The third and last are the people who have been confused by the jokes and tags on storefronts and have derived an incorrect definition and don't fully understand why they like certain types of games and are trying to find the words to explain the games that they want.
If you read the posts you only see 3 answers; earnest attempts to define immersive sims (many of which work fine as a definition. tbh Wikipedia's definition is good enough for most uses en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersi...)
The second answer is people making snide remarks for amusement.
That's fine, but please understand what the mixing of those things together has created.
And to be fair, you are not the only person who does this. I think there is something inherent to Immersive Sims that creates a general sort of irreverence.
Just stop.
There is a real discussion to be had about how not all systemic games are immersive sims; but that can't be had as long as people would rather ironically post memes and make irreverent quips instead of care about something.
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I know fans like to make fun of Immersive Sim definitions but the lack of a clear definition has not helped issues with discoverability.
'Anything is an immersive sim' definitions end up with searches being stuffed with store simulators and vr games.
So if something meets the 'quality target' it stays in; rather than looking at all the content and then cutting out the bottom, say 30%, at each milestone?
ie shipping the content that is strong enough rather than the strongest content?
What about cutting content because it doesn't stand up to the quality of the rest of the game? How/when does cutting content fit into this process?
(I assumed at certain milestones, content would be cut for not being the best with the understanding that a game is only as good as its worst part)
Capcom art team is feasting
I wonder if they do pump deals when the munch is expensive and munch deals when the pump is expensive.
You could do any of these prestige games with fmv instead of cut scenes and lose practically nothing. And probably save a big chunk of the budget.
It's basically just my blog post that is the culmination of me in a few bsky threads going off about romance in games.
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The real problem is people don't play enough indie games (myself included).
I wrote a blog post. It is about romance in games and why doing romance badly still kind of works. It goes without saying that it should not be read or engaged with in any manner.
tommyhanusagames.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...
Reminder to start with the training when playing Deus Ex for the first time.
I'm waiting for some enlightened centrist to chime in about how what we really need is a well balanced splitting maul.
Oh, the ludonarrative dissonance!
(but this is actually quite shocking and I am curious to see what he gets up to next.)
My interest in VNs mostly comes from studying interactive narratives in games and realizing I should look at the sub-genre that is exclusively does that for cutting edge techniques and inspiration.
The genre knows how to better handle the game narrative problems that AAA games often struggle with.
I'm going to leave this here so other people can get caught up the whole dating sim/visual novel thing which is 5+ years old at least.
Also I'm like an immersive sim/ crpg/ first person shooter guy-man. I shouldn't be the one updating people on this stuff.
mimidoshima.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/w...
(I am aware immersive sims are my only examples but that's just where I am at in my life now.)
Thief TDM was released in 1998 and Deadly Shadows was 2004; that's six years. Thief 4 was released in 2014 and was a reboot. Thief can not be rebooted again* (assuming no mainline games) till 2030. Development should probably start soon.
*I'm not counting the VR game but maybe I should?
Example:
BioShock. First entry was in 2007, last was in 2014. That's about 7 years. It has been more than 7 years since the last Bioshock; it must be rebooted.
Corollary Example:
Prey can not be rebooted as their was only one release. This is why people were angry.
I'm announcing the reboot rule:
If and only if you are making a future entry in a media franchise is going to release after a period of time longer than the first and last release of the media franchise; You must do a reboot.
Corollary; you can not reboot if it doesn't have at least 2 entries.
Why do you have to talk about Mushroom Samba like that? I know its an Ed episode but still.
How’s that Bloodborne PC port coming along?
A function with the description "To remove, don't `degine`" The poster has no idea what degine was supposed to mean. This is funny.
"You don't leave comments for yourself, you leave comments for yourself 6 month later" - me, probably
6 months later...
TLDR; play more indie games (steam is mainstream)
bsky.app/profile/did:...
But I have another question. What happens when devs eschew romance? Obsidian hasn't been putting (player focused) romance in their games for a long time. Some critics call it a good thing, some players feel something is missing. I think if you talk about romance you also need to mention no romance.
And there are of course indie and niche games that spend more time on the details of these things. Both with love and violence. But it does require looking through indie games to find it (and finding distribution outside of mainstream platforms like steam).
When you compare it to violence, the same situation occurs. Various guns and weapons are 'unrealistic' in games which pick and choose what parts to abstract.
Typically they try to at least make it feel like you are making similar decisions in a game as a professional might do in reality.
It is reductionist but no more so than all games are; and it makes affordances as all games do. A relationship in the language of a game is going to be as different from a real relationship as one you would see in a film, or on a serial TV show.
Someone could say that a romance requires effort and attention; in the context of a CRPG that may be a lore dump and engaging with that text. It's having conversations with NPCs and delivering items. It's using the mechanics of the game to craft romance in the game.
