What makes a game immersive? If it were simply addicting gameplay that makes time disappear, then you could call games like Tetris or Pokemon immersive, yet few players would use that term for those games. Instead, most players would point to titles like Skyrim or Mass Effect as examples of immersive games, but if you ask gamers what sets those apart, you could get a hundred different answers.

Immersion can be difficult for developers to achieve and easy to lose, but it is something that separates fun-but-forgettable titles from video game classics that can be played again and again.

Creating Immersion

Dragon Age: Origins dialogue options

While there are dozens of different factors that can make a game more immersive, most of them boil down to one simple rule: Offer players meaningful choices with real consequences.

This applies to more than Bioware-style dialogue trees as seen in Dragon Age: Origins; although, those are certainly a part of it. For players to be fully immersed in a game, they need to be able to make choices about their character, their style of play and the progression of the story.

Many games offer dozens of customization options during character creation, but for most titles these choices are purely cosmetic. Some games take it a step further by making choices like race and origin affect playstyle and the story. In Dragon Age: Origins, for example, each race and background choice changes where the game begins and the way other characters interact with the player throughout the story.

Choosing a face and a backstory are both good, but the real measure of an immersive game is often the way in which players are able to interact with the game world. Many developers boast of play-it-your-way game designs, and giving players choices between run-and-gun and stealth, good and evil, and so on is critical in creating an immersive experience.

One way developers show the effect of player choices in the game world is with a morality system that keeps track of their good and bad actions. Bioware in particular is known for games with variations of this mechanic, such as lightside and darkside points in Knights of the Old Republic and the Paragon/Renegade system in Mass Effect. It is also present in other games such as Fable or Fallout 3.

The ability to affect the outcome of the story, in both a small and a grand scale, is incredibly important in taking a player from a passive viewer to an active part of the game. While some titles can tell excellent “one size fits all” stories, a few games make the character an extension of the player rather than the other way around, and by changing the story based on player decisions, developers create a game that is both immersive and replayable.

Breaking Immersion

Mirror’s Edge: In-Game (left) vs Cutscene (right) storytelling

As hard as it can be to create immersion, breaking it is all too easy. Even a simple mistake can stick out like a wristwatch in a gladiator film, and once the illusion is shattered, it can be nearly impossible to put it back together again. If choice is the foundation of an immersive game, consistency is the framework that keeps it standing.

The easiest way a game can ruin a player’s immersion is a shoddy interface—whether it is convoluted menus, distracting displays or poor controls. The best storytelling in the world cannot make up for a camera that gets stuck in the corner or a HUD that blocks half of the screen.

While normally praised for its immersive first-person freerunning perspective, one of the few criticisms made about Mirror’s Edge was the game’s clunky controls, which sometimes caused players to run up walls they were trying to avoid or fall down chasms when they meant to jump. The issue was not the difficulty of the game, but rather its unresponsive controls that did not always do what the player told them to do.

Mirror’s Edge also had excellent first-person storytelling during missions, but its levels were divided by out-of-place 2D cutscenes with an art style that reminded players of a certain series of insurance commercials. For many, the cutscenes instantly pulled them out of the game, breaking the flow in what would have otherwise been an excellent example of immersive game design.

Meanwhile, Half-life 2 and its mini-sequel episodes never left the first-person perspective and rarely took control away from the player. Deus Ex: Human Revolution used a mix of first-person and cutscene storytelling, but the art style and character interactions were consistent throughout the game. There was no jarring shift as there was in Mirror’s Edge.

Maintaining a consistent experience will keep the player immersed in gameplay and story. Any break in that consistency will immediately draw back the curtain and remind players that they are sitting in front of a screen at home rather than out slaying dragons or toppling corrupt empires.