Iron Tower Studio - Creating an "Immersive" CRPG

Over at the Iron Tower forums, Vince D. Weller has opened a new section called the Depository to hold reasoned RPG design papers.  A handful of articles from Vince are already there (older ones we have mostly linked before) but Scars of War developer Gareth Fouche has added Creating an Immersive CRPG.  Since we've agued about that dirty word here before, let's start with his intro:

So, immersion. Immersion's really great, isn't it? To immerse. To be immersed in...stuff. Who wouldn't want that, am I right? Certainly marketers and PR people know this. Every game that comes out these days promises to immerse your pants right off you. That's right. Your pants. Immersed right off your body. That is the kind of powerful...force we are talking about here.

Well, it would probably help to define immersion a bit more specifically so that I can stop using ellipses. The dictionary defines immersion as the "state of being deeply engaged or involved". Hmmm. Deeply engaged? Clearly this is a state of being that can only be induced via Pixel Shader 3 effects. DirectX 10 must be required, surely? Perhaps not. Certainly good graphics help, just as great audio does, but are those aspects all or even most of the story? I don't think so. Books can certainly immerse you. It's easy to find a good book, one that grabs you and plunges you into a world where you forget that it's 3 o clock and you have to go fetch your kids from school, and then the school councilor wants to have a chat with you and the people from social welfare. You can also certainly get immersed in your pen and paper role playing game, with nary a "bumpmap" in sight, unless you count the pockmarked skin of your obese cousin who is, disturbingly, roleplaying a dainty female elven ranger.

Given these facts I am convinced, despite the enthusiastic claims of our friends in PR, that great graphics are not the be-all and end-all of "Immersion". They aren't even necessary. So what is? I'm glad you asked, because otherwise I'd be without a topic for my article.