his party to pass by a closed gate, and instead used a pet mouse character to sneak through small spaces and access the necessary controls to open the gate, something none of the developers had anticipated.
''
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss'' (1992) is considered the first game to demonstrate the necessary elements of an immersive sim according to Spector and others.
It built upon ''Ultima VI''s gameplay and added in the first-person perspective, predating ''
Wolfenstein 3D'', the game that first popularized
first-person shooter
First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...
s, by a few months. The first-person view helped to cement the impression that the player was part of the game's world that they had full control of, and completing the impression of immersion.
Spector recalled that he had thought to himself "Do you not realize that the entire world just changed?" on seeing the initial demo for ''Ultima Underworld''.
Other early examples include ''
System Shock
''System Shock'' is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space s ...
'' (1994) and its sequel ''
System Shock 2
''System Shock 2'' is a 1999 action role-playing survival horror video game designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. Originally intended to be a standalone title, its story was changed during product ...
'' (1999), ''Thief: The Dark Project'' (1998) and its sequel ''
Thief II
''Thief II: The Metal Age'' is a 2000 stealth video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. Like its predecessor '' Thief: The Dark Project'', the game follows Garrett, a master thief who works in and around ...
'' (2000), ''
Deus Ex'' (2000), and ''
Arx Fatalis
''Arx Fatalis'' is an action role-playing video game developed by Arkane Studios and released for Microsoft Windows in 2002 and Xbox in 2003. The game is played from a first-person perspective and is set on a world whose sun has failed, forcing t ...
'' (2002).
However, at the same time, more action-oriented games with strong narrative elements that followed from ''Wolfenstein 3D'', like ''
Doom
Doom is another name for damnation.
Doom may also refer to:
People
* Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed
* Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist
* Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher
* L ...
'' (1993) and ''
Half-Life
Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...
'' (1998), drew larger commercial sales, making it difficult to gain publisher interest.
Around 2006-2008, several games emerged that revitalized interest in the immersive sim, including ''
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'' (2006), ''
BioShock'' (2007), ''
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl'' (2007) and ''
Fallout 3'' (2008).
Spurred from these successful titles, there have been new titles in the ''Deus Ex'' series (''
Deus Ex: Human Revolution'' (2011), ''
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'' (2016)), the ''Underworld'' series (''
Underworld Ascendant
''Underworld Ascendant'' is a first-person action role-playing game developed by Otherside Entertainment and published by 505 Games. It is the sequel to '' Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss'' and '' Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds''. ...
'' (2018)).
A remake of ''
System Shock
''System Shock'' is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space s ...
'' (2023),
"enhanced" and Virtual Reality versions of ''System Shock 2'' (2023) and ''System Shock 3'' (TBC) are also all planned for release. New properties, including the Arkane Studios titles ''
Dishonored'' (2012), ''
Prey
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...
'' (2017) and ''
Deathloop'' (2021), as well as White Paper Games' ''
The Occupation'' (2019) and
WolfEye Studios' ''
Weird West
Weird West (aka Weird Western) is a term used for the hybrid genres of fantasy Western, horror Western and science fiction Western. The term originated with DC's ''Weird Western Tales'' in 1972, but the idea is older as the genres have been b ...
'' (2022), were developed acknowledging the design principles of immersive sims.
Other titles in this period, such as ''
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild'' (2017) and ''
Hitman
Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be ...
'' (2016), while not necessarily considered immersive sims, have been said to possess elements of the genre, given their "sufficiently advanced
physics engine/systems that interact with both player verbs and mechanics and level design" and emphasis on emergent gameplay.
Performance in the industry
While the immersive sim genre is well-received critically, its performance within the
video game industry
The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...
tends to be poor and sales of immersive sim games have been varying. The original ''Deus Ex'' sold more than 500,000 units (at the time, a respectable number) but its immediate sequel, ''
Deus Ex: Invisible War'' was considered a commercial failure. More recently, while ''
Deus Ex: Human Revolution'' sold more than 2.1 million copies within a month of its release, its sequel ''
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'' had not yet cleared one million in sales a year after its release.
''
Dishonored 2'' also did not see a sales uptake similar to the one the original ''Dishonored'' had.
''System Shock 2'' only sold about 58,000 units eight months after release, in contrast to ''System Shock'' 170,000 units.
As a result of poor sales of ''System Shock 2'' and ''Thief'' from its multimillion dollar budgets, Looking Glass suffered mounting debts and closed down in May 2000.
Irrational Games still wanted to make ''System Shock 3'', but
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
, which held the publishing rights to the franchise, felt sales of the second were not sufficient to justify a sequel, leading Irrational to make a
spiritual successor
A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product lin ...
that shared the same concepts but avoided the intellectual property rights issues in ''BioShock''.
Jody Macgregor of ''
PC Gamer
''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games ma ...
'' noted that there are other factors contributing towards lower sales - including other competing games and changes in a sequel's marketing and approach. He also states that immersive sims require more commitment from the player to invest and learn the game's complex interacting systems in contrast to other types of games built around simpler mechanics thus making immersive sims harder to sell. Jordan Thomas, a developer on ''Thief'' and the ''BioShock'' games also said that immersive sims are very difficult to be built by groups other than large teams due to the complexity of such games - making contributions from
indie games unlikely.
Arkane's
Harvey Smith believed that while the sales trends for immersive sims in the 2010s were disappointing, there will always be a market for them but there will be a need to balance the cost of development to lower sales numbers.
Smith attributes the lower sales of more recent games to the general trend of players favoring fast-paced action games with strong multiplayer components - with publishers being wary of games without such elements. Immersive sims by nature tend to be single-player experiences requiring thought-out approaches but Smith believes that the new titles will adapt to these player preferences in the future, particularly from indie developers.
Lineage
![11](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/11.30.10SpectorDavidByLuigiNovi2.jpg)
A small number of studios and developers have been associated with the immersive sim genre, creating a lineage in its development originating from
Looking Glass Studios
Looking Glass Studios, Inc. (formerly Blue Sky Productions and LookingGlass Technologies, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The company was founded by Paul Neurath with Ned Lerner as Blue Sky Product ...
and its projects. ''Ultima Underworld'' was created by
Paul Neurath Paul Neurath is a video game designer and creative director. He founded both Blue Sky Productions (later renamed Looking Glass Studios) and Floodgate Entertainment. He was the creative director of Zynga Boston. In 2014 he founded OtherSide Entertain ...
and
Doug Church
Doug Church (born November 16, 1968, in Evanston, Illinois), is an American video game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the late 1980s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based im ...
, under their studio
Blue Sky Productions and
published by
Origin Systems.
Warren Spector
Warren Evan Spector (born October 2, 1955) is an American role-playing and video game designer, director, writer, producer and production designer. He is known for creating immersive sim games, which give players a wide variety of choices in how ...
of Origin (who had worked on ''
Ultima VI'') also worked closely with Blue Sky to finalize the game - which eventually transitioned into Looking Glass and created ''System Shock'' and ''Thief''.
Spector later joined
Ion Storm and founded its
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
studio where they developed the ''Deus Ex'' series.
Looking Glass Studios eventually closed down but developers from it launched their own studios - notably
Ken Levine who had helped with ''Thief'' and ''System Shock 2'' left to form
Irrational Games and create the ''BioShock'' series (which has been described as a
spiritual sequel to the ''System Shock'' games). Following the release of ''
BioShock Infinite'', Levine significantly pared back Irrational Games to reform under a new name,
Ghost Story Games
Ghost Story Games, LLC is an American video game developer based in Westwood, Massachusetts, and led by Ken Levine. The studio is the rebranding of Irrational Games as announced in February 2017, and while still the same business subsidiary und ...
, as to explore a new approach towards storytelling. However,
Jason Schreier observed that many of those that had worked on the ''BioShock'' series at Irrational or other related studios often ended up either at existing studios or created their own studios that made their own immersive sim take on ''BioShock'' and continued this lineage.
Separately,
Raphaël Colantonio
Raphaël Colantonio (born 1971) is a French video game designer, and was the founder and for 18 years president of Arkane Studios. He has served as creative director on several of Arkane's titles, including co-creator with Harvey Smith (game design ...
had been part of the quality assurance team supporting Origin Systems for
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
(EA) in publishing games like ''System Shock'' in Europe. Colantonio left EA and eventually founded
Arkane Studios, desiring to make an immersive sim sequel to the ''Ultima Underworld'' series. EA denied them the use of the intellectual property and instead Arkane produced ''Arx Fatalis''. Later, Colantonio brought on
Harvey Smith (a quality assurance tester for Origin for ''System Shock'' and one of the lead developers under Ion Storm for ''Deus Ex'') and they subsequently designed the ''Dishonored'' series as well as building the new ''Prey'' atop similar immersive sim fundamentals.
More recently, Neurath founded a new studio,
OtherSide Entertainment
OtherSide Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 2013 by Looking Glass Studios co-founder Paul Neurath. In June 2016, the company opened a second studio in Austin, Texas, led by Warren ...
obtaining the rights for an ''Underworld'' sequel from EA and for the ''System Shock'' property through
Night Dive Studios whom also had acquired the rights from EA. Neurath brought on Spector to help create both sequels.
Many immersive sims that feature numeric passwords use the numeral "451" (or "0451") as part of the first code that the player encounters, such as in ''
BioShock'', ''
Prey (2017)
''Prey'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by Arkane Austin and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was released worldwide on 5 May 2017, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.
The game takes place in an alternate timeline i ...
'' and ''
Deathloop''.
This is in reference to ''System Shock'' games which use it as part of the first door codes seen in the game - sometimes believed to be a reference to ''
Fahrenheit 451
''Fahrenheit 451'' is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, ''Fahrenheit 451'' presents an American society where books have been personified and outlawed and "firemen" burn any that ar ...
'' but according to Spector, the code had been used on the door for Looking Glass's studios in Cambridge. Since then its recurrence in immersive sims as well as other games such as ''
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare'' and ''
Firewatch'' is described as "kind of a signature that developers use to align themselves with Looking Glass", according to former Looking Glass developer Tim Stellmach.
The name Looking Glass is also played upon by developers of immersive sims to reflect on the importance of the seminal studio to the genre - for example: OtherSide Entertainment's name (playing on the title of Lewis Carroll's book ''
Through the Looking-Glass
''Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There'' (also known as ''Alice Through the Looking-Glass'' or simply ''Through the Looking-Glass'') is a novel published on 27 December 1871 (though indicated as 1872) by Lewis Carroll and the ...
'')
and ''Prey'' having the Looking Glass computer system that the player encounters frequently.
References
{{Looking Glass Studios
Video game genres