What good is immersion?

A number of years ago, while I was a Supergroup (Guild) leader City of Heroes, I started poking our membership on a few questions, while trying to get a better feel for where people are coming from.  Now, the SG in question was a Role-Play group, but it had a bit of an odd history.  It had started as a fairly small, very focused group, with a great deal of emphasis on roleplay.  However, as it grew, for various reasons, it changed.  It's not that it was no longer an RP group, but the "style" of RP changed.  So, to kind of poke at people and see where they thought the group should be, I laid out 5 categories of RP players.

1) Run n Gun. A Run n Gun-RPer is more focused on gameplay than RP. IC chatter is a nice "flavoring" to add to the mission, or maybe while waiting for the last laggard to get to the mission door. However, any time not spent actively in mission is time wasted, and "stand around" RP is to be avoided most times. Frequent use of OOC chatter is ordinary and not a problem.

2) RP-Lite. Like the Run n Gun-RPer, the Lite-RPer is focused on gameplay over RP. The RP provides a bit of flavor to the experience. The Lite player is more willing to spend RP time outside of mission, but only to a limited extent. Some IC bonds between characters may form, but it'll be more along the line of saying "old chum" or the like, than anything else. Frequent OOC chatter is ordinary.

3) RP-Medium. This is the person who sees RP and Game Play roughly in balance. They're willing to engage in considerable RP outside of missions, including working on ongoing storylines, events and the like. IC Friendships and Romantic Relationships are fairly common. OOC chat is acceptable, but if it "breaks" the flow of an RP, it's frowned upon.

4) RP-Heavy. The Heavy RPer is the person for whom RP>Game Play. They're perfectly happy playing a Level 50, because while the game horizons may be complete, the personal horizons of the character are neverending. These players will almost always form close IC Relationships (both "friends" and "romantic"). OOC chatter is minimized, and frowned upon, as breaking immersion.

5) RP-Immersive. For this person, the game is almost immaterial. It's all about the RP. These people often go to lengths to avoid finding out any personal information about the players behind the characters they're playing off of, because that breaks their immersion. OOC chat is highly frowned upon.
I was reminded of all of this the last few days as I got a chance to putter around in the Beta for SW:TOR.  The above scale was written to gauge how those who would self-identify as RPers at one level or another look at things, but listening to the general chatter in TOR, there were some interesting comments from those who would not be considered RPers at all.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, TOR is set up a great deal like Mass Effect or Dragon Age in some ways.  It's heavily plot driven, with a large number of animated dialogue scenes with actual voice acting.  Gone are the days where your contact would present you with a wall of text with a simple "accept mission" button at the bottom.  You actually get to interact with your contact, choose responses to shape your conversation (and through that, shape your character and game experience).  From an immersion point of view, it's fantastic.  It brings you into the story in ways that a Wall of Text never could.

On the other hand, I saw a fair amount of griping about it in the general chat (as I mentioned before).  Why?  Because for many, it "gets in the way of the game."  While my above list describes different approaches to Roleplay, there are other types of players out there as well.  You can subdivide them in various ways (power levelers, raiders, such and so), but as a general description, they are people for whom gameplay trumps all.   Story and immersion are secondary, and perhaps even unimportant.  What they want is the simple act of playing the game systems (combat, crafting, whatever) and any time that the game "forces" them to interact with the plot is time wasted.

This is hardly a new consideration in MMO's.  I have one friend in City of Heroes who has the constant frustration of not being able to follow the plot of Task Forces, because much of the time, she's the only person who wants to really read the storytext, and the others are unwilling to "waste" their time doing so.

What TOR does though, is it takes the dispute to a whole new level.  Because the game forces you into those dialogue scenes, it forces the Gameplay crowd to interact more heavily with the story than they would like.

Now, I'll openly admit, I'm a very story oriented player.  I like the abilty to shape my experience within the game, to interact with the story in ways that are more profound than "go kill 10 Rodians" or whatever. (Though that is in the game too).  I do worry about TOR's ability to remain interesting in the long term with this system.  I'm afraid that it may be more of a Massively Online Single Player Game, than a multiplayer game, but only time will tell on that issue.  (This is wierd from me, who spends more time soloing than not). 

What good is immersion? Is the attempt to create a more immersive game a good thing?  To me, the answer is a clear yes.  It's also clear that there are many who already dislike those elements, because they get "in the way" of the game.  What does this mean for TOR in the long run?  Only time will tell.

DC loves your anger. It feeds them

A number of years ago, Eric Bischoff (you know, there's actually alot of common ground between comics and pro wrestling when you think about it.) wrote a book called Controversy Creates Cash.  Essentially, his thought that was by being controversial, in your face, you kept people interested and made money.  You know, it worked.  While his empire in WCW eventually imploded (for a variety of reasons), the entire Monday Night Wars saga proved Bischoff's phrase.
That's the attitude that's behind what's wrong with comics today, all of it.  We know that DC looked at Marvel's success with "One More Day" and learned the lesson that "controversy creates cash".  People got angry, protested Marvel, blogged in great anger.   Yet, sales went... up.  I'm not sure if it was all those angry bloggers showing themselves to be hypocrites (I'll never read another Marvel book!  Ooooh, all right, I will), or if it was simply new readers who got drawn into things.  That's what DC is aiming for, and it may well work.  I know initial sales have been strong.
The issues with the depiction of women?  It's all part of the same tapestry.  More severe than any complaints about exiling the JSA to Earth-2 or the like, but a part of the same process.  Slutfire has gotten more attention in a few panels than any version of Starfire has in how long?  It's created buzz.. it's created news.  It's created attention.  The question is... will it create sales?  My sad suspicion is, yes.  I'm sure there will be a fair number of people who will not purchase the book.  However, I also feel that more will buy the book.
The only answer that will make the people in DC sit up and pay attention is to not buy those books.  Enraged blog posts?  Those are good to their mind.  They create more buzz, more attention, and in the end, more money.  Only when they look up and see their bottom line shrinking will they consider this to be a bad thing.
(also, if you think that only comics are going this way, here's a thought provoking article I saw yesterday:  http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/30/opinion/stepp-bunny-tv/index.html )