Strategy Informer interviews Pete Hines

[aenemic]

well, the term 'role playing' obviously comes from acting, which was around a long time before the first rpg came around. and as an actor you have no choice whatsoever in terms of story and morals. you follow a straight laid out path.

defining what is an rpg and what isn't differs from person to person, but one thing is for sure: you can never expect a computer rpg to feel like the real world and let you have the same possibilities as in real life. I doubt any game designer has ever thought it would be possible or tried to make it possible.

when Beth speaks about immersion in their games I'm pretty sure they mean that when you play it, you're immediately sucked in and feel part of the world and feel like you care about your character and what happens to him/her. and what makes a person feel that way about a game is a totally personal thing. so discussing what point of view, what kind of graphics, the amount of text to read etc... there's just no reason for it. it's all the little things that play in here, like story, sound, environments...

 

[fedaykin]

If telling people who are calling me an idiot that they are in fact the ones who are idiots is your idea of hostility ...

Whoa, hold on there, bub. What's this?

this post is for all the intellectually dysfunctional assholes out there [...] anyone who believes this is a fucking idiot.

Who was calling whom an idiot and an asshole? That's right, it was YOU who started doing that. Talk about intellectually dysfunctional - you can't even keep your cool in a debate.

Same goes for you, bub. I'm not arguing about every facet of immersion. I'm arguing about one very specific facet, which deals with perspective. First person is simply more immersive than third person.

And it has already been explained to you several times that immersion has little to do with perspective. FP is not inherently more immersive than TP.

 

[Per]

So, recap: Tyshalle rushes in yelling, calls a number of people morons and idiots for not believing in his Statement, then proceeds to add as many Qualifiers to the Statement as to make it a truism and also irrelevant to pretty much anything that's been said before. Also, bullying is the mark of adult conversation. Discussion over, then?

 

[Beelzebud]

All I know is that Fallout kept me immersed for months after it came out.

Fallout 2 kept me immersed for months after it came out.

Bethesda doesn't have to give me a IMMERSHION Seal of Approval.

 

[Seymour the spore plant]

Maybe I shouldn't be going into the merits of this debate, because I'm of the admittedly radical opinion that "immersion" is nothing but a cheap and meaningless marketing buzzword. Either it means LARPing, as in Oblivion, or is merely a byproduct of a good game/book/movie/whatever which draws you in because of its quality, and not the other way around. They could very well be hyping their game using the word "awesome" instead and look about the same degree of retardation to me.

Sorry, for all the shit-flinging going on toward Bethesda's way I keep forgetting what a bunch of sensitive, proper gentlemen you all are.

Is your name John Bethesda or something? Dude, dissing a company is one thing, specifically calling other people "intellectually dysfunctional assholes" and "fucking idiots" is another thing entirely. Back when Bethesda devs posted on these boards they were pretty well-received despite people already being critical of their company, so I don't see why you should take these insults personally. In all honesty, it makes you look like a fanboy.