Immersion in Games and How to Get It

 Hello. C J here. In my opinion a good game, video game or tabletop game, needs to have meaningful challenge to be interesting. The trick, I find, with game design is to make that challenge increase as the game continues. Players become more powerful but the challenges they are faced with scale faster than they do. It’s often a game designer’s first instinct to reward their player with getting stronger faster, better and easier. This can be a problem though, as too much increase in strength without effort makes the earlier challenges seem less important.

This is why I avoid setting up unlimited resource gathering systems for myself when I’m playing Minecraft. I avoid farms that aren’t for wheat. I do the level progression through mining, crafting and fighting the long hard way. This is to me more fun. I avoid Addons mostly because I really want the vanilla look and feel. I don’t often use resource packs either. Humans are smarter than we realize we are. We need to innovate to be healthy and making us innovate under unfair conditions is really a game designer’s job.

I just started a new Minecraft Survival world earlier and I’m starting with no Addons and one goal, make it to the nether. I’m already at copper. This is a big deal. I have through sheer perseverance found a copper vein. This is cool. Now I’m going to see how long it takes to get to iron. I find there is one and only one thing I would ever improve in Minecraft. Minecraft has an amazing, unparalleled early game. There’s no long tutorial, you’re not hand held and you need to learn the rules of the new block and survival based world you are in on your own.

Then you can get wood and later stone tools. Get leather, then copper, then iron. Then finding diamond is the big deal. There are structures and new world bosses frequently to challenge a player. The one thing I always ask is, how do you win? I know that the game has endless good reasons to not have a plot and it does have a boss, the ender dragon. I’ve beaten them once though. What do I do? I get everywhere the hard way because that’s the fun way. It’s the far endgame I feel I want to add back to the game. I need it to get harder.

Why get to the nether? I’ll tell you later.

C J Mcpherson