Today marks the first installment of a special series on Heart of Style studying the concept of user immersion in digital productions, with a case study of the Insomniac game franchise Resistance.
Resistance: Fall of Man. For those of you who don’t remember, it was one of the PS3's launch titles--a military-based First-Person Shooter set in an alternate history science-fictionalized Britain. The game, featuring Vin Diesel's unauthorized grandfather U.S. Sergeant Nathan Hale, was developed by Insomniac Games and struggled like a devoted St. Bernard to keep the platform afloat in the stormy waters of the Next-Gen console wars. Those familiar with Insomniac Games are aware that they created Sony’s blockbuster Spyro and Ratchet & Clank franchises, and that their CEO is also the last son of Krypton.
It's been well over two years since the game's successful release, and the successful title’s already reaped a sequel, an in-production novel, and a devoted online community. Given the Resistance IP’s success, I think it's worth taking a second look at where it began so that we can study just how entertainment producers generate and evolve new IP franchises the digital age.
When you first pick up Resistance: Fall of Man and pop it into that Space Odyssey-inspired Monolith you call a game console, you’ll notice one thing right off the bat: this is an incredibly immersive game.
“Wow, Devin. That’s quite a lot of praise you’re dropping on a simple FPS!” you exclaim.
It is a lot of praise. But what does it actually mean?
“Immersion” is a word we hear tossed around a lot in relation to DEP. It’s become sort of this amorphous blob of a word, encompassing anything that we don’t really know how to define but still want to advertise as generally good. Foley art produces realistic sounds—FOR IMMERSION! Users make customizable character choices—FOR IMMERSION! CGI boobs bounce with their own physics engine—FOR IMMERSION!
Unfortunately, strange things happen when producers try to create content with certain objectives in mind while simultaneously having no clue what those objectives really entail. That’s why we’re going to start from square one. We’re going to investigate just what immersion is, why users desire it, and most importantly how we can employ the concept of immersion to create better entertainment productions.
Stay tuned kids!
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